Zynga’s Café World Goes from 0 to 8.6 Million Users in a Week, with Big Implications
FarmVille broke all sorts of records as the fastest-growing and largest application on Facebook. But now another Zynga production, Café World, is looking set to best it. The app has grown from 0 to 8.6 million users since it launched a week ago, according to AppData, based on a combination of cross-promotion from other Zynga games (including FarmVille) and advertising on Facebook.
This is especially good for Zynga, as we believe the company could try to go public as soon as next March. Café World has a baked-in revenue model in the form of virtual goods. It’s another big hit using the so-called “Zynga Playbook” for making apps grow, meaning the company can further justify its 2009 financials to public investors. We’ve heard the company is already on track to make $200 million this year.
However, the effect on the overall social gaming developer ecosystem is not so clearly good.
Café World is not a clone of Playfish‘s Restaurant City, but there are many similarities — like the fact that both are virtual restaurant games, where users create restaurants, cook and sell virtual food, etc…. Specific similarities include: The layout of the restaurants, the view of the street on the side, the design and animation of characters — especially walking and eating. See our review of the two games for more on that. Café World has done some features in a more interesting way, like restaurant expansion.
In context, Restaurant City is currently the eleventh largest application on Facebook, with 16.2 million monthly active users. It is one of the company’s crown jewels, the other big one being Pet Society, at number 6 with 19.5 million monthly active users. The company is the second largest developer on Facebook, with 56.9 million monthly active users. But Zynga is the largest with 140 million, if you add up all of its applications (note: this number is not de-duplicated).
To get a sense for what Café World means for Restaurant City, take a look at what happened to Slashkey‘s Farm Town before and after Zynga launched FarmVille in June. As FarmVille grew, Farm Town’s traffic leveled off, even though it is staying steady with nearly 19 million monthly active users. The same may be happening for Restaurant City, as its traffic has also leveled off in the last week. Although none of those stories have been fully told — Playfish’s Country Story, also a virtual farming game, is smaller but is still managing to grow. It has more than doubled in the last 90 days, from 3.15 million to 7.34 million monthly actives.
What Zynga is showing is that it is willing to copy, then innovate on high-quality games perfected by others, and use its market size, cash, and optimization techniques to do that. Its cross-promotion efforts include strategically placed buttons for Café World in other games, including hits like FarmVille, Mafia Wars, YoVille and more. In terms of money, we’ve heard from multiple sources that Zynga is spending $50 million on Facebook ads this year. Meanwhile, Zynga isn’t just coming out with quality new games. It keeps pumping out new versions of existing games, like its recent expansions of Mafia Wars.
For any company that develops a game that gets traction, Zynga has the ability to come in and do it better.
It is not clear what any other developer can do to stop this, besides find more effective ways to build and market their own apps. While Zynga is sometimes busted for things like spammy invites, many other developers have been or actively are guilty of the same. Perhaps a group of VCs or a private equity firm will step in with $100 million, roll up some of the smaller yet successful developer shops, and go to war? Perhaps more established gaming companies will make acquisitions and devote more resources to social gaming? Yesterday, casual game company PopCap raised $22.5 million in a large part to push its social gaming effort faster — this is after ten years of the company growing to 240 employees without ever taking a round. And it was not surprising to hear, earlier this week, that another large rival, Playdom, is looking to raise more money.
To dig deeper into the virtual goods market, check out our new report: Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2009 – 2010.
yes I am having a problem with cafe` world ,it`s too slow and the food disappearing of the counters that I waited hours for the food to cook and the coins, I use to cook the dishes.this is pissing me off then I don`t feel like playing the games, do something about this problem soon. I enjoy playing it like cooking the dishes not when i get pissed off with it.I will stop playing this games
my cafe world zynga on facebook was blocked.can you please help me on how to get it back.i missed playing cafe wolrd.
I dont know why you miss it. Its a fact all Zynga games have technical issues daily and THE ONLY REASON THEY ARE MAKING IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE ON FACEBOOK. If they werent on FB they wouldnt have all these users. Thats a fact! If Zynga had its own place to go and the games were as crappy runned as they are now, Mark would be working at Burger King. They are the worst games Ive ever played.Zynga (Mark) use the FB people as guinea pigs and we let him get away with this. We complain daily of all his games not working and it does no good. How he is getting away with this Illnever know and they make money from dumb people that give it for virtual items. Its time for people to stand up to Zynga and stop giving real cash and maybe they will finially fix there games. They are all in a shambles. Thats a fact because i play Farmville, Petville. Yoville, Cafe World and CW is the worst. I quit Roller Coaster Kingdom because it was real bad like cafe Worls with the latency problem that was not coded correctly and they refuse to change it. People need to ban together and not let Zynga get away from also ripping people off daily. if you read the different forums of the games you will read many complaints of people that have paid cash and not gotten what they paid for 3 months later down the road. How can a company ever get this far. Its idots allowing it and other pay the price. I refuse to every give Mark any of my hard money when I get noting but headach from his games. The only reason why I play is because of my personal situation being home all the time and its pom FB and its something to to do but its gotten to where its just an awful experience daily playing any Zynga game. Now put that on the chart of all of the complaints, and its not just me that has about had it with Zynga. They have an awful service record, their games are always breaking down daily, and to say anything on a Zynga forum that isnt positive without being ugly your still shut down by the Mods. Zynga doesnt like for any negativity to get out. Zynga is one big Negative in my books. And the only reason why I play is because its on FB and I want to stay comnnectd to my firends there and they feel the same way. Its like e have a barrel over our heads really.
I would like to take a brief glance to this “PlayBook” just to see if it deserves all this buzz it is receiving.
why dont you all fix cafe world its pops up says lost connection it very bad when you expect to have a nice cafe im level 64 cant get in to get food off food spoiled need to fix it or lots people going to quit playing it
I have been playing cafe world on facebook for awhile now I am on level 72 I am having a problem I can’t cook anything it keeds kicking me off the game. I cant
‘t serve any of my gifts keep getting kicked off and when i can cook something it takes a long to get it off I get kicke doff all the time and I dont fell I should have to reset to start all over again I worked really hard to get where I am on the game and want to stay please tell me what I can do to fix the problem. Thank You,
i lost my useage of cafe world three days ago i have tried and tried to regain the site but each time the popup said i clicked and expired site or typed it incorrectly . i try everything to regain the site to no avail i even wrote zanga for help no answer can some one help me correct the problem
i have lost usage of cafe world and so have 6 other of my family memebers. as soon as we click cafe world everything locks up and you can’t navigate anywhere on the page. the mouse seems usless and then it shows the characters moving and spoiled food but you can’t do anything on the page. i have to hit the refresh button to get out of the page. i hope someone will be able to help all of us so we can continue to play this game. will lose alot of people if this doesn’t get corrected.
my cafe world just disaper now i can not even get the app for it
yes i lost the game to can someone tell me what is going on with it. mines also said expired site try again??????
I ACCIDENTLY BLOCKED CAFE WORLD AND I CANT FIND HOW TO GET IR BACK……….PLEASE HELP
I can get my homepage but cannot get in to my cafe some of my family can’t ,wot’s going on.
Im having a problem sharing my food Its not posting to my profile also, when I click on the envelope to help or recieve food It use to go back to the game and now I get kicked off. I have to restart the game all over again. Can you help me get this fixed.
Thanks,
I just leveled up to 109 and got 0 cafe cash.
This is not the first time this has happened. Getting 0 cash for leveling up has been going on for a month or so. Can you fix this?
@Tina i’ve been playing cafe world for 2 or 3 weeks and i’ve waited 2 days for a pot roast to finish, it actually doesn’t take very long, all you have to do is be very patient and wait for your dishes to finish otherwise cafe world is not for you because its not for impatient people so be patient ok?
Never would have thunk I would find this so indisnpesable.
my cafeworld is not loading, i need to know why and i have updated my window and flash player
i did agoal to get pumpkin seeds and didn’t get them i need them to do another game and i placed my witches caudiron and it dissappeared help please thank you
On one of my goal Amelia’s 3 i erased by mistake my bat teriyaki and can not countinue please could you put it back. I HAD PUT TOGETHER RICE BAT BONES ABD TERIYAKI THANK YOU …..
Please make a Cafe world Express like u did for Farmville for the Mobile Android phones, please. Thank you
I HAVE WRITTEN COMPLAIN TO NO AVAIL. I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO PLAY CAFEWORLD FOR A WEEK CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHATS GOING ON. THANK YOU I HAVE TRIED DIFFERENT BROWSWERS AND IT STILL DO NOT WORK
I have been playing cafe world for over a year and a half. I played up until around 2PM today and then the link wouldn’t work. I have food that needs to be taken off stoves but can’t get in. I can’t even get to cafe world to send a message saying I can’t access it. What a waste of my time to lose all that food. I am currently running four different cafe’s (in different names) and I’ll lose food on all of them. That’s very discouraging. Is there any recourse when this happens?
Several features do not work. I cannot ask my friends to send things because the page comes up blank. Some of the build items don’t work at all to have people help, they just flash and go back to the original. I had been working on the different dishes but now the all expire because I can’t get anyone to send items because the game will not let me send request to my friends that I know play. I am getting very frustrated. I have been playing since the game came out but I might have to stop because of all the problems.