Friday, December 3, 2010

Evilcorp Acquires Words With Friends

I've made my disdain for FarmVille creators Zynga pretty clear, and now the thing I feared is beginning to happen. Zynga is using their money and power to scoop up good companies. Newtoy, creators of the popular Words With Friends and Chess with Friends, is the first victim. Zynga promptly renamed them Zynga with Friends. I only wish I was making that up.

Zynga head Marc Pinkus allegedly considered renaming them Zynga With Friends With Benefits, but nobody could figure out what the benefits were, or how many Zynga coins they'd cost.

Newtoy also made their own FarmWille ripoff called We Rule. Compared to other compulsion loop games, it really wasn't bad, in the same way that Attack of Clones wasn't as bad as The Phantom Menace.

The Games With Friends network created by Newtoy is the most popular social gaming system on iOS systems, and Zynga has the most popular social gaming titles on other systems, so it's a pretty natural match. No word on whether the Zynga model (Step 1: Steal, Step 2: Lie, Step 3: Screw your customers) will be applied to the "With Friends" line.

Maybe we'll have to buy some Zynga coins in order to get a "Q". Or perhaps come back in 15 minutes to see if our "Z" is ready.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I always like word games. Lately a friend introduced me a new game EPELER, it’s a cute word arcade game. I need to make as many words as possible from the falling letters, and the goal is to clean up the world. Took me 2 days to see the ending~

By the way my words with friends id is hihecat, want to start a game?

Thomas L. McDonald said...

I'll have to check that one out. I hadn't heard of it.

Right now, I don't have WWF on my device. (I have to keep taking stuff off and putting new apps on.)

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