Japan Facing a Farmville Invasion

It looks like Softbank is planning to bring social games like Farmville to Japan:

Zynga, the online gaming company best known for its Farmville Facebook game, has received a US$150 million investment from Japanese Internet company Softbank.

The two companies plan to form a joint venture, Zynga Japan, that will develop and distribute social games across Japan, they said in a statement.

Softbank, which holds the iPhone monopoly in Japan, has been beating out competitors in the battle for new subscribers.

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9 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - July 30, 2010 at 2:04 pm

Categories: games Tags:

helical

Oh noes! It’s the Sunshine Bokujo epidemic all over again!
The deluge of invites to that virtual farming game that got passed around in mixi got pretty annoying since one supposedly got a little perk for introducing a friend.

InJM

Don’t forget Gree. Gree has lots of those kinds of games.

helical

I’m not a member of Gree, but wasn’t Gree a gaming social community site to begin with?

What made Sunshine Bokujo so obnoxious was that mixi was originally a social networking site without apps and games for the longest time, until management thought they could “re-invigorate” the site by introducing that element afterward, alienating some people who didn’t really want gold farmer mentality dominating the conversation.

somegirl

this is by far the saddest news ever. I have had to deal with Zynga and their customer service on many occasions. They are a terrible company, they have great games and many of my friends play Farmville, Mafia or Vampires but those games still have bugs in them. . .or you spend the money to support them and get favor points which are than lost or “missing.” I have heard from so many people who have lost money because weekly upgrades swallow them by accident. They have so many servers that the games often play differently too. I think as a company they need to focus on making their games work smoothly before expanding out.

space_cakes

Wait… there are people out there that are paying to play these games?

Rob A

I think this is a mistake.

Fact: America has a far lower work ethic than most of Japan. (Evidence: Work/School on Saturday)

Fact: These games are purely a waste of time. (Evidence: No win conditions)

Fact: This waste of time, cumulatively, hurts the general workforce and productivity of America. (Evidence: Studies showing large % drops in output correlating to large % increases in games like this)

Fact: Japan is better than this. (Evidence: …ok, so I don’t really have any, but they seem like it)

Summary: Let America waste all their time playing stupid games like Farmville while you remain a productive economic power. Then, when America is of only greedy fatcats with all the money and a bunch of Idiocracy-worthy drones addicted to web games and Twitter, you can easily step in and buy it to make SuperJapan.

I, for one, welcome our new Giant Robot-loving overlords.
April

Too bad they’ll have to deal with their iPhones crashing everytime they open Farmville.
Miachael

I am scratching my head about why you link to softbanksucks in this article, hidden under the word “Softbank”? Doing SEO for softbanksucks?
http://kingjapan.wordpress.com/ King Japan

This is great news. These games will help make my co-workers dumber and lazier so I can get a promotion.

Japan Facing a Farmville Invasion

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