Zynga's Texas Holdem Poker: Five Reasons Why It Succeeds Despite Conventional Wisdom

Zynga's Texas Holdem Poker has always astonished me, it defies the conventional wisdom that real-time games can't succeed on Facebook. Also, amazing to me is that in less than a year, we've already developed conventional wisdom about games on a brand new platform. But I digress...

So why does Texas Holdem Poker succeed where all other real-time games fail? Here's five reasons.

1. You don't need your friends to have fun. It sounds counterintuitive, but if you need your friends playing with you to have fun, then you need them to be online. Most friends are not available to play games whenever you feel like playing. It's the core problem of real-time games. Online poker, however, is nearly as fun to play against strangers as it is with friends.

2. People normally play online poker with strangers. Not only do you not need your friends to play with you, but you wouldn't even expect to play with friends. People having been playing online poker against strangers for years, it's the rule, rather than the exception.

3. Critical mass. Zynga launched Texas Holdem Poker during the those hazy golden days when Facebook first opened the platform. You know, back when people still responded to invites. The early launch combined with the acumen of Zynga's CEO Mark Pincus allowed Texas Holdem Poker to acquire a massive userbase fast. As a result, there was (and is) always someone to play with, which is the key to have a successful real-time game.

4. It doesn't require direct communication between players. Playing online poker with strangers doesn't require you to directly interact with the other players. It's possible, but not necessary. As a result, people can treat it like a single-player game. And believe me, not everyone likes to interact with people, especially with strangers.

5. It's bottable. Meaning that you can have bots as players without the other players knowing. Bots ensure that there is always someone with whom to play. For the record, I'm not saying Zynga uses bots, especially not now that they've reached critical mass, but it would have helped them in the past had they chose to use them. I want to be clear here because when it comes to online poker, bots are a HUGE no-no, and I don't want to paint Zynga with that brush.

Conclusion: In my mind, Texas Holdem represents the opposite of the design principles that people (including myself) are espousing as necessary to have a successful social game.

You don't need your friends. The social graph is unnecessary. It's real-time. Communication is optional. It's essentially a single player experience.

Further evidence that nobody really know what games are going to work on Facebook. It's still a brave new world, kids.

QQ Games, the world's most popular multiplayer real-time casual game service is failing in the U.S. Why?

In China, QQ Games have reached up to 3 million concurrent players (that means players online at the same time).

In the U.S., this afternoon, after being live for over a year, QQ Games has just under 1500 concurrent users.

Wow.

In the U.S., QQ Games takes the form of a plugin for AOL Instant Messenger. AOL has 30 million active users a month. So out of 30 million active users, QQ Games attracts 1500.

Wow. Again.

So what's the deal? How come one of the world's most popular multiplayer real-time game services is failing to take off in the U.S.?

You're expecting an answer...well...here's some possibilities:

1. It's a downloadable plugin. That usually hampers adoption somewhat, but it's a stretch.
2. AIM users don't know about it. Nope, it's prominently features on the AIM homepage. And it's offered as an option when you install AIM!!!
3. The games aren't fun. Maybe...but nope, they're fun. However, they are NOT social. They are multiplayer puzzle games that don't require any interaction between players.
4. Americans don't like playing against strangers. Maybe...if so, it's a problem for all multiplayer real-time games. And besides, they have an option to invite friends to play.

I think it just hit me. The games on QQ Games are not really any more fun in multiplayer mode then they would be in single-player mode. In fact, they feel like single-player games. For instance, they have a Bubble Bobble Clone called Robo. If you played Bubble Bobble in the arcade, it's awesome because you can hear your opponent groan when you send a barrage of bubbles down on her head. In the online version, you don't get any feedback, it's boring. You opponent isn't even going to send a chat message because they're too busy playing.

For multiplayer action games like the ones on QQ games to be as fun as the arcade originals that they're modeled after, it'll require audio chat.

However, I think the core reason they haven't had the user uptake of their parent company is because they have yet to fully implement their virtual economy. QQ Games does have gems that you earn by playing games, but at the moment those gems can't be used to buy anything, which makes them meaningless. Offering virtual goods in exchange for the gems gives people a reason to play over and over again. It gives purpose to gameplay. Purpose fuels retention. The problem, of course, is providing a context in which the virtual goods are meaningful. That's easy when you control the platform as in China, not as easy when you don't (a point I should probably touch on in a future post).

So while nothing can make QQ Games social (except perhaps adding some social games...duh), implementing the rich virtual economy of the Chinese parent will increase usage significantly, I suspect. I'd wish them luck, but their parent company, Tencent, pulled in a half a billion dollars last year, so as they say...who needs luck when you have 500 million dollars in the bank.