社交游戏巨子Zynga最近有点烦

    人们对社交游戏的狂热已经大大降温。一场酝酿已久的风暴以社交游戏公司Zynga近来的不幸收尾。如今，分析师和投资者都在疯狂地挥舞着示警的红旗。他们特别不看好那些斥巨资收购最新热门游戏开发商的公司。调研公司BTIG Research的分析师理查德•格林菲尔德解释称：“许多媒体公司因投资这个领域而蒙受损失。”

    这并不是说社交游戏领域气数已尽。只不过竞争加剧，而游戏玩家们对最新热门游戏的热情消退得越来越快。格林菲尔德说：“每款游戏的寿命越来越短，成功也越来越小。人们越来越浮躁、善变。”

    确实，据流量监测服务机构AppData称，2011年，Zynga游戏的活跃玩家数量比最高峰时期下降50％所需的平均时间为62天。2010年的时候，这个数字是164天，而在2009年，则是223天。金融公司Robert W. Baird & Co.高级研究分析师科林•塞巴斯蒂安表示：“游戏是一项靠热门驱动的业务，所以真的很难有预知未来的水晶球，能够提前知道什么游戏可以大红大紫，以及它们能火多久。”塞巴斯蒂安称，该市场仍在增长，但速度有所放慢。他估计，社交游戏领域的营收在2011年增长了50％以上，但今年很可能只会增长20％。

    因此，华尔街不看好那些仅仅为了将最新热门游戏收入旗下就收购游戏开发商的公司。历史记录确实也不容乐观。

    Zynga仍未摆脱OMGPOP的收购阴影，无论是资产负债表，还是对投资者的回报，目前来看都很不乐观。今年3月，Zynga以2亿美元收购《你画我猜》（Draw Something）游戏开发商OMGPOP。外界曾认为Zynga捡到了摇钱树。不过事与愿违，收购刚完成，《你画我猜》的用户数就开始下降。Zynga最后不得不减记了OMGPOP的一半资产。投资银行Sterne, Agee & Leach的总经理阿尔文•巴蒂亚称：“Zynga收购的时机恰逢用户数最高的时候。收购一结束，用户数就开始直线下滑。”【今年7月，Zynga首席执行官马克•平卡斯在出席《财富》技术头脑风暴大会时还向与大家表示，现在就断言收购成败还为时尚早。不过上周，Zynga表示将对OMGPOP的交易进行高达9,500美元的资产减记。】

    Zynga本质上是一家社交游戏公司。不过，即便是业务更为多元化的大型游戏公司，目前也遇到了不小麻烦。行业巨头电子艺界（Electronic Arts）早已制定了依靠收购谋增长的长远发展规划，但现在它遇到难题了。2011年7月，电子艺界用现金、股票和基于长期绩效的后期支付额等方式收购了PopCap，收购总价最高可达13亿美元。PopCap曾开发出宝石迷阵（Bejeweled）、植物大战僵尸（Plants Vs. Zombies）等脍炙人口的作品，但其营收自收购后开始不断下滑。这种窘境迫使PopCap创始人约翰•维奇对公司进行重组——裁员50人并缩减其它方面的开支。维奇8月份时在公司博客上表示：“我们经历了一场巨变，人们玩游戏和为游戏花钱的方式都发生了改变。用户的喜好变化了，这要求我们重新规划业务，并投资于新类型游戏和新平台。现在的用户和我们当初完全不一样了。”

    自2010年以7.6亿美元收购Playdom后，媒体巨头沃尔特•迪士尼（Walt Disney Co）也遇到了类似麻烦。格林菲尔德称：“Playdom并没有被很好地整合。”皇家银行资本市场公司（RBC Capital Markets）分析师大卫•班克则表示：“Playdom收购案一开始就令人失望，还拖累了整个数字媒体集团的营收。”不过，班克补充说，去年推出几款新游戏后，整个部门有了些起色。“社交游戏业务取得了一定成功，但过程十分漫长。我确实认为他们可能是在高位上买入，但我不知道这是一个错误的战略决策。”

    The white-hot enthusiasm for social gaming has cooled considerably.Zynga's recent woes have capped a long-gathering storm. Analysts and investors are now frantically waving cautionary red flags. They're particularly bearish on companies paying big bucks for entities that have developed the latest hit game. "A lot of media companies have been burned by investing in this space," explains Richard Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research.

    It's not that the social gaming sector is tanking. It's that competition has intensified and enthusiasm for the latest hit among gamers can increasingly be clocked with an egg-timer rather than an old-fashioned desk calendar. "The lifespan of individual games is getting shorter and shorter and having lower and lower levels of success," says Greenfield. "People are becoming more and more fickle and transitory."

    Indeed, the time it has taken the number of active users playing Zynga's (ZNGA) games to drop 50% from their peak fell to 62 days on average in 2011, down from 164 days in 2010 and 223 days in 2009, according to tracker AppData. "Games are a hit-driven business and so it's really hard to have a crystal ball and know what games are going to be successful and for how long," says Colin Sebastian, a senior research analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. Sebastian says the market is still growing, but at a slower pace. He estimates social gaming revenue rose north of 50% in 2011, but will likely be up only 20% this year.

    All of this has made Wall Street bearish on companies that chase after firms for the sole purpose of adding the latest flash-in-the-pan hit to their rosters. The track record isn't very encouraging.

    Zynga is still reeling -- both its balance sheet and investors -- from the acquisition OMGPOP for about $200 million in March. It thought it was buying a hit title, Draw Something. But the ink was barely dry on the purchase agreement when the game's popularity started tanking, forcing Zynga to write off about half of the game's value. "They bought it as the user base was peaking, and it fell off right after they acquired it," says Arvind Bhatia, a managing director at Sterne, Agee & Leach. (In July, Zynga chief Mark Pincus told the crowd at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference that it was too soon to judge the success of failure of the acquisition. Last week the company said it planned to take a writedown of as much as $95 million on the deal).

    Zynga is, at its core, a social gaming company to its core. But even more diversified games firms have suffered. Electronic Arts (ERTS), whose long-term business strategy has been to grow through acquisitions, has stumbled. It acquired PopCap Games in July 2011 for about $1.3 billion in cash, stock and future performance-based payments. PopCap, which created such games as Bejeweled and Plants Vs. Zombies, has been struggling with declining revenue since the takeover, which recently prompted PopCap's founder, John Vechey, to slash 50 jobs and make other cuts as part of a restructuring. "We've seen a dramatic change in the way people play and pay for games," said Vechey, on the company's blog in August. "The change in consumer tastes requires us to reorganize our business and invest in new types of games on new platforms -- it's a completely different world from when we started."

    Media giant Walt Disney Co (DIS) has also faced challenges since moving into the sector with its $760 million acquisition of Playdom in 2010. "Playdom wasn't digested very well," says Greenfield. The deal was an "initial disappointment" that caused "earnings to drag in the digital media group," adds RBC Capital Markets analyst David Bank. But after rolling out a new set of games last year, Bank says, the group has seen some improvement. "The business has ramped to some success, but it's been a fairly long journey," he says. "I do think they probably got in at the top of the market, but I don't know that strategically it was a bad decision."