Facebook kingpin 
Zynga has long been accused of liberally borrowing ideas for its games, but now a tiny development studio is putting the company in an embarrassing spotlight.
NimbleBit, the three-person development team responsible for the breakout iOS hit Tiny Tower, has pointed out the many similarities between their hit and Zynga’s upcoming Dream Heights game in a manner that’s as entertaining as it is cutting.
After its first day 
on the NASDAQ, Zynga’s performance has been less-than-impressive, and Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris takes a moment to figure out exactly what went awry.
Shares in Zynga’s Wall Street debut may have started strong today, but minutes after they began trading, the stock’s pricing chart looked like something that even the most extreme skier would have avoided.
By the time all was said and done, the company was down 5 percent, closing at $9.50 per share (and was down as much as 10 percent at one point during the day), bucking the trend of the year’s other hot internet stocks, like LinkedIn and Groupon — despite the fact that Zynga is profitable, while those companies are not. What went wrong?
Social game maker 
Zynga’s much anticipated debut on Wall St. didn’t go quite as well as planned Friday.
The company finished the trading day at 9.50, 5 percent below its offering price – as investors, fearful of a new tech bubble, steered clear and analysts ripped the company on growth concerns.
Zynga’s debut 
on Wall Street Friday is the largest from a U.S. company since Google went public in 2004 — and it has been one of the most widely anticipated stock offerings of the year.
But if early trading is any indication, anticipation doesn’t translate into interest.
As expected, 
social game maker Zynga will begin trading shares on Wall Street Friday, marking one of the video game industry’s biggest public offerings in years.
The company has priced shares at $10 each, the high end of its expected range and will offer 100 million shares to investors. That puts the company valuation at about $7 billion.
[Though Zynga’s upcoming $1 billion IPO is lower than expected based on previous reports and market cap valuations, Gamasutra’s Chris Morris explains why the company is playing it smart with its low share prices.]
Five months after announcing its intention to go public, Zynga is about to make the splash, but it’s doing so with a much smaller splash than most people expected back in July.
Back then, when the market was teasing investors with a head fake of stability, analysts, and the financial media (along with most of the gaming industry) expected the company to raise between $1.5 and $2 billion – with an accompanying market cap of $15 billion and $20 billion. But when shares begin trading Dec. 16, the company will only seek $1 billion – and have a maximum market cap of $7 billion.
FarmVille has a date with Wall Street on December 16. And we’re all invited.
Four months after signaling its intention to go public, Zynga has finally updated the paperwork to let investors know the date is imminent, with shares set to begin trading in two weeks. But despite speculation about Zynga instantly becoming the highest valued company in the gaming industry, that’s likely not going to be in the cards.
You don’t have 
to be a wizard of Wall Street to know the market sucks these days. While the Dow Jones Industrial average is slightly higher than it was at the start of the year, persistent fears of a double-dip recession – or worse – are preventing both individual and institutional investors from jumping into the market with any gusto.
That’s starting to affect the valuations of companies with looming public offerings, including a high profile one in the gaming world. And it should be a lesson to other game companies thinking about an IPO.
Reports last week 
that the Air Force’s drone program had been hit by a virus raised all sorts of concerns about cyber-terrorism infiltrating the military. It turns out, though, that the whole thing could be Facebook’s fault.
Pentagon officials say the virus wasn’t something that specifically targeted military systems, but was instead a fairly common piece of malware that’s used to steal people’s online gaming passwords.
We certainly have no 
problem getting caught up in the fun of playing games, but the people who create them have their pocketbooks to worry about, too. In this column, finance expert and GameSpy contributor Chris Morris guides you through the tricky corridors the gaming industry’s financial side, touching on big-time business decisions and how they matter to the common gamer.
Not too long ago, publishers tended to turn their noses up at social games. Mafia Wars? Poker? Sure, they were mild distractions to entertain people in-between status updates… but a viable economic force? No way! Then FarmVille took off — and the bubble began growing. Big-name developers and executives began defecting. And publishers began investing. Flash-forward to today: No one’s foolish enough to say social (or mobile) games are going to replace console releases anytime in the foreseeable future, but at the same time, no one’s foolish enough to consider the field an afterthought anymore, either.
Electronic Arts, of course, is the biggest publisher to immerse itself in the social network gaming waters. Between its 2009 acquisition of Playfish (which consisted of a $300 million offer with an additional $100 million earnout) and its buyout of PopCap earlier this year (for $750 million and additional earnouts that could ultimately push the price over $1 billion), EA’s not taking the new casual gaming movement lightly.
Chris Morris: Journalist 