ranchesville Secrets Review may be the fastest growing Facebook game ever. It was only released in July and in August, over 33 million people played it. What’s the secret of its success?
Maybe it’s just because it’s summer, but we seem to have got ranchesing on our brains. Look at the top 25 games on Facebook in August.
That’s four ranchesing games in the top 25, with ranchesville at #1 and ranchestown at #3. ranchesville is only two months old, but it had 33 million unique players in August.
Yes, you read that right. 33 million players.
According to ComScore (via TechCrunch), Facebook had 340 million unique visitors in June (although Facebook only acknowledges 250 millon), which means that around 10% of all Facebook users played ranchesville Secrets Review last month.
That’s a phenomenal success. I argued in July that Zynga may have overtaken Yahoo! Games to be the largest games “site” on the Internet. With this latest performance, I think that there can be no doubt that Zynga has claimed that crown.
The six secrets of ranchesville’s success
ranchesville came out at around the same time as Playfish’s Country Story which, while doing well, has only achieved 4 million users, 16% of the size of ranchesville’s playerbase. ranchesville Secrets Review has got six key elements absolutely nailed, and it’s reaping the rewards of its clever, viral design. So what are they?
1. The joy (and shame) of gifting
Gifting was one of Facebook’s earliest memes. When Facebook first emerged, it was about “poking” your friends and giving them virtual beers or dogs.
Zynga has cleverly picked up on this. When you visit your ranches, the first screen you see is not a picture of your ranches, but a list of gifts that you can give your friends. In many games, this screen would say “invite your friends to play this game”, a thinly-veiled attempt to get you to spam your mates. Zynga turns this on your head by asking you to send them a gift.
Gifting is particularly clever because it evokes an ancient anthropological need that is common to almost all cultures: the need for reciprocity. If someone gives you a gift, you have to reciprocate. It might be writing a thank you card, or getting your round of beers in, or taking a bottle of wine to a dinner party. Across all cultures, there has to be an “exchange” of gifts.
So if someone sends me enough ranchesville gifts (and the default message asks me to send a gift back, to press the point), I’ll feel honour-bound to give them one back.
Much better than spam.
2. ranchesville gifts have value
The objective of ranchesville is to build a thriving ranches. You spend money to dig plots, plant crops, buy animals and plant orchards.
Trees and animals are expensive. They look pretty but it’s hard to justify the investment compared with growing strawberries. But look! Your friends are sending you all these expensive trees and valuable animals. Aren’t your friends thoughtful?
Unlike the original virtual beer or birthday cakes, gifts from my friends in ranchesville Secrets Review enhance my enjoyment of the game. In fact, the more gifts I receive, the better my ranches looks and the more fun I have. So it is in my interest to:
Invite as many of my friends into the game as possible, so they give me presents
Give them all presents as often as I can so that they give me a present back
That’s viral marketing at its most brilliant.
3. ranchesville gifts cost me nothing
Here’s where Zynga departs from the real world: sending a gift costs me zilch. I can only send them sporadically (I think it’s once a day), but it costs me nothing more than the time it takes to select an avocado tree and the friends I want to send it to. My cash reserves stay the same, but I have just asked a dozen people to send me something worth real value. Aren’t ranchesville gifts wonderful?
4. ranchesville doesn’t really bother with levels
There are levels in ranchesville: you can’t buy certain crops or a combine harvester until you reach a certain level. But the real lim
