Does Zynga return to relevance with NFTs?

Ah yes, Zynga, the name that has dominated the industry of flash and mobile games in the golden days of Facebook, but then somehow became irrelevant as Facebook was not the most dominant social media platform. However, with the recent rise of crypto and NFTs, Zynga made a bold move that could return them to the spotlight they once had by diving into the NFT world themselves.

“We are taking our community building seriously. We are ramping up that team deeply. When we ignite the community, we will be actively engaged with that community.” – Matt Wolf, Zynga

© Zynga

How Come Zynga Is Thinking About NFTs?

Before discussing their involvement with NFTs, let us look back on what Zynga was and technically still is. Back when Facebook was the biggest social media platform that took pretty much all of MySpace’s users within a year of its launch, Zynga was the company that had some of the best games on the platform. The biggest hits were Mafia Wars, and Texas Hold’em Poker. While those games are still around, they are not even as nearly as popular.

The answer to the question above is relatively simple, as Zynga needs new revenue streams and NFTs are a fantastic opportunity. Last year they partnered up with Forte’s blockchain infrastructure company. Since then, the company started building a team for NFT games. While there are currently only 15 people working on the project, they are looking to push the team to as big as 100 people, according to Matt Wolf, Zynga vice president of blockchain gaming.

Will Zynga’s dive into NFTs succeed?

In the last year or so, the number of NFT games being created has increased by quite a bit, and to be honest, most of them are terrible to play, even if it is possible to make some profit on them. Sure, there are exceptions, like Axie Infinite, for example, but the majority feels like a sloppy version of old Facebook gamed: do you see where this is going?

Zynga seems like the perfect company that can take advantage of the NFT craze and implement them into some of their most popular IPs, which is exactly what they are planning to do. Because most play-to-earn games share a lot of mechanics and principles like Mafia Wars and Farmville, it is effortless to see how reviving these IPs by putting NFTs into them could bring the company a lot of success.

Of course, they will probably not implement the NFT features directly into the old games, but instead, they will create new ones with the same name and slap “NFT edition” or something similar like they would slap “64” for the Nintendo 64 games back in the day. Either way, we are looking forward to this.

NFTs are Zynga’s golden ticket to a “Comeback”

While the company did not really go anywhere, the NFT games will give them quite a push, as they certainly know how to make games that would be perfect for this genre. However, the enormous potential to help Zynga make a comeback is the company’s potential acquisition by Take-Two Interactive, which would be for $12.8 billion. This deal is yet to be closed, but it would certainly be significant for Zynga if it does.

We might see a resurgence of the famous doggo logo on favorite games soon.

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