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Draw Something Loses Appeal, Downloads and Users Decline

 

Draw Something, the game that’s a combination Pictionary and Text Twist, was the biggest story in mobile gaming a couple of months ago.  The game from maker OMGPOP was launched in February and in just a few weeks, it managed to log 35 million downloads and about 15 million active daily users.  The game became the top free app and top paid app in Apple’s App Store and in Google Play.  In other words, the game was hot with iOS and Android users.  The game may have been boosted by its connection with Facebook.

Zynga, the company behind huge Facebook games including Farmville, noticed the game and bought OMGPOP for $200 million.  It was the hottest game at the time it was purchased and Zynga probably thought it has the new Angry Birds in its hands.  It turned out to be a good sale for OMGPOP but for Zynga, it’s starting to appear like it was a bad purchase.  Recent reports say that daily users went down from 15 million to just 10 million, and the downloads have of course also declined.  The downward trend appears to be continuing and it spells bad news for Zynga.

I have play Draw Something on the iPhone and iPad and although I admit it was fun at first, the game started to lose its appeal.  It doesn’t help that the words are very limited and are just repeated so after some time, the drawings become too predictable.  And unlike Angry Birds, Draw Something has no regular updates so there are no new challenges.  The goal in Draw Something, it seems, is to gather as much colors as you can so you can improve your drawings.  But you’ll actually only need a few colors, so unless you want to complete all color packages available, there is no real challenge in the game for you.  The game also takes time, from doing the sketches and from watching your friends guess your drawing.

Have you played Draw Something? Do you still enjoy the game or you believe, like most users, apparently, that it has lost its appeal?

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2 Comments

  1. grapesofwrath Reply

    It has totally lost whatever appeal it had! Count me in among those who almost never tap that icon. I mean it proves to be a stupid game. I don’t even understand how we score. Is it the Level? Some people simply write the word and don’t draw anymore! There really was no solid concept of gameplay to begin with.
    As for Zynga, lesson learned the hard way. Lower the prices of your with Friends games and you might recover some loses through that.

  2. You need a competitive edge to be sustainable. Either head to head or co-op play to create some drama, and to create drama you need some conflict. Drawing together to attain worthless points is not exactly this kind of conflict.

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