I use the term 'fake' here in the context of a product made entirely out of information, and your cinema example is a good one. The experience is the sale, not the asset. That said, the other company I'm watching in this space is Blizzard which recently opened up their real money 'auctions' for items in Diablo III. This legitimizes what has been an underground industry for years and recognizes that there is some business value in trading "products" made out of bits instead of materials. Unlike Zynga the Blizzard scheme has users selling to users and Blizzard just takes a percentage. If the model generates any serious revenue at all for Blizzard I would expect Zynga to follow suit, allowing Farmville users whose cow births a gold medal calf or something to trade that for Zyngian currency or even real money. These businesses have to be careful not to create an actual currency because the government will shut that down, but trading virtual goods has so far passed muster on that score.[1]
That said, the analysis I've seen on Zynga games relates the pleasure not from the virtual farming, so much as the chance to get more out than you put in (the gambling rush as it is known in Las Vegas). You plant your farm and you get a golden bean or something that is now 'valuable' as opposed to all those other times you planted and got regular beans. Its a powerful tool, wielded well by Zynga and others.
[1] You will know you are trouble when your customer wants to pay you with rare gear from Diablo or extra egg laying chickens or something.
I enjoyed Zynga games for a while, but there was a change at some point along the line where you could no longer play the game as it was designed without spending money. That's when I stopped playing.
It's fine to have the spend-money parts as fun add-ons. I might even spend a dollar or two here or there on such things.
But I will not play a game that tries to hook me in for free but then requires me to purchase pieces of it just to play it as it is designed.
That's a tricky line, of course. I'll play WoW sometimes, and I pay for that. But I'm not paying real money to give my character some spell that's required for basic play. For a funny hat or a cool mount (that's functionally the same as a free one), sure.
Greed, for lack of a better word, killed Zynga. They pushed it too far.
I think this captures a very common sentiment. Certainly folks I know have expressed it as well, which is that its one thing to have 'bonus' items cost real money but its another thing entirely to feel 'duped' into investing in something without knowing the costs. Its a challenging line in the freemium world because on the one hand you can 'dial in the amount of money you want' and on the other hand folks defect. There is an interesting corollary in taxation [1].
With Blizzard, one wonders if they will begin to compete with their customers by creating and then selling through their auction system rare or unique, and by definition game changing, items. The temptation will always be there of course, a company has to choose not to step over that line.
[1] I worry about using that example because it sounds like a troll, it is not.
"I use the term 'fake' here in the context of a product made entirely out of information, and your cinema example is a good one."
I understand the points being made here but using something like cinema isn't the best thing when you think about it.
The reason is cinema has been around a long time. It's something that started at a different time and also you are doing it the presence of other people and it's a cultural thing.
Things that are legacy are different in people's minds. So using it to either make or break an argument as to human behavior can be problematic.
You could use, as an example, people's behavior with attending sporting events pointing to why people spend money to see a team win. And then why they will or will not do "x" activity. But as we all know the chance of starting a new sports league and getting the same type of attendance and devotion simply hasn't and most likely won't happen. (Professional soccer in the US is an example. It's big in the rest of the world but it doesn't make the nightly news in the US and there is very little attention payed to it relative to Football, Baseball, Ice Hockey, Basketball. And even Ice Hockey is much bigger in Canada.)
So you could say "this would work because look what people do with respect to Football" or "this wouldn't work because look what people do with Football" and you are comparing something that has a huge advantage because it's so entrenched in the way we all think at this point. (And High School Football in small towns vs. big cities even bigger difference.)
That said, the analysis I've seen on Zynga games relates the pleasure not from the virtual farming, so much as the chance to get more out than you put in (the gambling rush as it is known in Las Vegas). You plant your farm and you get a golden bean or something that is now 'valuable' as opposed to all those other times you planted and got regular beans. Its a powerful tool, wielded well by Zynga and others.
[1] You will know you are trouble when your customer wants to pay you with rare gear from Diablo or extra egg laying chickens or something.