????人們對社交游戲的狂熱已經(jīng)大大降溫。一場醞釀已久的風(fēng)暴以社交游戲公司Zynga近來的不幸收尾。如今，分析師和投資者都在瘋狂地揮舞著示警的紅旗。他們特別不看好那些斥巨資收購最新熱門游戲開發(fā)商的公司。調(diào)研公司BTIG Research的分析師理查德?格林菲爾德解釋稱：“許多媒體公司因投資這個領(lǐng)域而蒙受損失。”

????這并不是說社交游戲領(lǐng)域氣數(shù)已盡。只不過競爭加劇，而游戲玩家們對最新熱門游戲的熱情消退得越來越快。格林菲爾德說：“每款游戲的壽命越來越短，成功也越來越小。人們越來越浮躁、善變。”

????確實，據(jù)流量監(jiān)測服務(wù)機構(gòu)AppData稱，2011年，Zynga游戲的活躍玩家數(shù)量比最高峰時期下降50％所需的平均時間為62天。2010年的時候，這個數(shù)字是164天，而在2009年，則是223天。金融公司Robert W. Baird & Co.高級研究分析師科林?塞巴斯蒂安表示：“游戲是一項靠熱門驅(qū)動的業(yè)務(wù)，所以真的很難有預(yù)知未來的水晶球，能夠提前知道什么游戲可以大紅大紫，以及它們能火多久。”塞巴斯蒂安稱，該市場仍在增長，但速度有所放慢。他估計，社交游戲領(lǐng)域的營收在2011年增長了50％以上，但今年很可能只會增長20％。

????因此，華爾街不看好那些僅僅為了將最新熱門游戲收入旗下就收購游戲開發(fā)商的公司。歷史記錄確實也不容樂觀。

????Zynga仍未擺脫OMGPOP的收購陰影，無論是資產(chǎn)負債表，還是對投資者的回報，目前來看都很不樂觀。今年3月，Zynga以2億美元收購《你畫我猜》（Draw Something）游戲開發(fā)商OMGPOP。外界曾認為Zynga撿到了搖錢樹。不過事與愿違，收購剛完成，《你畫我猜》的用戶數(shù)就開始下降。Zynga最后不得不減記了OMGPOP的一半資產(chǎn)。投資銀行Sterne, Agee & Leach的總經(jīng)理阿爾文?巴蒂亞稱：“Zynga收購的時機恰逢用戶數(shù)最高的時候。收購一結(jié)束，用戶數(shù)就開始直線下滑。”【今年7月，Zynga首席執(zhí)行官馬克?平卡斯在出席《財富》技術(shù)頭腦風(fēng)暴大會時還向與大家表示，現(xiàn)在就斷言收購成敗還為時尚早。不過上周，Zynga表示將對OMGPOP的交易進行高達9,500美元的資產(chǎn)減記。】

????Zynga本質(zhì)上是一家社交游戲公司。不過，即便是業(yè)務(wù)更為多元化的大型游戲公司，目前也遇到了不小麻煩。行業(yè)巨頭電子藝界（Electronic Arts）早已制定了依靠收購謀增長的長遠發(fā)展規(guī)劃，但現(xiàn)在它遇到難題了。2011年7月，電子藝界用現(xiàn)金、股票和基于長期績效的后期支付額等方式收購了PopCap，收購總價最高可達13億美元。PopCap曾開發(fā)出寶石迷陣（Bejeweled）、植物大戰(zhàn)僵尸（Plants Vs. Zombies）等膾炙人口的作品，但其營收自收購后開始不斷下滑。這種窘境迫使PopCap創(chuàng)始人約翰?維奇對公司進行重組——裁員50人并縮減其它方面的開支。維奇8月份時在公司博客上表示：“我們經(jīng)歷了一場巨變，人們玩游戲和為游戲花錢的方式都發(fā)生了改變。用戶的喜好變化了，這要求我們重新規(guī)劃業(yè)務(wù)，并投資于新類型游戲和新平臺。現(xiàn)在的用戶和我們當(dāng)初完全不一樣了。”

????自2010年以7.6億美元收購Playdom后，媒體巨頭沃爾特?迪士尼（Walt Disney Co）也遇到了類似麻煩。格林菲爾德稱：“Playdom并沒有被很好地整合。”皇家銀行資本市場公司（RBC Capital Markets）分析師大衛(wèi)?班克則表示：“Playdom收購案一開始就令人失望，還拖累了整個數(shù)字媒體集團的營收。”不過，班克補充說，去年推出幾款新游戲后，整個部門有了些起色。“社交游戲業(yè)務(wù)取得了一定成功，但過程十分漫長。我確實認為他們可能是在高位上買入，但我不知道這是一個錯誤的戰(zhàn)略決策。”

????The white-hot enthusiasm for social gaming has cooled considerably.Zynga's recent woes have capped a long-gathering storm. Analysts and investors are now frantically waving cautionary red flags. They're particularly bearish on companies paying big bucks for entities that have developed the latest hit game. "A lot of media companies have been burned by investing in this space," explains Richard Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research.

????It's not that the social gaming sector is tanking. It's that competition has intensified and enthusiasm for the latest hit among gamers can increasingly be clocked with an egg-timer rather than an old-fashioned desk calendar. "The lifespan of individual games is getting shorter and shorter and having lower and lower levels of success," says Greenfield. "People are becoming more and more fickle and transitory."

????Indeed, the time it has taken the number of active users playing Zynga's (ZNGA) games to drop 50% from their peak fell to 62 days on average in 2011, down from 164 days in 2010 and 223 days in 2009, according to tracker AppData. "Games are a hit-driven business and so it's really hard to have a crystal ball and know what games are going to be successful and for how long," says Colin Sebastian, a senior research analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. Sebastian says the market is still growing, but at a slower pace. He estimates social gaming revenue rose north of 50% in 2011, but will likely be up only 20% this year.

????All of this has made Wall Street bearish on companies that chase after firms for the sole purpose of adding the latest flash-in-the-pan hit to their rosters. The track record isn't very encouraging.

????Zynga is still reeling -- both its balance sheet and investors -- from the acquisition OMGPOP for about $200 million in March. It thought it was buying a hit title, Draw Something. But the ink was barely dry on the purchase agreement when the game's popularity started tanking, forcing Zynga to write off about half of the game's value. "They bought it as the user base was peaking, and it fell off right after they acquired it," says Arvind Bhatia, a managing director at Sterne, Agee & Leach. (In July, Zynga chief Mark Pincus told the crowd at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference that it was too soon to judge the success of failure of the acquisition. Last week the company said it planned to take a writedown of as much as $95 million on the deal).

????Zynga is, at its core, a social gaming company to its core. But even more diversified games firms have suffered. Electronic Arts (ERTS), whose long-term business strategy has been to grow through acquisitions, has stumbled. It acquired PopCap Games in July 2011 for about $1.3 billion in cash, stock and future performance-based payments. PopCap, which created such games as Bejeweled and Plants Vs. Zombies, has been struggling with declining revenue since the takeover, which recently prompted PopCap's founder, John Vechey, to slash 50 jobs and make other cuts as part of a restructuring. "We've seen a dramatic change in the way people play and pay for games," said Vechey, on the company's blog in August. "The change in consumer tastes requires us to reorganize our business and invest in new types of games on new platforms -- it's a completely different world from when we started."

????Media giant Walt Disney Co (DIS) has also faced challenges since moving into the sector with its $760 million acquisition of Playdom in 2010. "Playdom wasn't digested very well," says Greenfield. The deal was an "initial disappointment" that caused "earnings to drag in the digital media group," adds RBC Capital Markets analyst David Bank. But after rolling out a new set of games last year, Bank says, the group has seen some improvement. "The business has ramped to some success, but it's been a fairly long journey," he says. "I do think they probably got in at the top of the market, but I don't know that strategically it was a bad decision."