CastleVille has been announced for Facebook as a new MMORPG from Zynga, and just the latest game in a huge lineup of over 10 new social networking games that Zynga will be launching very soon. The games range in all kinds of new genres and will also be hitting new platforms and formats, including Facebook (natch), cellphone and mobile platforms, Google+, web games (via HTML5) and China’s Tencent platform.
These games are: Mafia Wars 2, CastleVille, Zynga Bingo (within the larger Zynga Casino), and Hidden Chronicles. New mobile games include Mafia Shakedown, Dream Zoo and FarmVille Express.
All of them are the latest strategy in the company’s pursuit of taking back market share that was recently won by Electronic Arts thanks to the huge success of The Sims Social (which now has over 66 million players!) and other AAA spin-offs of big name EA titles like Dragon Age Legends.
“We want to be the biggest macro bet on social gaming. We want to give you more of a World of WarCraft feeling, but packaged up in something you can understand in three clicks and five or 15 minutes.” said Chief executive Mark Pincus.
As for CastleVille itself, the game is the latest in Zynga’s “Ville” series of titles and the follow-up to CityVille.
In the game players build their own Castle, defend it from enemies, show it off to their online friends, and craft items like potions and Armor. The game also features an actual storyline and characters; showing off a new personlized form of storytelling that Zynga has never attempted before. Players explore the world around them, meet new characters and run errands for them, and unlock new characters and paths as they progress. Players can also trade items with their friends and barter with them by visiting their towns.
“CastleVille takes Zynga’s Ville legacy to a new level of social. In short, Zynga is bringing massively multiplayer role-playing games to the mass market,” says Bill Jackson, creative director of Zynga Dallas and previously of Microsoft’s Ensemble Studios.
Zynga has grown to a tremendous size in recent years. The company has acquired at least one company a month for the past year and has slowly built up an army of game developers that will allow them to create multiple games on multiple platforms simultaneously and make bigger and better games than ever before. The company currently employs over 2,500 employees, including 1,700 at the company’s new headquarters alone.
Does CastleVille sound like a winner to you? Will you be playing it?