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Dyack On Social Media: "It's Going to Crash Very Hard"

by Matthew Kato on May 11, 2011 at 04:02 AM

Casual gaming via things like Facebook's FarmVille has become a popular way to pass the time, but some such as Silicon Knights head honcho Denis Dyack don't believe the fun will last.

In an interview with Industry Gamers, Dyack thinks that this sector of gaming cannot be sustained. "The trend that I see is it's probably going to be one of the biggest bubbles and explosions that our industry's seen in a long time, and I think when it crashes it's going to crash very hard," he declared. "I don't think there's an economy there."

"I think Zynga’s valuated more than some traditional publishers right now that have been in the industry for decades. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it. It seems imaginary to me... it doesn’t look long term healthy to me. And right now you're seeing a lot of influx in venture and you're seeing a lot of excitement and a lot of pie in the sky ideas, but when games actually have to start showing pure revenue and real 'Here's how much we made and here's how much it cost'... I think that industry is going to not last very long."

Even with EA's acquisition of social media gaming company Playfish, some publishers have been slow to jump on the bandwagon, and Dyack believes there is good reason for this. "I think there are a lot of publishers out there that don’t agree with it and they just haven’t spoken about it. I don’t see Nintendo going into that space."

For more from Dyack, read the full interview.