Zynga Announces RewardVille. Will American Express, Zynga deal be a virtual rewards game-changer? Got points?
Starting today, you can redeem them for virtual items like cows in FarmVille or guns in Mafia Wars. In a first-of-its kind deal, American Express has teamed with game-maker Zynga to make its credit card rewards redeemable for virtual goods. It’s the latest example of gamification – or the introduction of game elements into non-game activities. There are reasons this commerce and gaming partnership works for AmEx and Zynga, but the deal could have implications for other companies’ reward programs as well. Zynga’s player demographics gel with the American Express cardholder base Per Jonathan Flesher, Zynga’s GM of business development: American Express and Zynga are logical partners for demographic reasons.
Cardholders can already redeem points for other intangible objects There’s no money exchanging hands when cardholders redeem points, and often no item they receive in the mail. The deal raises the perceived value of Zynga’s virtual currency. Zynga brings virtual goods to physical retailers. Social gaming powerhouse Zynga has built a business potentially worth north of a billion dollars.
And it doesn't sell anything. Real, that is. By some estimates, the company will reportedly pulls in over half a billion dollars in revenue this year selling virtual goods, such as virtual tractors and furniture, that are used in social games that are played by hundreds of millions of people each month on social networks like Facebook. The virtual goods Zynga sells may not be real, but they're now available at major retailers in the U.S. such as 7-11, Target and Best Buy thanks to new prepaid cards Zynga hopes will encourage more consumers to play its games and buy virtual goods.
The prepaid cards come in two denominations -- $10 and $25 -- and can be redeemed in-game to fund the purchase of the virtual goods that power Zynga's booming business. Already, payment companies that are involved in social gaming have struck deals with retailers similar to that announced by Zynga. The Zynga Statistics: Games, Platforms, Timeline and Revenue Analysis. Is Zynga Trying To Patent Virtual Currency? If we’re reading correctly, this patent filed in March is multiplayer gaming network Zynga’s application for the control of non-redeemable virtual currency and/or poker chips bought with real currency in virtual games, a.k.a US Patent Application #20100227675 for “Virtual Playing Chips in a Multiuser Online Game Network.”
While at first glance it seems like the patent’s strictures only pertain to poker chips, it explicitly references Zynga games Zynga Poker and Farmville in its “Examples of Embodiments” section, which delinates both “Non-Redeemable Virtual Currency” and “Non-Redeemable Virtual Poker Chips” as inventions that Zynga is claiming the rights to.
I am by no means a patent analyst, but tell me if this claim doesn’t read this way to you: So from what it looks like, Zynga is trying to patent the the ability to buy virtual currency that can’t be traded for actual currency or “what happens in virtual stays in virtual.” Will Zynga be successful in acquiring a patent on virtual currency.