The social gaming company Zynga has brought its gaming services to China in a partnership with the Chinese Internet service Tencent. Their first game is titled “Zynga City.”
According to AFP, the free online game is a market specific version of the “Cityville” game, which was available in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and English upon its release in December.
During gameplay, players construct dream cities with businesses, homes, parks, and landmarks. They can then invite friends to come and live in their virtual cities as cartoon-like characters that operate businesses, enforce laws, and other tasks.
Zynga bragged about how “Cityville” is the most popular game on social media giant Facebook, using data from industry analyst AppData.
“Cityville” had more than 80 million monthly users as of Monday, according to the AppData website.
The trial version of the social game released on the month-old Tencent Open Platform allows people in China to play the game in their own language.
“We hope that Zynga City will be a success on Tencent Open Platform,” said platform general manager Lin Songtao.
“We are expecting that more and more international social game developers will bring their popular games to Tencent Open Platform for Chinese Internet users and this will support the rapid growth of the social game market in China.”
The growth of “Zynga City” is spearheaded by the San Francisco-based social game developer’s studio set up in Beijing in May of last year with the acquisitions of XPD Media.
The game has decorations, architecture, storytelling, quests, events, and action that is geared towards Chinese culture, according to Zynga.
“Zynga is committed to building a truly local offering in China and the announcement today is a continuation of the company’s overall international initiative of creating high-quality games that can be enjoyed across all cultures and languages,” the company said in a release.
