About two years after ‘FarmVille’ from Zynga, the San Francisco-based startup, drew millions and millions of Facebook users to plant fascinating fields of dazzling digital crops, social gaming seemed to have bloomed into an enticing multi-billion dollar activity. But now experts are wondering if the gamer fatigue is gradually setting in, thus putting question marks over its growth prospects as marketing costs are shooting up.

Just weeks after the much-awaited version of ‘Mafia Wars 2’ was made live to great fanfare on Facebook, hard-core gamers across the globe were understandably excited. Many of them had spent years dabbling in the original Mafia Wars that involved creating an online criminal empire, and fighting intense virtual gang wars.

But soon there were murmurs of fatigue and sighs of tiredness among the self-proclaimed fans of the game. Some of them complained that the sequel had too many bugs and that certain missions could not be finished. A few others found out that at a certain point they ran out of challenges. After hitting a particular level, it was almost like hitting a ceiling as the game was left with little to offer.

Why are the costs zooming?

Even while overall expectations and prospects for the social gaming market remain reasonably robust (it is expected to generate more than $14 billion in revenue in three years time, up from mere $6 billion in 2011, according to an estimate from Lazard Capital Markets), the domain is perhaps feeling its first signs of growing pains. A large number of developers now jostle for the online gamers’ clicks and clamor for their attention. It is not a mere coincidence that the latter are cutting down on the time they spend on each social game.

In order to stand out, companies like Zynga spend millions of dollars to develop titles and then million dollars more to market them. Rising expenditure and decreasing revenues are increasingly putting a cap on business margins and profit levels. And it is getting tougher for hits to come by.

State of the social game market

In fact, according to analysts of social game market, the economics are no more what they used to be earlier. This is largely because customer acquisition cost is shooting up, which means further pressure on margins, experts point out. Saturating the competitive market with ad campaigns is the key to attracting a large audience. Developers are keen to take their offerings early on to as many people as possible.

They are desperate to work out the types of players (their number gradually receding) who like a particular game and are likely to stick around, play around with friends, and spend some amount in it. However, this strategy does squeeze margins and also makes it tougher to profit over the long term from the game.