Struggling social game outfit Zynga has announced it will shut down its branded version of popular slots-bingo hybrid game Slingo later this month. A year and a half ago, Zynga proudly announced the launch of Zynga Slingo as its first licensed game deal, but the writing was on the Facebook wall following Slingo’s purchase late last month by RealNetworks. Zynga Slingo is now closed to new players and will disappear completely from Facebook on Aug. 27. Zynga Slingo’s 3.5m monthly active users will be offered one-time compensation packages in Zynga Poker, Bubble Safari or Farmville 2.
Meanwhile, the results are in from the ‘social casino experiment’ conducted last Thursday at The Casino at The Empire in London’s Leicester Square. David Sargeant (pictured grinning at right), the lucky punter who earned his role as social casino lab rat via a Facebook contest, was given £1k with which to wager, with any winnings going straight into his pocket. The kicker was that his every wagering decision – whether to hit, stay, pick red or black or play a three card poker hand – would be crowdsourced via the Empire’s Twitter followers.
It took three hours for Sargeant to cycle through his stack of chips, making a total of 63 wagers on the advice of his digital backseat drivers. The net result was a £932.50 payday for Sargeant, who said “all that tweeting was hard work” but he wasn’t complaining. Neither was social media agency Battenhall, who came up with the promotion for London Clubs International, which operates the Empire facility. Twitter was recently determined to boost sports bettors’ ability to predict the outcome of games, so maybe we’re on to something here. Perhaps LCI’s parent company Caesars Entertainment might want to give crowdsourcing a try the next time they consider whether or not to buy a golf course or something.
