So About That Browser-Based Ultima Game…

Submitted for Dragonly consideration: Zynga, the makers of (ugh) Farmville, are now apparently worth about $290 million more than Electronic Arts.

Which is to say that this:

Is, bafflingly, worth more than all this:

Now, of course, Zynga’s growth, which has decidedly stratospheric aspirations, isn’t necessarily a good thing, in that it’s not exactly sustainable. Zynga’s target market and marketing model are also…volatile, to say the least; they entirely depend on Facebook’s audience as their customer base. They’ll be fine as long as they can keep producing the next best thing as far as browser-based, socially integrated gaming goes…but I wouldn’t personally care to bet that they can keep it up.

Still, the example of Zynga demonstrates that there is a lot of money to be made in browser-based gaming that integrates with major social networks (Facebook, Twitter…). An full-fledged RPG in the Ultima vein probably wouldn’t make quite the same sort of killing that Farmville did, but would it be a fiscal success even so?

One suspects it would. And it just so happens that we know that BioWare Mythic has been working on just such a thing.