Zynga Fixes

Mobile is a trend, it is a tsunami, and it is not new, it has been going on. So the thought that Zynga should place a major emphasis on mobile is to state the obvious. Mobile is going to be the central computing experience for most people. They are out and about but they are connected, they are online. Mobile is where the center of gravity is headed, if it is not there already. And that has implications for numerous companies, many industries.

Being metrics driven is important. But being only metrics driven can feel empty. Creating games is artwork. You can't get rid of the metrics, but you can't be a slave to the metrics either. What makes for a great actor? A great director? A great movie? What makes for a great game?

There's A Major Flaw In Zynga's Plan To Fix Itself

It has no choice but to figure out mobile. Zynga's mobile users are growing three times faster than its web users. ...... Farmville, which first put the gaming company on the map, has led to a slew of other "ville" attempts, like Castleville, Cityville, YoVille, PetVille and FishVille. Most have not been able to attract the same user-base as Farmville. .... "The 'With Friends' network is the same strategy as ville games," says the source "Pick a franchise that has one hit and double down on the franchise as each game performs worse and worse."

Going mobile is as much a strategy as going online is. That is a broad direction. Then you have to figure it out.

Wall Street is even more metrics driven than Zynga. Way more. It looks at cold, hard cash, earnings.

Related articles

• The Zynga Debate: Is the FarmVille maker doomed?
• EA levels copyright lawsuit against Zynga
• EA Sues Zynga, Says The Ville Rips Off The Sims [Lawsuits]
• Zynga Is Now A Mobile Company, Whether It Wants To Be Or Not (ZNGA)
• EA sues Zynga, says The Ville is an 'unmistakable copy' of The Sims Social
• EA sues Zynga over 'The 'Ville' [update: Zynga responds]
• Update: EA taking Zynga to court over The Ville
• Meet The Power Player Charged With Saving Zynga's Business (ZNGA)
• Zynga says EA copyright lawsuit 'ironic'
• The Ville gets Zynga slapped with a lawsuit by The Sims Social's EA

Zynga And Mobile

Zynga and Facebook are in the same boat. They are both trying to figure out mobile.

Zynga's Rocky Shift to Mobile

To turn around its flagging business, Zynga Inc. is betting big on mobile games and creating a network that connects mobile-game players..... people have shifted to playing games on their mobile devices instead of on personal computers. Zynga says the number of people who play its games on mobile devices is growing three times faster than the number of those who play on the Web. .... Zynga's shares closed Friday at $2.72, down 73% from its December IPO price of $10 ..... Pincus said his vision for mobile games is to connect a large network of game players across a variety of platforms

Fred Wilson, Mark Zuckerberg And Mobile

Related articles

• Zynga Is Now A Mobile Company, Whether It Wants To Be Or Not (ZNGA)
• Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says company is not 'all-in' on mobile games
• Zynga Gets Hit With Insider Trading Lawsuits (ZNGA)
• The Zynga Debate: Is the FarmVille maker doomed?
• Zynga Getting Hammered
• Zynga's earnings report "disaster"
• Zynga COO Said to Lose Product Oversight as Growth Slows - Bloomberg
• Meet The Power Player Charged With Saving Zynga's Business (ZNGA)
• Zynga's David Ko opens up about Zynga's mobile publishing plans
• Zynga or Facebook? Game On!

Zynga: Could It Reinvent Itself?

This blogger below argues Zynga got down the science right, but is failing on the art part.

Zyngapocalypse Now (And What Comes Next?)

Both inside and outside the walls of Facebook, the story of social games has become one of dead geese and golden eggs, flatlined growth, formulaic games and shady practises..... the main problem in social games was that the product was almost identical across all providers, and that social game makers had trapped themselves into thinking that it had to be so. I said that this had led them to treat the market as akin to fast food ..... I thought Zynga would miss the opportunity to spend incoming investment on building better products and instead inflate the kind of product and business model that they already had. .... without constant and heavy promotion, social games tend to fade away pretty quickly ...... the business model of social games is hollow because the value it provides is poor. ..... The obsession with tactics is directly related to the obsession with metrics, and this leads to a culture which devalues original thinking. Social games have the exact same problem as network television in that respect, in that there are far too many quants running the show, demanding numeric proof for decisions. Quants understand little to nothing of why players play games ..... Timidity rules. .... The second generation needs to be thinking like HBO, not network television. It takes research and prototyping time to develop good game dynamics, but more than that it takes the right technology, talent and faith. This last quality is perhaps most frightening because it pretty much means letting the inmates run the asylum. ...... You may wish that game design was a process, but it’s an art. ..... why should the player play your social game as opposed to a downloaded PC game, a DS game, an Xbox game and so on .... ........... Social games do not bring people together. Most players in fact play them in a largely single-player fashion, making contact purely for reasons of necessity like trading, earning Energy and so on. ..... Players play to achieve, to do, to build, to create, to explore, to destroy and to win. ... What games don’t do particularly well is the whole “living a virtual life” thing. ....... (this is why poker is still Zynga’s most solid game), it’s all about the self-propelled, self-organised and self-successful player. “Social” simply helps that happen faster, in what we designers are increasingly calling “parallel design”. ...... most players’ game graphs in their Facebook games are either empty or full of the orphaned accounts of those who stopped playing. ..... G2 social games will probably have very different delivery to G1, like the difference between “software” and “app”. ..... If Yahoo was “Search, Generation One” then Google was “Search, Generation Two”. .... A similar shift is what will make “Social Games, Generation Two” real

I think the guy just called Zynga the Yahoo of social games, as in what Yahoo was for search. That is not flattering. Zynga is taking a beating in the public market, sure. But maybe it can reinvent itself.

Related articles

• Zyngapocalypse Now (And What Comes Next?)
• EA sues Zynga over 'The 'Ville' [update: Zynga responds]
• EA levels copyright lawsuit against Zynga
• Update: EA taking Zynga to court over The Ville
• EA Sues Zynga, Says The Ville Rips Off The Sims [Lawsuits]
• Electronics Arts sues Zynga, says it copied 'Sims' game
• Electronic Arts Sues Zynga for Allegedly Ripping Off 'Sims Social' Game
• EA sues Zynga over Sims-like game
• Zynga says EA copyright lawsuit 'ironic'
• EA Suing Zynga for Copyright Infringement

Zynga Getting Hammered

Its IPO has not been good for Zynga, nor for Facebook. They have been hammered. Not long back Fred Wilson on the East Coast and John Doerr on the West Coast talked of Zynga as the fastest growing company they ever had in their portfolios. I guess there are ups and downs. Right now happens to be a down time. It is not that Zynga's user base has shrunk dramatically. This is more a case of Wall Street looking at cold, hard cash. If you don't have it, you don't have it.

Just like Facebook Zynga is also struggling with mobile.

Zynga COO Said To Lose Product Oversight As Growth Slows

Pincus embarked on the overhaul in early July, at the close of a quarter marked by slowing sales growth and a drop in demand for virtual goods. Schappert, lured away last year from Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) with a pay package worth $42.8 million, has lost support within the company and taken some of the blame for its underperformance ..... “The place is in utter meltdown mode” .... The stock has dropped 72 percent since the market debut. The decline accelerated last week after Zynga reported sales and profit that missed analysts’ predictions. ..... The reorganization was aimed in part at making mobile- software development more of a priority across Zynga

Related articles

• Zynga COO Said to Lose Product Oversight as Growth Slows - Bloomberg
• Here Are The Zynga Insiders Who Cashed Out Just Before The Stock Crashed... (ZNGA)
• First insider trading lawsuit filed against Zynga after executives cash out
• Zynga Insiders Who Cashed Out Before The Stock Crashed
• Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, Other Execs Accused Of Insider Trading
• Zynga faces a pair of lawsuits from irate investors
• Lawsuit Says Zynga Insiders Knew Stock Would Tank When They Cashed Out [Zynga]
• Report: Zynga Insiders Dumped Lots of Stock Before It Tanked [Zynga]
• Zynga Gets Hit With Insider Trading Lawsuits (ZNGA)
• The Ville moves in on Zynga Poker as the top game on Facebook

Have Started Playing CityVille

I am a pretty accomplished farmer at Farmville on Facebook. But then I have not been active in months. I have played Angry Birds on Google+. But today I decided to play CityVille on the Google+ platform. It is fun.

I had managed to never spend a dime on Farmville. Cityville cost me 10 bucks on the first day. I am like, I can't wait, let's go get some energy. That was five bucks. Before you know I had put down another five bucks for a few thousand coins.

The Zynga business model works.

I am in mind to go back to growing my city only organically, as they say in tech startup world. Act lean.

I see me spending a few minutes every day to slowly build my city.

Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea
Played Farmville After Long Months
Farmville Has Not Been Loading For Me
Farmville's Got Competition

Did Zynga Go IPO?

@davetisch
David Tisch Wonder what's under @fredwilson jacket... #raisecachehttp://t.co/amMUwweN
Nov 18 via Twitter for iPhoneFavoriteRetweetReply

davetischDavid Tisch

Wonder what's under @fredwilson jacket... #raisecachehttp://t.co/amMUwweN

Nov 19FavoriteRetweetReply

in reply to @davetisch↑

@paramendra
Paramendra Bhagat@davetisch I've never seen @fredwilson so razmatazz, in person or in picture. Did Zynga go IPO? $$$$$ http://t.co/prk9WD2q
Nov 19 via webFavoriteRetweetReply

The Wilsons Were In Cairo Recently
Breakfast With Albert (Wenger)