Netizen: Zynga

Showing posts with label Zynga. Show all posts

Friday, November 16, 2012

Zynga's Mobile Woes

It is like you spent your prime learning Newton's theory of gravity, then someone, or something, comes along and says you need to be learning the Theory Of Relativity. That is how mobile is. I guess "getting" mobile is not easy.

Has Zynga Faced A Paradigm Shift?
Zynga: Could It Reinvent Itself?
Zynga Recipe
Zynga Morale
Zynga And Mobile
Zynga Fixes
Zynga Getting Hammered

Behind Mark Pincus's Bid to Save Zynga

Mr. Campbell, a technology veteran who has coached Silicon Valley CEOs such as Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt, had been called in by Zynga investor and venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to advise Mr. Pincus as the social games company's stock plunged and some of its online games lost traction. Some Kleiner Perkins partners warned Mr. Campbell that he might not make much progress. .......... Pincus was open to advice. Mr. Pincus "was discouraged" ...... He "felt terrible about what was happening; he felt the turmoil." ...... The 46-year-old CEO has remained outwardly positive while Zynga's troubles have played out publicly over the past few months. ..... He was grappling with internal strife, including executive defections and confrontations with employees. ....... the CEO, who owns 50.2% of Zynga's voting control and has previously worked with outside consultants to improve his management skills, is trying to remake himself as its leader by ceding more control to deputies and improving communications. ...... "rapid change in player habits and social technologies have dictated fundamental changes at Zynga. And when businesses change, it's inevitable that some people will choose to leave." ...... Mr. Gordon said Zynga had failed to prioritize mobile development and found that its online games didn't easily translate to smartphones' smaller screens. "Mobile turned out to be more different than anyone expected, in terms of monetization and also user experience" ........ In May, at an off-site meeting in Monterey, Calif., with 100 senior employees, one group led by product director Jonathan Liu confronted Mr. Pincus over morale. Mr. Liu said he told Mr. Pincus that Zynga needed a clear strategic vision. ...... Mr. Liu, who added that he was "almost yelling" at Mr. Pincus at the meeting. .... and reorganized the mobile division so that it was integrated into every gaming studio and not a stand-alone unit. He also pushed harder into new businesses, like real-money gambling. ..... also filled his calendar with product meetings ..... switched his main phone from a BlackBerry to iPhone ..... Employee departures became rote ...... When Zynga notified employees of their extra equity, many received just several hundred options spread across a multiyear vesting schedule, while others got a larger amount. Some employees asked if they could refuse the grant, which they viewed as an insult and a pittance ...... Pincus has focused on improving his communication skills ........ "Project Whistle," a program to connect top executives with Zynga employees. The group has run more than 30 meetings over the last two months where executives discuss Zynga's strategy and answer questions from the crowd. ..... delegation skills. Mr. Pincus has been known for dominating discussions and focusing on details such as the font choice or color scheme of games

Zynga's CEO Almost Broke Down In Tears Over Company's Downfall

employees berating him about the company's lack of a strategic vision and poorly thought-out schemes to boost morale

Now David Ko Is Essentially Running Zynga

David Ko, an executive who has championed Zynga's push into mobile and transformation of its Facebook-oriented franchises like FarmVille and Mafia Wars into multiplatform gaming experiences that cross both Web and mobile, has gotten another promotion in the process...... the troubled maker of social games shuffles management every few months, as it tries to adapt the company to a rapidly changing world where mobile rules..... Ko's been a key part of that transformation, pushing Zynga to buy Newtoy, the maker of Words With Friends, and OMGPOP, the maker of Draw Something...... Ko now oversees Zynga's strategic planning, international expansion, and infrastructure........ Ko also has oversight for all of Zynga's game development, with Zynga's top game-development executive, Steve Chiang, reporting to him. Chiang and Ko had previously shared oversight for Zynga's studios, with both reporting to Pincus. ..... Steve Chiang is now Zynga's president of games, overseeing all studios and reporting to Ko

Sunday, October 07, 2012

Has Zynga Faced A Paradigm Shift?

Microsoft was a PC company and the web came along. Bill Gates fantasized about turning off the Internet, completely. It was a paradigm shift that was not going in his favor. In some ways Microsoft never came around to embracing the web. It is a big company, but it is still a Windows company.

Zynga of course is no Microsoft, but for a while it was the fastest growing company in history. That is a crown of sorts. But for now it feels like Zynga has not been able to climb the next big mountain.

Zynga, just like Facebook, has not cracked mobile.

Being data driven is good, but being too data driven can make you miss trends that are just around the corner. Because your reflexes have become too mechanical. I think Pincus might have become too data driven somewhere along the way.

But I am an optimist. I give companies like Zynga - trailblazers - the benefit of doubt. I think they retain the capacity to perhaps turn things around. The proof is in the pudding though.

Other than missing mobile, Zuck and Pincus also have something else in common. Both have dictatorial powers. That does not look like a good arrangement when things look to be going downhill.

Pincus strikes me as someone quirky. He just might be able to pull it off. In about a year or two. And a billion dollar valuation is not a bad floor to have. Just stop the f___g bleeding.

As Zynga Stock And Outlook Craters, Is It Time For Mark Pincus To Step Down As CEO?

Draw Something, a game that earlier this year was the hottest thing on the planet for about a month...... at the moment, like Zynga was a shooting star, driven by several viral hits, rather than a stable, enduring company. ..... like many recent Internet companies that went public, Zynga structured the stock ownership to give Pincus majority control. Pincus has 50.15 percent control of the voting shares. That means, ultimately, he is the decider, and not the board. ..... the valley’s prevailing conventional wisdom, which says the biggest, most successful companies are driven by strong-willed founders. Pincus has been that. And for a long time, it seemed he had the right vision in terms of gaming and social media.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Zynga Morale

I'd not be surprised if Facebook has a similar story, although Zynga has taken a bigger beating. But this is not the end of the road. I think Zynga could reinvent itself. Markets go up, markets go down, markets go up.

DowninthedumpsVille: Morale Sinking at Zynga Along With Stock Drop

a culture driven by analytics, where every move is recorded, measured and evaluated ... ..... it appears the long hours and taxing work environment is causing the inevitable — some are deciding to leave, especially as shares trade 70 percent lower than the company’s public offering. .... a “flood of resumes” in recent weeks from Zynga developers looking for jobs or trying to raise capital. .... described morale as grim, while another characterized the feeling as “anxious.” ..... During the company’s 16th all-hands quarterly meeting today, Pincus reportedly talked about the company’s future and fielded tough questions from the crowd as he usually does .... On Wednesday, Zynga’s COO John Schappert resigned after only 15 months on the job. .... two weeks ago, Zynga reported a second-quarter earnings flop that led to its stock sliding by 40 percent...... it took only three months for there to be at least three notable departures from Facebook, the social network that it works with very closely and which is also suffering from post-IPO stock woes.... a majority of the 3,000-plus employees, many are also short timers .... Without a long history at the company, it may be hard for some to feel nostalgic about staying during difficult times. .... Zynga said 80 percent of the staff has been there less than two years .... many employees have joined the company through a dozen or more acquisitions. .... tries to figure out how to create a sense of dedication among its employees .... some employees think it might be the time to pull out the checkbook and spend some of the $1 billion it raised in its IPO on retention bonuses

One lesson though is analytics is not everything.

This is about cold, hard cash. Wall Street looks at cold, hard cash.

I can't say the two - Facebook and Zynga - went IPO too early. They did not.

In Touch With His Inner Steve Jobs?

Mark Pincus cops to being hard-driving but insists he’s a nice guy. .... Tech entrepreneurs are happy to be compared to Steve Jobs, as long as it refers to visionary leadership and not overly demanding, egomaniacal perfectionism. .... his micro-managing tendencies stem from his passion for what his company does

Does Zynga Need a New Game Plan?

For Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, the disappointing earnings confirm what he already knew: His company needs to move aggressively beyond Facebook into mobile gaming and other horizons. To that end, Pincus announced Wednesday the company plans to get into real-money gambling games in 2013. And as he told Slate’s Jacob Weisberg in a recent interview, the future success of social gaming depends on a rather simple principle: lowering the barriers to play

Betting Long on Mark Zuckerberg

Pincus still sees Zuckerberg as a great partner and “a visionary guy who wants to change the world.”

Poking With a Purpose

Pincus is betting on is that gaming will become more social, with increasing numbers of people drawn into competition via their various social networks..... Despite recent investor doubts, Pincus’ social gaming company has more than 300 million monthly active users of games ranging from Farmville to Hidden Chronicles to Zynga Poker. .... Pincus’ personal favorite is Scramble With Friends, which he plays regularly against LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. And Pincus tells Slate’s Jacob Weisberg that games like these are perfect for a world increasingly defined by multitasking, because they are “snacks you can consume in a couple of minutes.”

Monday, August 06, 2012

A Gaming Amazon

Amazon is one of those companies that has built such a strong infrastructure that they feel they can go into anything and everything. Apple is doing tablets? We will do it. Zynga is doing gaming? We will do it.

Amazon jumps into games: New studio makes its debut with a Facebook game

Amazon Game Studios ... launched the studio’s first social game on Facebook .... Amazon’s first social game is called Living Classics

Zynga Recipe

The downslide in its stock price has not changed the fact that Zynga has quite a corporate machine in place. It is still there.

Inside Zynga and the making of its next hit, ChefVille

a mix of folks with vast experience in gaming, going back to the glory days of Activision..... there are a lot of moving parts at Zynga .... what a fine-oiled machine the company is ..... the team working on ChefVille was passionate about food ..... the game can make everyone “better cooks.” .... a senior designer who wanted to do a “Next Gen” food game to follow up Zynga’s “Cafe World.” .... all Zynga games are tested with pods of people, each focused on a specific aspect of the title. Those pods are comprised of artists, writers and engineers ... the external focus groups that really lets the team know what people dislike before they ship something into the wild .... Zynga’s development process is so iterative, that the company is really making a “big complex toy.” By bringing in both hardcore and novice game players, the ChefVille team was able to pick apart what they were building and make sure that it hit all of its goals for engagement. ..... We let people play with it and sit back and watch. We build the next level of features based on feedback. We have ideas internally, but community matters. ..... The team that I sat down with has built games on literally every platform known to man. ..... With this new social element, a gaming studio now has a unique connection with the player. Games run 24/7 and are constantly being updated and tweaked ..... Zynga knows whether it has a hit within minutes of shipping the game. ..... Zynga travels to other cities to pull together groups of players for testing purposes .... Instead of worrying about whether a game can scale, Zynga teams can focus on making the game absolutely awesome, monetization ready and full of social hooks. ..... the moment of launching a game is when the work really gets started for a company like Zynga. ..... The company also makes sure to pay attention to all channels for feedback, including Twitter and its own support site. ..... you can’t say that Zynga doesn’t have a platform which is extremely powerful to launch games from. ..... The engagement levels on ChefVille are so deep that my jaw dropped a few times. There are always things running in the background, everything on the screen is clickable. ..... The level of detail and connectedness for ChefVille is unlike I’ve ever seen on any game