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Getting Into Zynga's Head
Not since the bad old days of EA maniacally blowing up respected studios while twirling its (admittedly fabulous) moustaches has a game company been so polarizing. FarmVille developer Zynga has millions of gamers enthralled with its Facebook games and thousands of developers and gamers horrified at its mercenary business practices. Director of product management Siqi Chen laid some truth down in a recent interview with Game Developer Magazine's Soren Johnson.
Former Civilization IV lead designer Johnson's bimonthly column, which he later reprints on his blog, is always a fascinating read. His latest piece revolves around Zynga and how its design side functions, and how the roles of its business, development, publishing, and design divisions work differently than at a traditional game company. Johnson also published the full text of his interview with Chen, from which we can glean some insights:
They know more about you than you do: "The science [of social game development] involves tracking, storing, and analyzing the billions of actions your players take and figuring out how to retain, grow and monetize your players in the best and most sustainable way."
Time is fun is money?: "You can make a pretty strong argument that most MMOs primarily seem to just reward time, but they’re awesome games. There’s nothing inherently negative about rewarding people for spending time playing your game."
FarmVille is interesting?: "When you’re on Facebook during a 5 minute break from work, the kinds of decisions that are interesting are pretty different from the ones that are interesting to you when you’re engaged in a 4 hour Civ4 marathon."
You should really read Johnson's original piece as well as the full interview if you have any interest whatsoever in the epochal social gaming phenomenon. Alternatively, you could follow the grand internet tradition of hating on games that don't personally interest you in the comments below. Me, I'm more interested in discussing what social gaming and companies like Zynga mean rather than pounding out frothing screeds about my sister-in-law's annoying FarmVille habits. Because seriously, folks, FarmVille sucking is not news.
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