10 ms·

Zynga CEO: "Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers."

194 points by EvilTrout 16y ago

bond 16y ago
"I don't fucking want innovation," the ex-employee recalls Pincus saying. "You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers." "The former employee, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about his experience at Zynga, said this wasn't just bluster. Indeed, interviews conducted by SF Weekly with several former Zynga workers indicate that the practice of stealing other companies' game ideas — and then using Zynga's market clout to crowd out the games' originators — was business as usual." No surprises there...
Keyframe 16y ago
I have only a second hand exposure to farmville due to an avid player close to me. I wouldn't say they don't innovate - or at least they mask it real good. Farmville is full of new stuff that ties in together all the time, but general framework looks to be less keen on innovation. I wonder how long can they run with it though. It's like where you have an ultra strong brand for games and you innovate by pushing various forms of gameplay scenarios (think of mario in various games not related to original genre mechanics). Farmville is just like the opposite, brand is the mechanics and framework. Seasonal stuff they put in is the only innovation over original concept they snitched from Harvest Moon and alike. So I guess farmvilles ultimate fate likes where genre-locked games go - e.g. fighting games (street fighter, mk...) where original fad fades away and leaves in core player group. If they're lucky - and with so many users, they'd have to screw up pretty badly to lose all of their gaming audience.
- patio11 16y ago
  The concept owes a lot to Harvest Moon, but let's not kid ourselves, those are very different games. FarmVille is a well-oiled machine designed for virality, keeping people playing through social obligation and fear of loss, and monetization. It has its own peculiar kind of beauty to it. You're a 40 year old woman and your aunt, who you always keep meaning to talk with but never find the time to do, needs help with her cow. Not helping her with her cow says you don't love her. That is genius. Evil genius, but genius. Harvest Moon, on the other hand, is a fully single person game with a story which optimizes for good reviews in magazines, because that drives box sales and that is where they make their money. It can afford to take twenty minutes until you get any control of your character, because you've already bought the game and can be assumed to wait it out. Any designer proposing that at Zynga would probably be shot, thrown out of a window, or shot after they were thrown out of a window, because it would kill the viral coefficient.
  - wootwooot 16y ago
    remember Farmtowm? (yeah, they copied Harvest Moon, but they were the first to bring it to Facebook... before Zynga released FarmVILLE 2 months later)
  - Keyframe 16y ago
    Aye, you're right about Harvest Moon - maybe "snitched" was not the word I was after for. I don't think Zynga should be viewed as non innovative evil place as the article suggests though. Farmville is a good game in its genre. Because if it weren't, people would not play it. And I admire their driver for constant updates, which do take a lot of effort to think about and make. Tournaments, hunting for truffles with your pigs, honeybees for your bee hives, seasonal items like wedding gazebos etc... And it's engaging mechanics works on multiple levels. There's that icebreaker level that facebook inherently drives which you've mentioned with aunt example. There's also a point based competing drive: "come on, that girl can't be a level over mine"... Then there is show of level (sort of a competing) which I regard as most genius of all. It's geared towards women population. Where they show of new items acquired on their meticulously crafted farm designs which are more of a home+backyard than a farm. This happens in real life too, but this is more streamlined and on display to everyone you know that plays farmville. Genius. Also, they produce lots of pixel art for their game - which is dear to my heart. So, I respect Zynga regarding farmville, a lot.
badmash69 16y ago
Ethical considerations aside, this seems like a solid management strategy to me. They have the brand to push through large mass of users , who are not so much into gaming as they are into socializing. If I were an investor in Zynga, I would be very happy , although I would probably use a part of the 10x ROI to buy a sweet gaming rig and play real games.
- zackattack 16y ago
  I don't know anything about this, so I'm just speculating: Are they into socializing? Or are they just into a pleasant distraction that fires off addicting dopamine patterns that they can also share with their peers?
  - samtp 16y ago
    Those don't have to be mutually exclusive
danilocampos 16y ago
The "social" games space is ripe for revolution. There's no fun there, nothing virtuous in what they consider gameplay. You don't even play with your friends, so much as exploit them for personal gain. It's a very cynical view of how to spend time with people. When the leading social games company is led by a guy like Pincus, what more can you expect?
- eavc 16y ago
  The high-profile "social" games are just really, super casual games that can be attached to something like Facebook. The fact that they're not fun is part of why they are successful. You're just kind of trivially there, so you don't feel dorky and you don't feel like you're wasting too much time, only a moment. All online multi-player video games are "social" games, but most of them aren't hyper-casual and can't be bolted on as a distraction to Facebook. Therefore, they feel a little dorky, a little like wasting time, and way more fun.
  - danilocampos 16y ago
    Yes, and that's an important observation. I'm not willing to accept that it's impossible to create a legitimately enjoyable game experience in the confines of the short attention span Facebook model, though. Scrabble, for example, lends itself perfectly to asynchronous, light, casual play (cf Scrabulous, Words with Friends). But it's legitimately fun at the same time. You're rewarded for imaginative approaches to solving problems. You can play with no skill or lots, but either way, you'll always find ways to get better. Most important: You're genuinely spending time with your friends. Sharing an experience that creates a memory. This is a big deal. This is missing from almost every other pseudo-social game. True story: I was job hunting, someone gave me a lead at Slide. Awesome guy, gave me good advice. But as soon as I found out I had to be conversant on the subject of a "game" called "SuperPoke Pets!" I vomited a little in my mouth and moved on to other options. Social game companies: Stop making horseshit, start building something fun. It's possible. It's just a little bit harder.
    - teej 16y ago
iamwil 16y ago
I heard the CEO speak at Startup School last year, and he claimed that he wanted Zynga to be an internet treasure--something with lasting value. Sounded good to me. His high minded spiel then seems contrarian to the report here, and I'm tempted to believe the report. Makes me less inclined to see what else he has to say. If it's true, I'm guessing eventually, he'll lose developer and gamer mindshare in that people won't want to work for Zynga. Then, would it be on its way to an internet treasure?
- all 16y ago
  I would definitely go with the report. I have lost count of the number of software companies that I have encountered that win marketshare with similar ethics to that being reported here about Zynga. They talk up sunshine and value in public but then go Ballmer on their employees.
lee 16y ago
To me this sounds like Zynga just took an idea that was already out there, improved upon it, and executed the marketing/business side of things better than their competitors. The blatant art rip-off is evil, but the methodology of "taking something proven, and making it better" is not. Apple does this all the time, and I don't fault them for it. For the HN crowd who "can't find an idea for a startup", maybe this is a really good method of finding one. Look at what's successful out there, and emulate to make it better.
- notahacker 16y ago
  Ironically, Farm Town was once described as "myFarm married with Zynga's YoVille" But did Zynga initially improve upon Farm Town or simply attract more users through a multimillion pound ad budget? For the consumer market "copy what the cool kids are doing and market the hell out of it" is arguably an even more successful strategy than "take something proven and make it better"
- Keyframe 16y ago
  There is kind of a proverb related to business here, which loosely translated says something like: "In a street where there are several bakeries, it is wise to open up another bakery." edit: I remembered that I have heard another version, with a different take: "In a street where there are several bakeries, next business that will open up will be a bakery" - I actually like that one more.
  - jashmenn 16y ago
    I like this. Can you give more information on the origins? E.g. in what country/language is this proverb? What's the original language text?
    - Keyframe 16y ago
      It's from Croatia (in Croatian). I have no ideas about its origin though.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
zaidf 16y ago
Smart, smart move on Pincus' part. Zynga's already done the innovative part in figuring out marketing/distribution. Now they need to reduce other risks. Copying competitors who have good game ideas but weak marketing/distribution is a great idea.
momoro 16y ago
I find myself entirely on Pincus' side. The author of the article mistakenly assumes that Zynga's value is in Farmville/Fishville/Poker. It's not. Pincus once said that if he could re-do tribe, he would instead build "a platform for testing ideas about how to make social networks," or something. With Zynga, Pincus has buildt an entire company mechanism for figuring out how to make money from FB games, I assume revolving around everything from what he calls "ghetto testing" to a/b tests et cetera. Yes, Zynga obviously copied the ideas being a lot of its games. So did 300 other companies. The value in Zynga is that it beat those 300 other companies. This article gives us no way of understanding why it beat all those other companies. My guess it that it's because Zynga's value is in its "platform for figuring out how to get people to pay money for games" rather than in the games themselves.
- forensic 16y ago
  Zynga is considered the winner not because it milks the most profit per customer but because they have the most popular games. So really it's not so much about getting people to pay - it's about getting people to play. FarmVille is famous because 84 million people play it. World of Warcraft still makes more money than FarmVille, but World of Warcraft has nowhere near that userbase.
- MartinCron 16y ago
  The value in Zynga is that it beat those 300 other companies. That's Zynga's value to Zynga. Not Zynga's value to anyone else.
  - michael_dorfman 16y ago
    Zynga's value to its users is what allowed them to beat those 300 other customers. "Copy/improve/iterate" can, in some cases, provide more user value than "create something new."
ellyagg 16y ago
I'm interested in how Zynga blatantly copying competitors is positioned as evil, but when Google promotes a software and hardware ecosphere that at heart requires the blatant copying of the iPhone, it's considered necessary and smart business. It can't be evil sometimes and not evil others. If copying is just smart business, then Zynga is proving that every shred of copying allowed by law is even smarter business.
- chc 16y ago
  There's a huge, mind-boggling difference between doing your own take on the general idea of a touchscreen phone with a user-friendly interface and "I don't want innovation." It's like the difference between a Cubist painting and a Picasso forgery — fundamentally they're both copying Picasso, but they're not the same thing at all.
  - hyperbovine 16y ago
    And Picasso copied Cezanne, who copied Pissarro, who copied Corot, who copied Turner, who copied Poussin, who copied Titian, who copied Bellini ... everybody copies, so why are we talking about it? Oh right, because somebody made $500 million a year doing it. Copying is an accepted fact of life until somebody gets rich. Ditto Facebook.
- jarek 16y ago
  And the iPhone "copied" ecospheres of Symbian, RIM, Windows Mobile, etc, adding a twist with an insane focus on shininess and touchscreen primacy. Google, when "copying" the iPhone, put their focus on choice (both of software and hardware) and the attendant openness. Microsoft is about to try to "copy" the iPhone, but with a distinct aesthetic. The difference between those copies and the Zynga business model? The former actually have differences.
fondue 16y ago
The entire article omits the fact that Zynga furiously iterates on their designs and improves them. I remember when I first joined Facebook and finding Mafia Wars to be just a cheap knock-off of other games with practically the same name. Within months Mafia Wars was streamlining their game, adding new experiences, and making the game more responsive and pleasant to look at. Their competition, from whom they copied, hadn't changed at all.
- samtp 16y ago
  Exactly. Its all about continually refining user conversion, engagement, and retention based on every possible usage metric
- JabavuAdams 16y ago
  Ah yes. Local maximum death by furious optimization. B .. b .. but our A/B tests told us that this is what people wanted! True, we don't know what other people want, but they don't know it either (long-term). If we always give people what they want (and nothing more), we eventually end up at the big red orgasm button, and humanity dies.
  - fondue 16y ago
    I don't know if they A/B tested their games but I do know that while I was playing the parts of the game I thought were terrible slowly disappeared and what I found appealing increased. One game mechanic I thought was terrible was the situation where you had to go back to earlier 'levels' of the game to complete your sets of items. They introduced trading. They also completely divorced the PvP aspect from the collecting game so you could practically ignore anyone setting a hit on you. Also, I would totally play the big red orgasm button game and much like someone addicted to a TASP, die from it.
ajleary 16y ago
Pincus talked on Charlie Rose a year ago about wanting to build a lasting company as opposed to being a serial entrepreneur. I actually love that sentiment, but also think it is hard to differentiate from his current goal: going public. Wall street investors will value this company very differently if it appears to be a fad that will have momentary glory (and revenue). That said, wall street tries to value a company's current AND future revenues (with an appropriate discount for risk and earnings out in the future) -- so Pincus is trying to get them to believe it is building the bedrock of a company that will last a hundred years. Right now Zynga is a revenue rocketship (even if you don't like the product, people, or business) that will make Pincus and all their employees wealthy. Pretty easy to get people to work there with those prospects. The sustainable business will be the work of the next generation of employees after first 1000 have vested and moved on. I wish them the best, but wouldn't count on them being a great stable business in 5 years. Tastes change and the best employees will have long since have cashed out.
ketanb 16y ago
I attended a startup seminar where speakers were founders from highly successful startups. Their advice was: "First imitate and then innovate". It is a usual business practice to first copy what's working for others, then innovate to make it better and leave the competition behind. It makes sense specially in a web industry where it takes very little time to catchup with competition. Companies have to keep innovating to keep an edge over imitators. Web industry doesn't have number 2 concept. It is either number 1 or out of business. I think not having room for number 2 is what is forcing companies to copy others work and kill the competition.
- jarek 16y ago
  There are a ton of number twos and threes on the internet. Quick sample: Bing, Yahoo!, Tagged...
  - ketanb 16y ago
    If we look at sites like Facebook or Linked-in or any company building social websites/applications chances of finding number 2 is less. I haven't heard any Linked-In or Facebook competitor. We do see number 2 like Bing, Yahoo etc because they are not startups. Bing is funded by Microsoft and Yahoo was number 1 sometime in the past and has enough money to self-sustain for a while. How long Yahoo will survive?
    - jarek 16y ago
      Tagged is a number three, not owned by a large corporation, not a previous giant. When it comes to social networking, network effects normally result in one or two highly visible giants and a long tail of smaller, likely specialized networks. These can still be profitable, and of course there's more to the web and startups than stuff that is social in nature.
inerte 16y ago
On a related topic, about copying and the drool over innovation, and thinking outside the box, and whatever buzzword bingo we're on: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/08/03/down-with-innovation-up-with-imitation/ http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/08/03/down-with-innovation-up... Well turns out this article wasn't submitted (I hope). http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1676407 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1676407
code_duck 16y ago
Sure, this is obviously the heart of Microsoft's successful tactics. Facebook, too, considering their newest ideas have been to copy twitter and foursquare. Actually, an embarrassing number of companies think like that. Unfortunately, the marketplace rewards them - consumers are indifferent to what should be a moral outrage AND to their own best interest, which is to reward originality in the hope that it produces more innovation. Instead, they reward copying and sleaze, and the innovators are extinguished - resulting in mediocrity.
deleted 16y ago
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zaru 16y ago
Not sure this biz model is sustainable. Especially considering how much FB is changing and will continue to change.
chegra 16y ago
I think the companies he copied should have had the vision to add money. All they seem to be doing is simply find a game that has gone viral and copy it and add money so the viral effect can be much faster. Point to note: When you have something viral garner more investment to get it even bigger, quicker.
ruang 16y ago
You can still add value to people's lives by improving on what already exists versus creating from scratch.
Eight 16y ago
I understand that Zynga is relatively good at what they do. But as a company I do not trust them at all. Just with the amount of spam advertising they do purely on Facebook it would not surprise me at all to see them sell your information to third parties.
deleted 16y ago
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rwhitman 16y ago
Call me jaded but lately I've learned that most of the wealth on the internet is generated out of "Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers." I keep encountering folks with this attitude, and sadly it seems to be working for them, very very well. No surprises that this is deliberately disseminated at Zynga
ethanhuynh 16y ago
"I don't fucking want innovation", "You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers." these quotes say it all, what I love from Zynga (put aside the ethical thing) is that they obsessively focus on "action" and "execution", and not "thinking". it matters because action makes the real things HAPPEN, here's why: when someone come and blame them and their whole evil philosophy they can just say that "it just happens. we just happened to build it, users just happened to use it and the company just happened to make revenue. get over it"
- Psyonic 16y ago
  You can always say "It happens." I don't really understand your point. "Hey Fred, some $100 bills are missing from my wallet... you haven't seen them, have you? Ya I took em to buy some blow. It happens. Get over it."?

194 points by EvilTrout 16y ago

bond 16y ago

"I don't fucking want innovation," the ex-employee recalls Pincus saying. "You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers." "The former employee, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about his experience at Zynga, said this wasn't just bluster. Indeed, interviews conducted by SF Weekly with several former Zynga workers indicate that the practice of stealing other companies' game ideas — and then using Zynga's market clout to crowd out the games' originators — was business as usual." No surprises there...

Keyframe 16y ago

I have only a second hand exposure to farmville due to an avid player close to me. I wouldn't say they don't innovate - or at least they mask it real good. Farmville is full of new stuff that ties in together all the time, but general framework looks to be less keen on innovation. I wonder how long can they run with it though. It's like where you have an ultra strong brand for games and you innovate by pushing various forms of gameplay scenarios (think of mario in various games not related to original genre mechanics). Farmville is just like the opposite, brand is the mechanics and framework. Seasonal stuff they put in is the only innovation over original concept they snitched from Harvest Moon and alike. So I guess farmvilles ultimate fate likes where genre-locked games go - e.g. fighting games (street fighter, mk...) where original fad fades away and leaves in core player group. If they're lucky - and with so many users, they'd have to screw up pretty badly to lose all of their gaming audience.

patio11 16y ago
The concept owes a lot to Harvest Moon, but let's not kid ourselves, those are very different games. FarmVille is a well-oiled machine designed for virality, keeping people playing through social obligation and fear of loss, and monetization. It has its own peculiar kind of beauty to it. You're a 40 year old woman and your aunt, who you always keep meaning to talk with but never find the time to do, needs help with her cow. Not helping her with her cow says you don't love her. That is genius. Evil genius, but genius. Harvest Moon, on the other hand, is a fully single person game with a story which optimizes for good reviews in magazines, because that drives box sales and that is where they make their money. It can afford to take twenty minutes until you get any control of your character, because you've already bought the game and can be assumed to wait it out. Any designer proposing that at Zynga would probably be shot, thrown out of a window, or shot after they were thrown out of a window, because it would kill the viral coefficient.
- wootwooot 16y ago
  remember Farmtowm? (yeah, they copied Harvest Moon, but they were the first to bring it to Facebook... before Zynga released FarmVILLE 2 months later)
- Keyframe 16y ago
  Aye, you're right about Harvest Moon - maybe "snitched" was not the word I was after for. I don't think Zynga should be viewed as non innovative evil place as the article suggests though. Farmville is a good game in its genre. Because if it weren't, people would not play it. And I admire their driver for constant updates, which do take a lot of effort to think about and make. Tournaments, hunting for truffles with your pigs, honeybees for your bee hives, seasonal items like wedding gazebos etc... And it's engaging mechanics works on multiple levels. There's that icebreaker level that facebook inherently drives which you've mentioned with aunt example. There's also a point based competing drive: "come on, that girl can't be a level over mine"... Then there is show of level (sort of a competing) which I regard as most genius of all. It's geared towards women population. Where they show of new items acquired on their meticulously crafted farm designs which are more of a home+backyard than a farm. This happens in real life too, but this is more streamlined and on display to everyone you know that plays farmville. Genius. Also, they produce lots of pixel art for their game - which is dear to my heart. So, I respect Zynga regarding farmville, a lot.

badmash69 16y ago

Ethical considerations aside, this seems like a solid management strategy to me. They have the brand to push through large mass of users , who are not so much into gaming as they are into socializing. If I were an investor in Zynga, I would be very happy , although I would probably use a part of the 10x ROI to buy a sweet gaming rig and play real games.

zackattack 16y ago
I don't know anything about this, so I'm just speculating: Are they into socializing? Or are they just into a pleasant distraction that fires off addicting dopamine patterns that they can also share with their peers?
- samtp 16y ago
  Those don't have to be mutually exclusive

danilocampos 16y ago

The "social" games space is ripe for revolution. There's no fun there, nothing virtuous in what they consider gameplay. You don't even play with your friends, so much as exploit them for personal gain. It's a very cynical view of how to spend time with people. When the leading social games company is led by a guy like Pincus, what more can you expect?

eavc 16y ago
The high-profile "social" games are just really, super casual games that can be attached to something like Facebook. The fact that they're not fun is part of why they are successful. You're just kind of trivially there, so you don't feel dorky and you don't feel like you're wasting too much time, only a moment. All online multi-player video games are "social" games, but most of them aren't hyper-casual and can't be bolted on as a distraction to Facebook. Therefore, they feel a little dorky, a little like wasting time, and way more fun.
- danilocampos 16y ago
  Yes, and that's an important observation. I'm not willing to accept that it's impossible to create a legitimately enjoyable game experience in the confines of the short attention span Facebook model, though. Scrabble, for example, lends itself perfectly to asynchronous, light, casual play (cf Scrabulous, Words with Friends). But it's legitimately fun at the same time. You're rewarded for imaginative approaches to solving problems. You can play with no skill or lots, but either way, you'll always find ways to get better. Most important: You're genuinely spending time with your friends. Sharing an experience that creates a memory. This is a big deal. This is missing from almost every other pseudo-social game. True story: I was job hunting, someone gave me a lead at Slide. Awesome guy, gave me good advice. But as soon as I found out I had to be conversant on the subject of a "game" called "SuperPoke Pets!" I vomited a little in my mouth and moved on to other options. Social game companies: Stop making horseshit, start building something fun. It's possible. It's just a little bit harder.
  - teej 16y ago

iamwil 16y ago

I heard the CEO speak at Startup School last year, and he claimed that he wanted Zynga to be an internet treasure--something with lasting value. Sounded good to me. His high minded spiel then seems contrarian to the report here, and I'm tempted to believe the report. Makes me less inclined to see what else he has to say. If it's true, I'm guessing eventually, he'll lose developer and gamer mindshare in that people won't want to work for Zynga. Then, would it be on its way to an internet treasure?

all 16y ago
I would definitely go with the report. I have lost count of the number of software companies that I have encountered that win marketshare with similar ethics to that being reported here about Zynga. They talk up sunshine and value in public but then go Ballmer on their employees.

lee 16y ago

To me this sounds like Zynga just took an idea that was already out there, improved upon it, and executed the marketing/business side of things better than their competitors. The blatant art rip-off is evil, but the methodology of "taking something proven, and making it better" is not. Apple does this all the time, and I don't fault them for it. For the HN crowd who "can't find an idea for a startup", maybe this is a really good method of finding one. Look at what's successful out there, and emulate to make it better.

notahacker 16y ago
Ironically, Farm Town was once described as "myFarm married with Zynga's YoVille" But did Zynga initially improve upon Farm Town or simply attract more users through a multimillion pound ad budget? For the consumer market "copy what the cool kids are doing and market the hell out of it" is arguably an even more successful strategy than "take something proven and make it better"
Keyframe 16y ago
There is kind of a proverb related to business here, which loosely translated says something like: "In a street where there are several bakeries, it is wise to open up another bakery." edit: I remembered that I have heard another version, with a different take: "In a street where there are several bakeries, next business that will open up will be a bakery" - I actually like that one more.
- jashmenn 16y ago
  I like this. Can you give more information on the origins? E.g. in what country/language is this proverb? What's the original language text?
  - Keyframe 16y ago
    It's from Croatia (in Croatian). I have no ideas about its origin though.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]

zaidf 16y ago

Smart, smart move on Pincus' part. Zynga's already done the innovative part in figuring out marketing/distribution. Now they need to reduce other risks. Copying competitors who have good game ideas but weak marketing/distribution is a great idea.

momoro 16y ago

I find myself entirely on Pincus' side. The author of the article mistakenly assumes that Zynga's value is in Farmville/Fishville/Poker. It's not. Pincus once said that if he could re-do tribe, he would instead build "a platform for testing ideas about how to make social networks," or something. With Zynga, Pincus has buildt an entire company mechanism for figuring out how to make money from FB games, I assume revolving around everything from what he calls "ghetto testing" to a/b tests et cetera. Yes, Zynga obviously copied the ideas being a lot of its games. So did 300 other companies. The value in Zynga is that it beat those 300 other companies. This article gives us no way of understanding why it beat all those other companies. My guess it that it's because Zynga's value is in its "platform for figuring out how to get people to pay money for games" rather than in the games themselves.

forensic 16y ago
Zynga is considered the winner not because it milks the most profit per customer but because they have the most popular games. So really it's not so much about getting people to pay - it's about getting people to play. FarmVille is famous because 84 million people play it. World of Warcraft still makes more money than FarmVille, but World of Warcraft has nowhere near that userbase.
MartinCron 16y ago
The value in Zynga is that it beat those 300 other companies. That's Zynga's value to Zynga. Not Zynga's value to anyone else.
- michael_dorfman 16y ago
  Zynga's value to its users is what allowed them to beat those 300 other customers. "Copy/improve/iterate" can, in some cases, provide more user value than "create something new."

ellyagg 16y ago

I'm interested in how Zynga blatantly copying competitors is positioned as evil, but when Google promotes a software and hardware ecosphere that at heart requires the blatant copying of the iPhone, it's considered necessary and smart business. It can't be evil sometimes and not evil others. If copying is just smart business, then Zynga is proving that every shred of copying allowed by law is even smarter business.

chc 16y ago
There's a huge, mind-boggling difference between doing your own take on the general idea of a touchscreen phone with a user-friendly interface and "I don't want innovation." It's like the difference between a Cubist painting and a Picasso forgery — fundamentally they're both copying Picasso, but they're not the same thing at all.
- hyperbovine 16y ago
  And Picasso copied Cezanne, who copied Pissarro, who copied Corot, who copied Turner, who copied Poussin, who copied Titian, who copied Bellini ... everybody copies, so why are we talking about it? Oh right, because somebody made $500 million a year doing it. Copying is an accepted fact of life until somebody gets rich. Ditto Facebook.
jarek 16y ago
And the iPhone "copied" ecospheres of Symbian, RIM, Windows Mobile, etc, adding a twist with an insane focus on shininess and touchscreen primacy. Google, when "copying" the iPhone, put their focus on choice (both of software and hardware) and the attendant openness. Microsoft is about to try to "copy" the iPhone, but with a distinct aesthetic. The difference between those copies and the Zynga business model? The former actually have differences.

fondue 16y ago

The entire article omits the fact that Zynga furiously iterates on their designs and improves them. I remember when I first joined Facebook and finding Mafia Wars to be just a cheap knock-off of other games with practically the same name. Within months Mafia Wars was streamlining their game, adding new experiences, and making the game more responsive and pleasant to look at. Their competition, from whom they copied, hadn't changed at all.

samtp 16y ago
Exactly. Its all about continually refining user conversion, engagement, and retention based on every possible usage metric
JabavuAdams 16y ago
Ah yes. Local maximum death by furious optimization. B .. b .. but our A/B tests told us that this is what people wanted! True, we don't know what other people want, but they don't know it either (long-term). If we always give people what they want (and nothing more), we eventually end up at the big red orgasm button, and humanity dies.
- fondue 16y ago
  I don't know if they A/B tested their games but I do know that while I was playing the parts of the game I thought were terrible slowly disappeared and what I found appealing increased. One game mechanic I thought was terrible was the situation where you had to go back to earlier 'levels' of the game to complete your sets of items. They introduced trading. They also completely divorced the PvP aspect from the collecting game so you could practically ignore anyone setting a hit on you. Also, I would totally play the big red orgasm button game and much like someone addicted to a TASP, die from it.

ajleary 16y ago

Pincus talked on Charlie Rose a year ago about wanting to build a lasting company as opposed to being a serial entrepreneur. I actually love that sentiment, but also think it is hard to differentiate from his current goal: going public. Wall street investors will value this company very differently if it appears to be a fad that will have momentary glory (and revenue). That said, wall street tries to value a company's current AND future revenues (with an appropriate discount for risk and earnings out in the future) -- so Pincus is trying to get them to believe it is building the bedrock of a company that will last a hundred years. Right now Zynga is a revenue rocketship (even if you don't like the product, people, or business) that will make Pincus and all their employees wealthy. Pretty easy to get people to work there with those prospects. The sustainable business will be the work of the next generation of employees after first 1000 have vested and moved on. I wish them the best, but wouldn't count on them being a great stable business in 5 years. Tastes change and the best employees will have long since have cashed out.

ketanb 16y ago

I attended a startup seminar where speakers were founders from highly successful startups. Their advice was: "First imitate and then innovate". It is a usual business practice to first copy what's working for others, then innovate to make it better and leave the competition behind. It makes sense specially in a web industry where it takes very little time to catchup with competition. Companies have to keep innovating to keep an edge over imitators. Web industry doesn't have number 2 concept. It is either number 1 or out of business. I think not having room for number 2 is what is forcing companies to copy others work and kill the competition.

jarek 16y ago
There are a ton of number twos and threes on the internet. Quick sample: Bing, Yahoo!, Tagged...
- ketanb 16y ago
  If we look at sites like Facebook or Linked-in or any company building social websites/applications chances of finding number 2 is less. I haven't heard any Linked-In or Facebook competitor. We do see number 2 like Bing, Yahoo etc because they are not startups. Bing is funded by Microsoft and Yahoo was number 1 sometime in the past and has enough money to self-sustain for a while. How long Yahoo will survive?
  - jarek 16y ago
    Tagged is a number three, not owned by a large corporation, not a previous giant. When it comes to social networking, network effects normally result in one or two highly visible giants and a long tail of smaller, likely specialized networks. These can still be profitable, and of course there's more to the web and startups than stuff that is social in nature.

inerte 16y ago

On a related topic, about copying and the drool over innovation, and thinking outside the box, and whatever buzzword bingo we're on: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/08/03/down-with-innovation-up-with-imitation/ http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/08/03/down-with-innovation-up... Well turns out this article wasn't submitted (I hope). http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1676407 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1676407

code_duck 16y ago

Sure, this is obviously the heart of Microsoft's successful tactics. Facebook, too, considering their newest ideas have been to copy twitter and foursquare. Actually, an embarrassing number of companies think like that. Unfortunately, the marketplace rewards them - consumers are indifferent to what should be a moral outrage AND to their own best interest, which is to reward originality in the hope that it produces more innovation. Instead, they reward copying and sleaze, and the innovators are extinguished - resulting in mediocrity.

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zaru 16y ago

Not sure this biz model is sustainable. Especially considering how much FB is changing and will continue to change.

chegra 16y ago

I think the companies he copied should have had the vision to add money. All they seem to be doing is simply find a game that has gone viral and copy it and add money so the viral effect can be much faster. Point to note: When you have something viral garner more investment to get it even bigger, quicker.

ruang 16y ago

You can still add value to people's lives by improving on what already exists versus creating from scratch.

Eight 16y ago

I understand that Zynga is relatively good at what they do. But as a company I do not trust them at all. Just with the amount of spam advertising they do purely on Facebook it would not surprise me at all to see them sell your information to third parties.

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rwhitman 16y ago

Call me jaded but lately I've learned that most of the wealth on the internet is generated out of "Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers." I keep encountering folks with this attitude, and sadly it seems to be working for them, very very well. No surprises that this is deliberately disseminated at Zynga

ethanhuynh 16y ago

"I don't fucking want innovation", "You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers." these quotes say it all, what I love from Zynga (put aside the ethical thing) is that they obsessively focus on "action" and "execution", and not "thinking". it matters because action makes the real things HAPPEN, here's why: when someone come and blame them and their whole evil philosophy they can just say that "it just happens. we just happened to build it, users just happened to use it and the company just happened to make revenue. get over it"

Psyonic 16y ago
You can always say "It happens." I don't really understand your point. "Hey Fred, some $100 bills are missing from my wallet... you haven't seen them, have you? Ya I took em to buy some blow. It happens. Get over it."?