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I was surprised to hear 3000 people were making those Zynga games. Doing what exactly? Pls I'm genuinely curious. These social games seems so lame to me that I

I was surprised to hear 3000 people were making those Zynga games. Doing what exactly? Pls I'm genuinely curious. These social games seems so lame to me that I can't think of any reason why someone will even think of building a public company on top of it. You simply cannot meet investors' quarterly demand when your success is built on being "flavour of the month" business model. I don't have anything wrong against Zynga or its founder and so I don't wish them failure but this should have come as a common sense that they should have stayed private and stayed lean (both in taking VC funding and the number of employees)

Freestyler_3 13y ago
I am curious too, they can't fix a game in 6 days when it breaks..... The games they deliver are full of bugs and inconveniences (ie. game with quests; each new quests is automatically accepted, and there is a limited amount of quests that can be open, and you cant cancel quests) This is not an entertainment company.
- sdoowpilihp 13y ago
  The inconveniences are by design. The bugs are due to aggressive deadlines.
  - Freestyler_3 13y ago
    With 3000 people... that amazes me.
    - sdoowpilihp 13y ago
      only a percentage of those people are engineers working on the client facing component (i.e. the game). More over, people consistently underestimate the complexity of building games, including the PM's in charge of getting the game out the door.
    - ownagefool 13y ago
      Just like 9 woman don't get you a baby in 1 month, having more devs won't get your games to market and bug free after certian diminishing returns. Too many cooks in the kitchen and all that.
      - Freestyler_3 13y ago
        They don't even have people who tell the people they know about the problem and they are working on it. I am wondering what they did do with those 3000 people.
- wpietri 13y ago
  My theory is that's because the people playing aren't seen as customers so much as veal calves. Zynga isn't trying to make things that are fun; they're making things that are lucrative. Quality is useful to them only to the extent that it improves addictive potential. If you've ever spent time in lower-end casinos, they're pretty seedy. But nobody cares as long as they get their fix. And, of course, "crack house" is not a synonym for a nice environment to consume your quality product.
sdoowpilihp 13y ago
Games take incredible man hours to create, not so much on the engineering side, but on the design side. Copywriting, UI, animation, integration, and game design are all very labor intensive tasks that are performed by highly skilled individuals. Even on the engineering side, the clients can often take a long time to develop compared to a normal app. As opposed to using Bootstrap or UIFramework, almost all game UI's are "hand rolled" from scratch, and often have odd quirks in their design that can lead to a lot of extra testing. Games in general, whether poorly made games, or well made games, are a huge sink of labor.
chaz 13y ago
They have a few dozen games of varying popularity. The bigger ones need a non-stop flow of new content to be created. Zynga was very good at creating new tasks and items constantly, so there was always something to do and something new to collect. It requires new story lines, artwork, mechanics, localization, and support. Many of the games don't overlap, so each game needs much of its own team. > You simply cannot meet investors' quarterly demand when your success is built on being "flavour of the month" business model Sure you can -- just look at any company that's in the entertainment business. All of their products, from pop songs to to supermodels to blockbuster movies, have a limited shelf life and require hit after hit after hit in order to sustain the business. They stay ahead of the curve by casting a wide net, having a team that is good at selecting the hits, effectively bringing the product to maturity (like producing an album or movie), and marketing the crap out of it. Zynga may have made many mistakes along the way and probably got too large to quickly. But they not the first nor last company that got a couple of major hits and were backed to produce more based on that record. Do it well, and you have Pixar. Do it poorly, and you join the massive pile of overhyped one-hit wonders.
- CodeCube 13y ago
  I just had a funny vision of what their task management system might look like. With managers planting work items, and having to harvest them when the developers are done :P
  - mediascreen 13y ago
    Yes! Please Atlassian, consider this a feature request for Jira.
- yesplorer 13y ago
  I don't know exactly how many games Zynga has but I just did a quick check at zynga.com and I counted 33 games. hence on average 90 personnel per game? I think that is ludicrous especially considering the fact that the developers of Tiny Tower (which accused Zynga of a rip-off a couple of months back)build their game with 7 developers
alexmorse 13y ago
Ex-zyngite here. To your questions above, my opinions. I'm no expert, just have some experience there. 1) The massive staff is due to massive success initially, then massive management mistakes continually, from the top down the chain. That's not to say there aren't great people fighting the good fight; There are many intelligent and capable people, but there's also a great deal misalignment of interests throughout the organization. 2) I think most of the games are pretty lame as well. I don't understand why Zynga customers pay for the games in most cases, but they do. Millions of them do. Zynga is very good at catering to their audience and giving them what they want but... 2.5) Typically what happens is a studio will operate trying to make the most profit in the shortest time, burning out its users with cheap grabs because that's what the higher ups demand. A lot of people in the trenches love games, and want to make great games, but get mired in the moment and vague demands from on high. I don't think social games are a fundamentally flawed model. Some of Zynga's own games had massive retention and monetization per user, but didn't scale. I think it's an equation no one has fully down yet.
- wpietri 13y ago
  Hey, you can answer something I've been wondering about. What portion of people at Zynga genuinely like the games they're making, and what fraction think they're terrible? I ask because one writer in Hollywood mentioned that she was surprised to discover that the people in charge actually like the dreck they shovel out. Her theory was that having real taste in Hollywood was a handicap to career advancement. I was wondering if Zynga was the same way.
  - alexmorse 13y ago
    I worked closely with 3 studios, pretty closely with maybe 5 total. A studio tends to be about 50 people, maybe as big as a hundred. In those, there were many people that liked their job. By job I mean, the challenges, the scale, and environment. I only met a handful that were jazzed up about the game they were working on... and that was usually the most heartbreaking, because they just never had an opportunity to change things for the better as far as game design, or the art. There are two specific people I know as exceptions, that are tenacious as hell, and made concessions only when absolutely necessary. Total respect for them, but they're still pretty beaten down and discouraged. Intermittently, a lot of people got excited about games. Overall a lot of people derided the games they were making, a lot of the time.

Freestyler_3 13y ago

I am curious too, they can't fix a game in 6 days when it breaks..... The games they deliver are full of bugs and inconveniences (ie. game with quests; each new quests is automatically accepted, and there is a limited amount of quests that can be open, and you cant cancel quests) This is not an entertainment company.

sdoowpilihp 13y ago
The inconveniences are by design. The bugs are due to aggressive deadlines.
- Freestyler_3 13y ago
  With 3000 people... that amazes me.
  - sdoowpilihp 13y ago
    only a percentage of those people are engineers working on the client facing component (i.e. the game). More over, people consistently underestimate the complexity of building games, including the PM's in charge of getting the game out the door.
  - ownagefool 13y ago
    Just like 9 woman don't get you a baby in 1 month, having more devs won't get your games to market and bug free after certian diminishing returns. Too many cooks in the kitchen and all that.
    - Freestyler_3 13y ago
      They don't even have people who tell the people they know about the problem and they are working on it. I am wondering what they did do with those 3000 people.
wpietri 13y ago
My theory is that's because the people playing aren't seen as customers so much as veal calves. Zynga isn't trying to make things that are fun; they're making things that are lucrative. Quality is useful to them only to the extent that it improves addictive potential. If you've ever spent time in lower-end casinos, they're pretty seedy. But nobody cares as long as they get their fix. And, of course, "crack house" is not a synonym for a nice environment to consume your quality product.

sdoowpilihp 13y ago

Games take incredible man hours to create, not so much on the engineering side, but on the design side. Copywriting, UI, animation, integration, and game design are all very labor intensive tasks that are performed by highly skilled individuals. Even on the engineering side, the clients can often take a long time to develop compared to a normal app. As opposed to using Bootstrap or UIFramework, almost all game UI's are "hand rolled" from scratch, and often have odd quirks in their design that can lead to a lot of extra testing. Games in general, whether poorly made games, or well made games, are a huge sink of labor.

chaz 13y ago

They have a few dozen games of varying popularity. The bigger ones need a non-stop flow of new content to be created. Zynga was very good at creating new tasks and items constantly, so there was always something to do and something new to collect. It requires new story lines, artwork, mechanics, localization, and support. Many of the games don't overlap, so each game needs much of its own team. > You simply cannot meet investors' quarterly demand when your success is built on being "flavour of the month" business model Sure you can -- just look at any company that's in the entertainment business. All of their products, from pop songs to to supermodels to blockbuster movies, have a limited shelf life and require hit after hit after hit in order to sustain the business. They stay ahead of the curve by casting a wide net, having a team that is good at selecting the hits, effectively bringing the product to maturity (like producing an album or movie), and marketing the crap out of it. Zynga may have made many mistakes along the way and probably got too large to quickly. But they not the first nor last company that got a couple of major hits and were backed to produce more based on that record. Do it well, and you have Pixar. Do it poorly, and you join the massive pile of overhyped one-hit wonders.

CodeCube 13y ago
I just had a funny vision of what their task management system might look like. With managers planting work items, and having to harvest them when the developers are done :P
- mediascreen 13y ago
  Yes! Please Atlassian, consider this a feature request for Jira.
yesplorer 13y ago
I don't know exactly how many games Zynga has but I just did a quick check at zynga.com and I counted 33 games. hence on average 90 personnel per game? I think that is ludicrous especially considering the fact that the developers of Tiny Tower (which accused Zynga of a rip-off a couple of months back)build their game with 7 developers

alexmorse 13y ago

Ex-zyngite here. To your questions above, my opinions. I'm no expert, just have some experience there. 1) The massive staff is due to massive success initially, then massive management mistakes continually, from the top down the chain. That's not to say there aren't great people fighting the good fight; There are many intelligent and capable people, but there's also a great deal misalignment of interests throughout the organization. 2) I think most of the games are pretty lame as well. I don't understand why Zynga customers pay for the games in most cases, but they do. Millions of them do. Zynga is very good at catering to their audience and giving them what they want but... 2.5) Typically what happens is a studio will operate trying to make the most profit in the shortest time, burning out its users with cheap grabs because that's what the higher ups demand. A lot of people in the trenches love games, and want to make great games, but get mired in the moment and vague demands from on high. I don't think social games are a fundamentally flawed model. Some of Zynga's own games had massive retention and monetization per user, but didn't scale. I think it's an equation no one has fully down yet.

wpietri 13y ago
Hey, you can answer something I've been wondering about. What portion of people at Zynga genuinely like the games they're making, and what fraction think they're terrible? I ask because one writer in Hollywood mentioned that she was surprised to discover that the people in charge actually like the dreck they shovel out. Her theory was that having real taste in Hollywood was a handicap to career advancement. I was wondering if Zynga was the same way.
- alexmorse 13y ago
  I worked closely with 3 studios, pretty closely with maybe 5 total. A studio tends to be about 50 people, maybe as big as a hundred. In those, there were many people that liked their job. By job I mean, the challenges, the scale, and environment. I only met a handful that were jazzed up about the game they were working on... and that was usually the most heartbreaking, because they just never had an opportunity to change things for the better as far as game design, or the art. There are two specific people I know as exceptions, that are tenacious as hell, and made concessions only when absolutely necessary. Total respect for them, but they're still pretty beaten down and discouraged. Intermittently, a lot of people got excited about games. Overall a lot of people derided the games they were making, a lot of the time.