4 ms·
Good, I hope the man goes down with his ship and loses every dollar he's made off of the company. These in-app-purchase types of games are bad, but Zynga is on
by JonFish85 12y ago
Good, I hope the man goes down with his ship and loses every dollar he's made off of the company. These in-app-purchase types of games are bad, but Zynga is one of the worst.
These games don't strive to solve any problem, and in fact don't strive to make anyone's lives better. They essentially run an extortion game: "pay us to scratch the itch we give you."
And god forbid they get access to the gambling markets, because suddenly they will descend like vultures onto a group of people who lack the self control to spend their money.
They don't strive to make people happy; explicitly they make the most money when people are nervous that they might lose the hours/days/weeks of "work" they put into whatever this app is. They strip-mine people's souls for cash. I hope Zynga, King, et al. nothing but the worst. I don't like them, I don't like their leadership, I don't like their investors and I don't like the employees that work knowingly taking advantage of people (psychology majors who actively exploit people's base instincts for the explicit purpose of extracting money with no positive side effects).
Their games are the online equivalent of an emotionally abusive boyfriend or a drug dealer. They draw you in under the auspices of fun & cheeriness, but it quickly devolves into a quagmire of dependency.
As a quick disclaimer, I've never worked for a game company, never mind any of the one's I've mentioned. I think Pincus is a scumbag businessman for many reasons, some of which I listed here and some of the reasons that others have listed (i.e. stock take back, spyware bundling, game stealing, pump & dump (I know it's not the textbook term for it)).
- swamp40 12y agoThe worst one I ever saw was an iPad app with a cute and cuddly baby that you had to take care of every few hours. If you stopped playing the game for a while, the baby wound up in the ICU, with tubes and a mask hooked up to it. And the only way to get the baby out of the hospital was to pay money. It made my kids cry. I was so mad I banished any game made by that company. Pathetic.
- im3w1l 12y agoWhat was the name of the game?
- M8 12y agoAlso those games are social - in a way how drug addicts are being social to sell drugs to their friends to get some money to buy drugs for themselves.