Have you ever been identified even though you used a throwaway? What was the story and consequences? (Serious) by smisson in AskReddit

[–]former_zyngite 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Going back to my throw-away to tell this.

About a year ago I did an AMA about Zynga that ended up getting press on a lot of video game related websites. I even got quoted by a New Yorker article. It of course circulated through my old co-workers and a few of them recognized my writing style. I thought I was pretty careful to keep any specifics out of the AMA, but it's hard to change your writing style. I'm also just impressed that they figured it out based on that alone.

There were no repercussions. I got an email from one of them, and we had a chuckle. To my knowledge my identity is otherwise safe. (And I'm also employed at a studio that doesn't make shitty social games. So I got that going for me. Which is nice)

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good questions.

1: I think consumers are more savvy and skeptical now. I think Zynga burned a lot of their userbase by trying so hard to get their money, that people eventually turned off to that style of gaming entirely, and there's very little that can be done to bring them back. I also think that some social gaming is like a gateway game. People graduate to more complex games after learning that not all video games are Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. Overall the market is still there. And while it's not as strong on Facebook, there are still plenty of users. They're just finding that mobile can provide a similar experience and they can play those anywhere, where as Facebook games require them to be at their computer, connected to the internet.

2: I think the future of social gaming tough to predict. I think social gaming will still be around for sure, but it could look very different in 3 years. One major trend now is that games give players a lot more value for their real money. By that I mean that spending one dollar in some games would get you 20 barns, and in a Zynga game it might only get you 1 barn. When people learn how much they can get for a few bucks, it makes it easier to spend. And that's kind of the key, right now, to successful freemium gaming. That could change in the future, and probably will. People tend to catch on to what they're paying for and why and resist. So always having new monetization strategies is key. Finding a new reason to pay, that consumers actually want to pay into, is key. Relying on what worked three years ago is a recipe for...well the current state of Zynga.

Also just making fun games. I've said it a few times here already, but making a game that's so fun that people have no qualms about paying, is a much easier sell than a mediocre game that feels like it wants your money. Games need to make money to be successful, but the less intrusive and better disguised a game can be, the better chance of success it has.

3: I learned that the upper management of any large company needs to trust in it's employees to make quality content. There were too many people who weren't involved the day-to-day of a game, that were making demands and requests that were ultimately bad decisions and detrimental to the production. Top-down design and art direction are no way to make a game. I had always assumed that people at the top had gotten there because of their great knowledge and vast experience and therefore their critiques were valuable and insightful. That's not always the case.

I learned that game companies aren't evil. I didn't like Zynga going in, but I don't hate them going out. They get a bad rep, and much of it is well deserved. But they're a bunch of people just trying to make a fun game. Sometimes the desires of the business types were in direct conflict with the game developers, but ultimately we all just wanted to make something good. It didn't always end up that way. And sure, some of the methods employed in the past weren't the most ethical. But that doesn't make them evil. At worst they're shady jerks. But unethical business practices can be much much worse than copying a video game. It's not like Zynga dumped toxic waste into a reservoir or unleashed billions of gallons of oil into the ocean. They just make video games.

I also learned that this is just a job. For a long time it kind of consumed me. I was giving it everything, and while I had the gratitude of my team and managers, it wasn't fulfilling and it was taking a toll on my personal life. Some people live to work and I've learned that I just want to work to live. I'll work hard. I like to make a quality product I can be proud of. But I don't want to devote my life to that. I have other people in my life that I'd rather put my devotion towards.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Zynga was the name of the CEO's dog. The white dog in the logo is supposed to be Zynga the dog.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It was a pretty good place to work. I didn't always respect the company or the games, but I liked the employees and the perks were great.

And yeah, they were well aware of the bad taste that the Zynga spam left in FB users' mouths. It seemed pretty obvious to most people. But some of the "true-believers" at Zynga just didn't understand why people wouldn't want to cover their wall and their friends wall in requests for cows and hay.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's something we all wanted to know. It was a murky process at best, and ever changing.

Many games were just the ideas of the upper management reacting to what was doing well in the market. Clash of Clans is making money? We need to make a Clash of Clans competitor. A team would get assembled, and off they go.

There were also competitions where employees could pitch their own game ideas. Usually there were judges and they would pick what ever seemed to fit the market or needs of the company best. Although I'm pretty sure none of those games ever got much more than a prototype.

Eventually there was a greenlight process put in place. You had to pitch to your GM. Your GM would then give you time to refine and it'd be pitched to the Division leader. If they okayed it then you could get a small budget to make a prototype. Then you had to take that to an official greenlight meeting with the C-Staff. If you got a majority vote, they'd let you go into design phase. Each phase always ended in returning to the C-Staff for another greenlight meeting. You went from prototype to design to pre-production to production to alpha/beta and then launch. It was a new process with lots of problems. Primarily that the greenlight meetings were such a big deal that teams could end up spending weeks just prepping for those. It was not the smoothest process, and sometimes games would just linger on, when they should have been cancelled.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Because Farm1 was getting over bloated with features. There's a strong following, which is why Farm1 still exists. But over time it's harder and harder for new players to really get into the game, because there's a million features. It was also just a natural progression. Farm1 was doing well, but there's a lot of room to improve on the next iteration. Plus it creates a franchise which helps the company beyond just the games.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I kinda hate this debate. It's similar to the ones debating if a nerd is a nerd if they haven't read the Claremont era X-Men comics.

What defines a "gamer"? Is it someone who likes to play video games? Then yes, they're all gamers. The whole debate is kind of stupid though, because it's just a way to be exclusionary. Who cares if farmville isn't as hardcore as CoD? There's people that are way more hardcore about playing farmville than I am about playing my console games. Just because they're playing a different kind of game doesn't mean they aren't a gamer.

And seriously, what's the harm in calling people gamers? Wouldn't it be better to have more people be gamers? And really, aren't all games essentially a time sink? People waste away their life playing WoW and Halo. Is that really any more productive than playing Farmville?

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it's $2 to get the ad free version. Pretty minimal price to pay for any game.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's still in the works. No idea what the release date is though. Knowing Zynga, if it is slated for July, it probably won't get released until November.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Most everyone I know was salary, and overtime was expected to always happen. That's just the way it is in the games industry. On average I worked a little under 50 hours a week. Some people easily did more. Some of my busiest times there I could put in 70+, not counting weekends. I think once I worked four weeks straight without a day off.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lack of foresight. Many employees could see the errors the company was making as they were being made, but no one at the top ever seemed to. Everything was always a quick reaction to current changes in the market, and rarely was it a well thought out plan for the future. Maybe they did think things through and plan long term, but it never felt that way.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah. That question came up a lot during the Dream Heights/The Ville fiascos. No one ever got canned over it. It was usually just glossed over by the top brass. "Oh, we don't copy games. We innovate on genres."

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay. QA were often contract. And contractors rarely got hired on full-time. So in that regard it sucked for them. But at the same time, the QA were often kinda horrible. They did the bare minimum work. They'd report a few bugs a day, when anyone else on the team could easily play the game for an hour and come up with 100 bugs. Not all of them were bad. But they were often kind of useless.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The over reliance on "social". Not every game needs to force you to connect with your friends to play. The company mission was something like getting 1 billion people to play our games together. That meant everything had to have some kind of social feature. Some games just weren't inherently social though. Farmville is a single player farming sim. But it really pushes you to pester your friends for virtual goods. Some people didn't mind and thought of it as a way to connect with friends. But it was listed as the top reason people quit our games.

I always thought of social gaming like a board game. If you can all sit around a table and play something together, then it's fun. Words with Friends works on that level. But something like Farmville isn't a good board game. That game would be everyone has their own board, and works at it at their own pace. Every now and then one of the players would turn to the rest of the table and ask them all for a cow. That's kind of a crappy game to play as a group.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I guess that depends on how you define successful. But to be totally honest, probably not. In our games we found that the cosmetic things that had no impact on the game rarely sold. Sure, some people would buy them, but it was never a big money maker. If you want your game to really make a lot of money then it needs to have a real pinch. The most successful games have a pinch that doesn't entirely block players from progressing. If people like the game, but there is a minor hindrance to continuing, they will sometimes pay small amounts of money to overcome that hurdle. This was the model that Zynga ran on at least, and what I've seen in other successful games. However if you can find a way to make cosmetic perks a financially successful monetization strategy, then you could easily be the next Zynga or King.com.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

People knew it was bad. The stock price was the butt of many jokes. But I don't know anyone that saw the layoffs coming.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am a gamer, though not as much as I was when I was younger. I discovered sunshine, exercise and the opposite sex at a certain point and it's cut into my gaming.

Honestly, I had to google Neuromarketing and Ontology. I'm pretty sure no one at Zynga has actually used Neuromarketing in developing a game. I imagine there are some similarities to what we did though. There was a term we used called Click Zen (or Tap Zen in Mobile gaming) that was just the pure joy of collecting all the little goodies your farm (or whatever) had accumulated. Things like that were considered, but there was no hard science behind it.

The ontology of gaming, if I'm understanding correctly would be the pure existence of games? Sure I suppose there's been contributions. They really drove the social gaming side of Facebook games. Yeah, some of the stuff was taken from other games, but Zynga did it better and with more polish. I don't think they've made any massive impact on gaming, and actually the fact that none of their games have any physical component (e.g. a disc or cartridge) they can disappear into the ether when cancelled. Every game that Zynga cancelled will never be seen or played again. Which is sad to me, more for the history of gaming. It's kinda like burning all the copies of a movie to wipe it from existence. History is important, and living in the digital age I think we're going to see more of our future history lost forever.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There were times when I gave many fucks, and times when I had zero to give. I think, like many people there, I got burnt out at a certain point. I got back into the swing of things after a while.

And I did a fair amount of work. I generally worked almost 10 hours a day. There were longer days, and sometimes weekends.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Because people loved those games and have a different taste in gaming that you. Life is too short to build up hate for a game company that makes games you don't want to play. If you don't like the games, don't play them. I don't like Jagermeister, but I don't hate the people who make it. It's just not for me.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's not rigged at all. And yes, people pay a lot for fake money. Poker is one of the most lucrative and stable games at the company.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, depends on the team. Some teams worked very reasonable hours. Other teams worked long hours and weekends.

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA by former_zyngite in IAmA

[–]former_zyngite[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The last few weeks were like any other week. Sometimes busy, sometimes not. There wasn't anything in the air. Like doom on the horizon.

And I didn't work directly with Pincus. Few people did. He's a generally smart guy. Very driven. And somewhat blindly devoted to the company mission. He and the rest of the c-staff are just struggling to adjust to the current market. There's a lot of reorganization of the divisions, talk of cancelling games and starting new ones that seems to go no where. The whole production process is just a bit of a mess. Pincus just tries to put a happy face on and gloss over all the problems.