Zynga May Have Just Laid Off 100+ Employees From Its Austin Office
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Practically, though, bad Zynga news feels terrible. Because the guys who architected this repugnant exploitation machine already got paid. They made millions selling their stock before the market truly understood what a shit business they were running. Meanwhile, front-line employees sat with their plummeting stock locked up.
So any bad Zynga news is nothing more than notice that yet another group of hardworking folks is, somehow, getting fucked over, despite their leadership enjoying tremendous rewards.
Very frustrating to watch.
I think if you work for a screwy company like Zynga you should be very paranoid about cashing out of the company. If they have such a low opinion of their customers, who is to say they won't have the same sentiment towards their employees.
Anyone remember this from almost a year ago? http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57322150-17/zynga-to-emplo...
I get the distinct impression Zynga only has a high opinion of money.
How did that ever pan out? Were employees forced to renounce their prior options grants, or did the pressure change management's mind on this?
Otherwise, yes, Zynga's present situation's been a long time coming, pity it's the bastards who made off like bandits.
Also > (with all that tracing going on...)
:D
Take patio11's advice and go into B2B, you'll make money hand over fist with much more manageable working hours.
Not everyone in the industry is scum, though it's certainly not uncommon.
I know several people working quite happily at gaming companies (doing, from what I can see, some pretty cool stuff), and those game companies who are the most abusive generally have well-known reputations as such.
I suppose it might not be the best industry to go into straight out of college, when you have little leverage and lack industry smarts...
That means that there is a much more abundant supply of labour and that the demand side is exploiting this by offering lower wages, worse working environment, crazier hours etc.
The main difference between fashion, music and art is that the discrepancy is much more poignant in the games industry because there's an abundant supply of well-paying cushy jobs just around the corner which involve almost the exact same skill-set to compare against.
I hope this is just an isolated incident of bad company strategy than an overall industry trend.
I also feel unnerved when I see unsustainable companies go on unsustainable hiring binges. It's like the first scene in a horror movie. Are you crazy? Don't go in there! He'll kill you!
My startup is based out of Capital Factory, and if you even just walked in the door during Friday happy hour and announced that you were a developer here in Austin looking for a job, hungry funded startup owners would descend on you like wolves.
All that to say: You have nothing to be worried about. And also, come to more events...especially ones held at Capital Factory. :)
Both employ game dynamics to get participants to part with their money - the only difference being that casinos require you to pay up front, and Zynga doesn't have the same level of overhead.
The company will only face a race to the bottom, though, as others enter this space and competition for user time ramps up.
Your last sentence will probably hold true, unless they start producing something innovative and useful for a change..
It will be interesting to see if management bails from Zynga over the coming quarters. Personally, I would watch and see if management unloads on any stock or options.
So - to some degree, the crash and possible termination of Zynga's business model, enables these people to escape the company. If the stock had value, then they would be trapped in that really horrible (for some of them) career. When the stock has no value - they are all now free(er) to go - no handcuffs.
Glad the decision to leave is easier, at least.
Their conviction was greater than the potential wealth and very commendable.
Your comment insinuates that these employees had no morals and were freed by the failure.
This is actually a fucked up position.
There are many factors that play into this, the most significant of which is the employees living paycheck to paycheck where they cannot actually leave on a high ground position due to their needing the money... and your point is that "well, at least the company failed freeing them of any moral risk of staying with the company should it have succeeded and trapped them with lucrative options!"
To this I say, fully and openly:
Fuck every single thing about Zynga and the attitudes and policies it may beget.
FUCK ZYNGA
and I have zero sympathy for any of its employees in any regard.
I have been openly decrying this company for years - and I still will - I can't stand such bullshit in any industry and Silicon Valley should SHUN them and be ashamed of every relation to this company.
We are trying to make a better world here, aren't we folks?
If not, then fuck you - because if your goal is only self-enrichment then I despise you.
What if the Zynga employee/s in question had not a moral objection to virtual cow trade, but a mild distaste?
You can work in an industry that you think is kind of stupid, but not morally offensive.
This is totally separate from the issue of working for a company that steals other people's work as a matter of course, which was not addressed here.
Understand there is a difference between working for a lame company, and a morally objectionable company.
I could make an argument that what Zynga did with Tiny Towers/Dream Heights wasn't that much different than what Samsung did with it's Galaxy Tab/iPad. In both cases, these companies took another product as an example, and put their own spin on it.
Neither of them is really "morally reprehensible" - but, if you want to do original work, or make the world a better place, there are probably other places you can work - and taking money out of the equations makes it that much easier.
On the money thing though you really need to come to terms with the fact that there is way more random chance than there is earned riches in the tech business. For every person who got rich being the most brilliant mind on the problem at the right time, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people who got rich just because who ever was sitting in the seat they happened to be sitting in also got rich. The folks who just happened to be at Sun when it founded, or HP, or Google, or FaceBook. Randomness, not skill, plays a huge role there. There was a guy at Sun whom I helped manage out of the organization, he landed a job at a start up that two months later got bought with a full vesting of everyone. He walked away with several million dollars. It took a lot of thinking about that series of events to let it sit in my head without pissing me off.
Different people exploit their opportunities differently. I know that if I both knew how, and could have, shorted stock I held but was locked up but worth 'millions' I would have. I would have said "That's enough for me, sell it all, and when it dribbles out via my acquisition contract timed unlock I'll hand over the shares." That would have made me 'evil' in the eyes of the shareholders who bought stock during that time (and later sued the company) but my motivation would have been quite pure (FU money is a good thing). But I don't think of myself as an evil guy, and generally am pretty nice.
Bottom line is people with large holdings in a startup will look to 'liquify' a chunk of that to diversify and allow them to activate the wealth 'ratchet' (that is where you solidify your position by converting equity into real goods). If the value of the company continues to grow nobody ever remembers, if the value plunges, they get the short end of it. But its mostly randomness at work.
Because of that I don't share your interpretation that "FU money" is correlated at all with the sense of obligation. In my world view that obligation is intrinsic in the person and not affected by the source of income. When I see the good that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is doing, the Lucille Packard Children's hospital, and others, I think that is pretty cool.
[1] http://www.macfound.org/programs/fellows/
See: http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Gates_Foundation_Critiq...
So with his vast fortune Gates ensures that he pays the minimum required in taxes (which may support policies he disagrees with), and instead spends money on policies he supports.
That sounds perfectly rational.
If the perspective is that everything is disconnected and that you are more important than everyone else then yes, it does.
If one can see that all is connected and everything affects everything else then it makes very little sense. Those taxes pay for poor people's sustenance when they cannot work. They pay for people who can't afford private healthcare. It's rational to help them because more national unrest means more stress, less productivity and, in the end, less likelyhood of people buying your products.
The problem with being perfectly rational is that one may not consider the flaws in one's assumptions. Rationality is only as good as the information it's acting on and is not a silver bullet for making the right decisions. A blind man might conclude that while the sun may be hot at times, it's also extremely dark.
The point is that FU money is the point at which you have enough that you can walk away from situations that you don't agree with without that impacting the rest of your financial life in any manner.
In other words, it's retirement but at a younger age.
It's not to say you don't walk away from situations you don't agree with before you have FU money. It's just that you're at a point where it won't impact the rest of your financial life.
I don't really see why it has such a negative connotation.
/edit I should add this term is usually used in terms of someone who has spent 20+ years in a career (and typically the same company) and is at loggerheads with upper management in an unresolvable situation and is about to get forced out over the situation. i.e., upper mgmt is doing something that person believe is wrong, unethical, etc.
But really there are two points here:
1) People with a lot of equity in a single company will sell it when they can to diversify their risk (not evil)
2) People who end up with a lot of equity in a single company that is worth a lot of money are 'lucky' not necessarily 'good', 'smart', or 'evil.'
I certainly felt it raised eye brows when Pincus and other officers dumped big chunks of stock in a pre-arranged sale, but note that had Zynga continued to go up in value nobody would have blinked, but since it so spectacularly has crashed they are reviled. As bad as that looked I felt the Groupon folks turning down Google's $6B offer and instead selling their own stock through a private placement was a lot further down the scale toward 'poor judgement' than Zynga's moves.
I totally agree with point #1 though. People should be able to diversify their risk.
A 10b-5 plan or similar is the only legally safe way to act during a quiet period.
But trading during a post-IPO employee lockup, when there is no insider information concern, maybe isn't as tight as "the week before earnings release". Seems like it shouldn't be legally. But employers certainly would order their employees not to trade.
There was a nasty loophole/scandal a few years back where people would set up a legal auto-sale plan like "Sell 1000 shares every week", and selectively cancel the plan on weeks they didn't want to transact. I'm not sure what became of that.
Why did that piss you off? Sounds like it was a win-win situation for you and that guy.
I haven't heard this expression before, but it sounds like he had the guy fired. He didn't like the guy, or felt that the guy wasn't functioning well in his position at Sun.
Yeah, it's a bummer they'll have to find new jobs, but I don't feel particularly bad for them.
Even big startups are hard. Zynga is startupy, even though they're public.
There's a lot of schadenfreude on HN when it comes to Zynga. Articles about Zynga's problems regularly make it to the top of HN.
Some people think games are frivolous. They're not. Entertainment is (almost) a basic human need. Some people think Zynga players are somehow being tricked. They're not. They're being entertained.
Some people say that Zynga steals ideas. Firstly, I'm guessing 99% of the people who say that are just repeating something they've heard. The other 1% should know that everyone steals from everyone. Unless you're the first guy to ever make a dynamic website, have usernames, top-bar navigation... you stole a lot of ideas too. And the ideas you stole are more fundamental than the plot of a game.
(also, if you know my history (i used to make fun of companies like this for a living) yes, i understand the irony of me writing such a supportive comment.)
I love games and don't think they are frivolous for a moment. I'm not sure what that has to do with a discussion of Zynga, though.
There's usually no skill, no challenge, no fun, just a bald-faced hook into the effort/reward system in the mind.
The closest thing Zynga has to real games are Bingo, Poker, and Words With Friends. I'm not even going to count that last one because they bought it from someone else.
(Therefore, "increment a number" games could theoretically be fun. Though I personally find them more boring than watching paint dry. At least the paint eventually dries and you can move on to something else.)
No True Scotsman fallacy. Just because you don't think they're games doesn't make it fact. They make games, and people criticize them for it. The only thing your post did was help better prove OP's point.
First, Zynga is not criticized for making games, they're criticized for making Skinner boxes and passing them off as games. Quality, in other words.
Second, just because you think they make games doesn't make it fact.
Definition of a game per Google:
A form of play or sport, esp. a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.
Zynga's "games" (with very few exceptions) lack any form of skill, strength, or luck. Push button, receive reward, pay us cash or spam your friends and you can push the button more often.
That is literally all there is to most Zynga games. I'm not even engaging in hyperbole here! Compare with even the most grindtastic MMO's out there, even the most rehashed FPS or football franchise you can think of, and there's still a skill component that these wannabes can't grok.
Resorting to a dictionary definition to argue a point is nearly always a sign you've got a weak argument. But in this case, I want to point out the "esp." just after the first comma in the definition you cite.
It means especially. In context, that means that games need not adhere to the conditions specified in the subordinate clause.
Also, I swear Wittgenstein had something to say on this topic.
Or a sign that your opponent is redefining words to fit their argument instead of using the commonly accepted one. Are you telling me it's unfair to refer to an authoritative source as to the meaning of a word?
In any case, there has to be some kind of definition or else the word becomes meaningless. By defining Farmville as a "game", you could just as easily define twiddling numbers on an Excel sheet as a "game". Where do you stop? Is Farmville a game just because it has a pretty skin?
Unfair, no. A sign that the argument is weak, yes. Particularly in this case.
Also, use is meaning. Dictionaries are authoritative only in the sense that they capture current use at the time of publication. Even in that case, they're often lacking in some word senses and/or connotation because they don't exist in the writer's dialect.
>By defining Farmville as a "game", you could just as easily define twiddling numbers on an Excel sheet as a "game".
Are you twiddling the numbers as a form of play? Then yes, that'd be a game according to the definition given above. Games don't need to be challenging, or even all that entertaining.
It is, at least for me, more just transparent snobbery than the No True Scotsman fallacy. The same way some video game journalists don't like to cover Minecraft, as it's "not a real video game".
In my mind, Zynga "games" are to games what crack dealers are to entrepreneurs. It may be a subset, but it's a subset about which I believe quite firmly that those that participate should be shunned. They are an unethical company that produce products that I can describe only as predatory.
(And, yes, World of Warcraft falls in the same bucket.)
^I know that people believing something doesn't define facts - in this case I'm wondering if the fallacy would still apply.
The fallacy is when you keep changing the definition to fit the data.
I'm happy to see them fail because I firmly believe they violate the tenet that entities should create more value than they capture.
That's not why people criticize Zynga, and I think you probably know that.
BTW did you hear about the dot-commies?
They thought they had a right to everyone else's money.
By "basic ideas" I assume you mean "ideas that are better and more useful, and therefore more widely ripped off."
Your argument reminds me of when people say such-and-such band is so original -- yet it's another four guys playing guitar, bass, drums and vocals.
But Zynga doesn't make games. They make shitty frontends on a spreadsheet.
As to their theft of products, that's not hearsay. That's an ongoing, provable patterns of behavior:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/01/25/everything...
This is an absurd justification for the kind of outright theft Zynga has built an entire public corporation on.
Pincus was voted as the CEO of the Year at the Crunchies. He was chosen to be the closer to Startup School, he projected Zynga as a place for people to want to go to there: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1041758
This is a story parallel to Lance Armstrong's own rise and fall. About how if you were to drill down, really drill down, to find the next ethical, justifiable company that used Facebook to great benefit for humanity you're going to be looking for the 27th, 28th, 29th place organizations. Because frankly, as cynical and as well-duh it is now, what did we spend the greatest of our generations will and brain power on?
A Facebook ponzi scheme.
Now the tide is turning, pendulum swung, omega alpha etc etc and all those wonderful metaphors.
Where to go now? Go fixate on and fix something else. But remember, be nice to everyone on your way up. They're going to be the same people you see on the way down.
Awful, Zynga is.
A ponzi scheme, it is not.
Let's keep our criticisms to what is correct - there's so much of that to go around already.
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation. (Wiki)
The fact that the early investors cashed out like kings from the IPO, and later investors shouldered all the losses and may not even recover the liquidation value of the assets is pretty close to the definition. All that is missing is the "fraud" part, but that's a bold accusation and hard to prove. Then again, this story isn't over.
Just because the new investors were not smart in their investment does not make it a ponzi scheme.
The executives and VCs of Zynga built up a product and took their returns from the public by selling the public shares, which is a right to the future profits of the company[1]. Only, it turns out that those with the best knowledge of the inner working of the company probably knew there were no profits to be had, nor any on the horizon. This is made evident by the inside selling and relatively fast decline of the the company's share price.
So, while I don't go around claiming Zynga (or any such bust up) is akin to Madoff, I don't think the difference is as large as you think. It's all about intent, and we'll never really know. The rest of the pieces are there.
By the way, I'm long Zynga January 2014 calls. They may have been the recipient of loose SV money, and as such got lazy, but there is demand for this product if they can get it together. There's a real business here, so I guess I'm in the non-Ponzi crowd.
[1]If you aren't investing with the intent on earning the future profits of the company, but instead are looking to sell at a higher price, you are speculating, not investing. I don't feel sorry for speculators, it's the nature of that zero sum game.
Buying a share does not give you the right to future profits in a company. It gives you ownership and control over a percentage of the corporation, and does not guarantee a dividend.
By selling shares to the public, the shareholders are trading control of the company for money with the public investor. Whether or not they bought a lemon is the fault of the public investor.
It is _not_ a ponzi scheme, it is the exchange of assets.
It isn't "my logic", it's the definition of a Ponzi scheme: early investors were paid out by later investors, with the bottom falling out for the later investors. That hasn't happened, because the story is still unwinding. It might not ever happen. It will only be obvious in hindsight.
Besides, I own many stocks, and they return income to me.
>Buying a share does not give you the right to future profits in a company. >it gives you ownership and control over a percentage of the corporation
For someone critical of "logic", those two statements contradict each other.
A company is expected to be profitable, and owning a stake in it entitles me to a share of those profits. What do you think Zynga is promising when they sell me a share of the company at IPO? Do you really think they are saying, "Here's part of this company. It might make money, or it might not, but perhaps someone will buy it from you for a higher price at a later date"?
Good luck with your portfolio if you base it on a different philosophy.
>Whether or not they bought a lemon is the fault of the public investor.
Well, I'm sure the SEC would disagree with you on that statement.
>It is _not_ a ponzi scheme, it is the exchange of assets.
One does not preclude the other. Ponzi's original fraud involved the exchange of assets. The scam is in what they tell me the asset is worth and what it is actually worth.
Definition [1]: A form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.
This is not what selling stock in an IPO is because stock is not non-existent. A share of equity is a very real asset. You are committing a No True Scotsman fallacy by trying to redefine the term to fit your needs.
>Besides, I own many stocks, and they return income to me.
Just because you own equity does not mean you are an expert. Case in point: You don't know the difference between company net income, returned earnings, and dividends.
>A company is expected to be profitable, and owning a stake in it entitles me to a share of those profits.
No it does not entitle you to a share of any net income.
All it entitles you to is vote of power. This is how corporations work. It's basic business, for christ's sake. [2]
>Well, I'm sure the SEC would disagree with you on that statement.
Why? Did Zynga falsify an annual filing or their 10-k? No? Then the SEC doesn't give a shit.
>One does not preclude the other.
Yes, it very much does, because in a ponzi scheme you give up your money to an investor for their service. In an IPO, you give up your money for shares of equity, which you sell later.
I'm not going to go in circles with you on this any longer. You've either have a case of confirmation bias or you're trolling. It's a shame because you're another example of a rational but unintelligent investor.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?oq=define%3Aponzi+scheme&s...
Wait a minute, you looked up a definition that used the specific term non-existent to bolster your argument, then accuse me of warping the definition?
In fact, there have been a variety of "Ponzi Scheme's" over the years, some of which have used stock, bank deposits and land.
>Case in point: You don't know the difference between company net income, returned earnings, and dividends.
Huh? Okay.
>Why? Did Zynga falsify an annual filing or their 10-k? No? Then the SEC doesn't give a shit.
I was talking about your statement, which is that:
"Whether or not they bought a lemon is the fault of the public investor."
Completely false, mainly because the public information is provided by the company. By the way, the SEC has looked into Zynga.
>I'm not going to go in circles with you on this any longer.
Good. I'm sure it's been exhausting for you, looking up all these finance terms on Google. Between the arrogance and personal attacks, you're not adding much here.
-- Interesting.
If you look at the data, from 1996-2005 (10 Years)
> source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/lancear...
TDF: Of those that placed top 3x: 15% clean, ~85% were not. You know you have a problem when you are on the wrong side of the 80 /20 rule, as an entire field.
Lets hope the ills that plague Zynga are not like the TDF:
Top 3 x 10 years = 30 places Only 5 of these "places" were awarded to "clean riders", of which there were only 3.
First - None Second - Joseba Beloki (1) Thrid - Beloki(2), Bobby Ulrich, Fernano Escartin.
Or, you can not care that these athletes are using science to perform optimally at their sport. That's what I do, but that's another argument.
You might argue that it's against the rules to ride a motorcycle, but so was doping. It's also against the spirit of the sport, but so was doping.
If the objective was to use the best available science to compete at the highest level, then they failed horribly.
I'm skeptical there were any clean riders. Those three may just be the ones that didn't get caught. Hell, Armstrong was under the microscope for a decade and it took a long time for the truth to come out.
Let's get coffee at the downtown Medici: http://www.paperlesspipeline.com/jobs
Top bar is all Apple. Zynga story is an entire page scroll down.
Not sure what you mean by "top bar", but there's a Windows 8 Review above the fold.
Also, remember that the Zynga story is "From Polygon" (Polygon is The Verge's sister gaming site), so it wouldn't be at the top regardless.
https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=zynga+%22ping+me%22+OR...
This is a theme that exists throughout most Zynga games.
or pay cash and continue immediately.
No, for me the problem is much simpler. Its a shitty business run by very poor business minds. That may sound dramatic and sensational, but let's consider the facts: they paid $250 million for a company of 15 developers whose most valuable asset was a mobile version of Pictionary that had been on the market for just three months. Completely unprofitable, they built a multilmillion dollar state of the art office in San Francisco. That's something you do when you are wildly successful, maybe. I work for a company many orders of magnitude more successful than Zynga and our office looks like a dungeon. So what? That's being wise with cashflow. That's a company I want to invest in. Finally, a friend of mine works for Zynga and he was regularly taking all expense paid trips. For his one year anniversary he was sent to England and Ireland as a reward.
I don't think of Zynga's management as sinister evildoers. I think of them as immature and completely unfit to manage a company. I say good riddance but I do hope those laid off find better opportunities soon.
Here is when you get such perks at Zynga:
- You win some sort of company-wide award at the quarterly meeting. You (or your team) did something awesome and you are getting rewarded.
- You get a big quarter-end cash bonus and you spend it on your trip.
- It's not actually a vacation. You are on a business trip and maybe you convince your manager to delay your return and you take off for vacation time at that time.
- 25% of your stock options vest on your first anniversary and you cash in and spend on your trip. Assuming you got a boatload of options if you take into account the stock price.
That's all I can think of.
But what DO you get as a prize for your one year anniversary? Some studios put your name up on a poster... That's about it. The rest is by merit.
And as to your immature and completely unfit comment: I call bullshit on that as well. People like that do not get the type of funding that Zynga got. They do not get superstars on their board like Zynga does (Reid Hoffman, Bing Gordon, Jeffrey Katzenberg, etc). And people like that definitely do not get a company to go public. So, yeah, I call bullshit.
Oh, and you can point at the board of directors and all of their past successes as if that somehow proves that the company is well run. I can point at the balance sheet and stock price. Facts are stubborn things.
I think we should measure the executives "fitness" based on the fact that the stock is below book value less than one year after the IPO, rather than the fact that they managed to attract some cool people to the board.
Or maybe they were very shrewd business minds. After all, you have a business that was very much a fad - and any insider would be able to tell you that, but yet somehow you've convinced the wider world that this was a sustainable new trend, and to pour unimaginable amounts of money into your company.
So, tons of funding, and you can see the cliff at the end of the train tracks. What do you do?
Lavish offices? Lavish perks? Lavish accoutrements? Lavish trips?
Horrifically irresponsible and downright illegal? Perhaps. But in the circumstances, perhaps the best (selfish) move.
Either way I still say good riddance.
So rather than predicting and pre-empting the dive in social gaming, Zynga is in a tough situation where they're facing the harsh reality as it comes. As a result, they're stuck with a huge, bloated company not prepared to quickly pivot or create innovation in new product categories.
I don't know what else Zynga can do right now but to downsize and to refocus the company on building what's next and not what was. It's almost like they need to find a new product strategy and business model. And it will take a lot of insight, leadership and team to get it done.
What they have going for them is that they have a lot of cash and a lot of experience in the social gaming genre.
But what they have going against them is momentum which includes employees losing faith in the company.
I agree with your post, outside of this.
They most definitely predicted it, and cashed out their stock to benefit from it. How else do you explain them cashing out so much, so early? That's the hard part for me to get over.
Other than the shadiness of the VCs and execs, Zynga was a decent idea that didn't work out, like so many before it.
Would you have acted differently?
careers@bentoboxinteractive.com
Or because the White House doesn't make important news announcements on Christmas Eve when nobody's paying attention...
I don't think this is a Zynga dick-move. I think this is a typical company move to bury a non-flattering story.
There are many things one might accurately criticize Zynga for, but this is not one of them. If they hadn't done it this way investors would have yet another reason to sell the stock, it would be evidence the company is run by idiots.
They're nothing more than a money hungry company that deserves to perish. The real question here is: will this have a knock on effect for Facebook stock and perhaps have a chain reaction?
If I were Facebook I'd seriously be considering an acquisition and then priority number #1 being turn the image of Zynga around, perhaps even re-brand to Facebook Games.
My friend IM'ed me at 11:27a PST yesterday saying "Dude, my whole studio just got laid off. We have 2 hrs to vacate. Can you email someone?" Hit twitter, and it was off like a rocket.
What disappoints me about the current social gaming genre is how many games what would have otherwise been decent tycoons are ruined with slot machine mechanics.
You're the first person I've "met" who got SimIsle. Maybe I need to give it another try...
Happy Farm was legitimately a social game - even further than Farmville ended up being. In fact, almost two thirds of the Chinese population that played admitted they did so only so they could steal crops from their friends.
It's almost a case study into the Chinese culture unto itself.
Sort of softens the blow of it; at least a lot attention is diverted to Cupertino.
This concerns me because this is Zyngas leadership tone on display. It does not invoke confidence.