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

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

#71

Post by mattmaroon » Fri, Sep 10, 2010, 3:31 AM UTC

danilocampos wrote: post #28

eavc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

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 sol…

Who made you the ultimate authority on what's fun? That sort of elitism is sadly not surprising here.

Believe it or not, a lot of people actually think Farmville is fun. I'm not one either, but I've met many who are. It's so ridiculous to assume that because you think it isn't fun, nobody does, and therefore it has no value.

The fact that your comment has 42 karma right now is the main thing wrong with this site.

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

#72

Post by mattmaroon » Fri, Sep 10, 2010, 3:33 AM UTC

teej wrote: post #33

danilocampos wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sol…

Please remember that what you find enjoyable could possibly be different than what 40-year-old moms in flyover country find enjoyable. Also realize the latter group is what made Oprah, the Wii, and Zynga billion dollar businesses.

I don't know. The guy has like 600 karma here. Clearly he is more capable of judging what is fun and what is not than the 80 million Farmville players.

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

#73

Post by mattmaroon » Fri, Sep 10, 2010, 3:40 AM UTC

teej wrote: post #45

danilocampos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who takes enjoyment from exploiting their friends in the furtherance of a glorified spreadsheet needs a hug, a trip to the ice cream parlor, and a meatspace game of Uno. There may be a baseline pseudo-fun available in the current crop of social games. Most social games, though, are more interested in bare metal compulsion than truly meritorious, universally recognizable fun . You're really willing to sit there…

> You're really willing to sit there and tell me that you're comfortable with social game evolution stopping right now? This stuff really is sufficiently fun for you? You seem to have a great vision for what social games could be. I cannot urge this enough - please go build that vision now. The industry needs innovation badly. There are huge profits to the person who can pull this off, and I hope that person is you.…

All of this thread about whether or not social games are fun is such an oversimplification as to be worthless.

First off, there's the semantics. What is a social game? Is it something running in Facebook? If so, you're not going to see it evolve too much too soon. That's because of the way the platform incentives are structured, the mindset of the average person who is on Facebook at the moment (more often than not at work, multitasking, able to devote only infrequent, short bursts of attention) and the inherent technical limitations of the Flash platform. If you ever saw the traffic graphs of a successful game, you'd understand immediately why casual is winning. It has a high bounce rate and peaks on weekday mornings.

If you define "social gaming" more broadly, which I think you should, then World of Warcraft, League of Legends, and many other very innovative games are social games. In that case you're already seeing social games evolve. My little cousins play Call of Duty over Xbox live with each other from their homes 50 miles apart every day. That's social gaming if you ask me, and they at least think it's fun.

There's certainly no accounting for taste. It's just plain snobbish to say the games you like are "universally recognized as fun" and the games you don't like aren't. I'd rather jam a ballpoint pen into my eye than play an asynchronous game of Scrabble. You'd sooner catch me playing Farmville.

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

#74

Post by smhinsey » Fri, Sep 10, 2010, 4:13 AM UTC

danilocampos wrote: post #28

eavc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

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 sol…

I think I get what you are saying, and I don't think it's some sort of fun-defining elitism. There is a distinct lack of substance in a lot of the games, and I am really curious to see how the upcoming Civilization Facebook game turns out. Of all of the major players in the space, I would expect the most of them.

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

#75

Post by danilocampos » Fri, Sep 10, 2010, 4:25 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #73

teej wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're really willing to sit there and tell me that you're comfortable with social game evolution stopping right now? This stuff really is sufficiently fun for you? You seem to have a great vision for what social games could be. I cannot urge this enough - please go build that vision now. The industry needs innovation badly. There are huge profits to the person who can pull this off, and I hope that person is you.…

All of this thread about whether or not social games are fun is such an oversimplification as to be worthless. First off, there's the semantics. What is a social game? Is it something running in Facebook? If so, you're not going to see it evolve too much too soon. That's because of the way the platform incentives are structured, the mindset of the average person who is on Facebook at the moment (more often than not a…

What a nice barrel of straw men you have there. I love the bonfire you've constructed for them!

For the purposes of a thread about Zynga, it's reasonable to assume a social game in this context is, indeed, a Facebook-flavored game.

Realtime multiplayer has enjoyed a lot of evolution since you had to bind curses and status reports to your F-keys in Quake. Definitely share your enthusiasm for where it is going right now.

Asynch casual multiplayer is in a dreadful rut. The big beef I have with it is that so little of it is skill based that you can't enjoy improvement over time, except with more and more swipes of the credit card (edit: or pointless grinding). I don't think the games I like are universally recognized as fun. What I said, if you'll read my post, is that asynch casual games are relying more on ill-concealed compulsion loops than on anything an observer would look at and think "boy, that looks fun to play."

Until asynch casual multiplayer, as your semantic nitpicking requires I call it, leverages gameplay that lets players feel themselves grow more skilled, we're just not talking about anything of lasting value. Personal growth is a huge component of enjoyable gameplay and you can't just add a row to a spreadsheet game to simulate that.

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

#76

Post by ethanhuynh » Fri, Sep 10, 2010, 4:41 AM UTC

"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"

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

#77

Post by JabavuAdams » Fri, Sep 10, 2010, 4:58 AM UTC

fondue wrote: post #17

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,…

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.

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

#78

Post by jpeterson » Fri, Sep 10, 2010, 5:36 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #71

danilocampos wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sol…

Who made you the ultimate authority on what's fun? That sort of elitism is sadly not surprising here. Believe it or not, a lot of people actually think Farmville is fun. I'm not one either, but I've met many who are. It's so ridiculous to assume that because you think it isn't fun, nobody does, and therefore it has no value. The fact that your comment has 42 karma right now is the main thing wrong with this site.

I've never met anyone who found Farmville fun. This includes many hard-core addicts of the game. In fact, I find that most people who play it do so despite the fact that it's a pain in the ass.

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

#79

Post by danilocampos » Fri, Sep 10, 2010, 6:07 AM UTC

forensic wrote: post #52

danilocampos wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@teej Very thought provoking. What a great conversation. I wish I had a clearer vision on the next step for social games. I honestly do. Sadly I think it'll be a long, iterative process before that industry sorts out exactly how to make a genuinely compelling experience that fits into the very real confines and perceptions you described. Bits and pieces will shake out as true fun but it'll take time to see it cobbled…

It's not that no one knows how to make a truly magnificent social game. In fact there are many people who know exactly how to do it. Right now the marketplace is too young to appreciate quality. The masterpieces are overlooked and the winners are whichever games are the loudest and most accessible. That's how it will be until the public as a whole gets more experience in this area and develops a certain level of tast…

This is a really great point. I hadn't considered the maturity of the market. I look forward to seeing it grow up as people's expectations increase.

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

#80

Post by jshen » Fri, Sep 10, 2010, 6:22 AM UTC

danilocampos wrote: post #75

mattmaroon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this thread about whether or not social games are fun is such an oversimplification as to be worthless. First off, there's the semantics. What is a social game? Is it something running in Facebook? If so, you're not going to see it evolve too much too soon. That's because of the way the platform incentives are structured, the mindset of the average person who is on Facebook at the moment (more often than not a…

What a nice barrel of straw men you have there. I love the bonfire you've constructed for them! For the purposes of a thread about Zynga, it's reasonable to assume a social game in this context is, indeed, a Facebook-flavored game. Realtime multiplayer has enjoyed a lot of evolution since you had to bind curses and status reports to your F-keys in Quake. Definitely share your enthusiasm for where it is going right no…

Bejeweled

It's social, casual, skill based, and fun.

To answer a likely question, it's social be use I want to beat my friends scores each week