Zynga: evil or genius?

[Marek]

I have to say that I've been fascinated by the success of Zynga. If you aren't familiar with the company, they are behind FarmVille and many other games that are popular on Facebook. Many of their games (which could be called social PBBGs, usually running Flash) are immensely successful. They were essentially THE company who showed that you can create a popular game on Facebook and monetize it.

Not everyone has good things to say about Zynga. For one, a lot of people consider FarmVille and similar games to be silly and inane. But also, Zynga was criticized more than once for its "evil" business practices. Apparently they steal game ideas from competitors, and are aggressive in their monetization.

I recently saw this article, which explores the accusations that have been made against Zynga: "FarmVillains: Steal someone else's game. Change its name. Make millions. Repeat." http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-08/news/farmvillains/

Let me play devil's advocate here. What if you followed these steps:

• Find an existing game with a good idea, but few players, or mediocre implementation.
• Create a game based on that idea with better implementation, or better graphics, or more fun mechanics.
• Find that your game has suddenly attracted millions of players, while the original game is struggling to attract anyone.

Where exactly have you broken any rules? There are things which are protected by law. Namely copyrights. As far as I know Zynga never violated any copyrights. In fact they have probably created more content and invested more money into their games than any of their competitors. They hire whole teams of artists.

What if they just did a better job than their competition? If that's the case, don't they deserve their success?

I'll repeat something I think is true: ideas are cheap. Execution is what matters. If ideas were as valuable as the Zynga critics suggest, then the inverse would also be true: steal Zynga's ideas, and become a millionaire. But that's not so easy, because ideas are not what matters. Zynga's execution is just damn good. That's how they made it.

[Barrikor]

Sad to hear... I've gotta agree with you though.

[Chris]

LOL, during my life time there was only one truly original game created, it was called Tetris. Everything else is at least partialy a copy or modification of another game. Behold the only moral and upright, Alexey Pajitnov, because every single one other game designer is an evil thief

Do not forget Blizzard, they do the same thing Zynga do. Not even one game of theirs is even slightly original. The most awesome was how they brought the reguelike genre to the masses (Diablo). OK, they betrayed the genre by allowing savescumming in DI and discarding permadeath in DII, which made hardcore fans of the genre to cry in fury, but who cares, casual players loved it.

[JGadrow]

I say this is just people crying foul because they're jealous. Personally, I haven't played any Zynga games because they don't appeal to me. They look like edutainment games to me. lol But, even just sitting here on this forum listening to game pitches you always hear people describe their vision in terms of other games.

Why? Because there is already a proven audience for those games, it's easier to visualize the end result of the product, and they can build off of ideas that are proven to be fun while trying to eliminate the aspects they think are not fun. It's not foul business practice, it's good business sense.

[Winawer]

I've never tried either game, but I guess it depends on how much they stole exactly. If it's just the idea, then it's ok. If they ripped off the entire game, then it's not cool IMO.

[dsheroh]

This is the first I've heard of Zynga being called "evil" for copying other peoples' games.  I'm used to hearing people complain about evil tendencies in their monetization schemes (generally by partnering with companies using unethical or outright fraudulent billing practices).

Note that I have not seen any of this first-hand, as I've never had any interest in playing any Zynga games (or any Facebook games at all, for that matter).  I'm just repeating some of the rumblings I've heard here and there around the net.

[jannesiera]

First of all, I agree that taking and adapting / mixing up other game ideas is a natural phenomenon when designing games. About Zygna, I agree with Dsheroh. I have read articles describing Zygna's bad practices and (outrageous) unethical "business" -tricks. And they ain't lying about it, it's no secret. It makes me sick but I refuse spending my time being bothered by those folks.

They're a disgrace for game developers all over the world and I don't respect them. So what? I don't expect my disrespect to make any difference either but if I have to say anything constructive in this threat it would be that you can't learn anything that should be off meaning to your life or business (IMHO).

[133794m3r]

the part about stealing of the ideas is nothing new. Every game that you've ever played is in some way based off of other games. They're just more upright about it and literally copying of games. It's not 'evil' but it's plain stupid in my mind. It's not something that garners respect and they don't car. Their CEO IS evil and their business practices are what makes them evil. Good and Evil are just words there is no cutthroat  way to explain good and evil in simple terms. It's more about which way that they lean towards.

They do unethical business practices, they also have shown time and time again they only care about the money and will go to any lengths possible to get it. And they have behavioral psychologists working for them so that they can get people addicted to their games whether they're "fun" or not doesn't matter all they care about is getting paid. That alone makes them evil. Combine that with their unethical business practices they are evil there is no other way to label them.

Blizzard steals ideas from other games but they generall improve upon them which isn't evil but is just unethical in my mind. They don't, however, always chase the dollar as fast as humanly possible under all possible ways and not care a bit about their reptutation. Businesses are neither good or evil it's just about how they want to operate. Zynga has shown time and time again they're just a bunch of evil and moronic businessmen as evil as they come. Blizzard is similar but they've got some constraints still.

I've always seen Zynga as what Blizzard would become in a few years if they ever lost their precious millions of subs in WoW. Personally, i'm surprised that facebook hasn't bought out zynga yet considering how much money they bring in. Them now having to use the facebook credits shows that they're finally getting a slice of that pie. But they are still complete evil.

They stand for everything that is the opposite of a true designer and developers everywhere. They break them all and they have the reputation to go along with it. It won't last forever though, just look at themselves their users are constantly dropping they've peaked and they don't know what else to do there's nothign they CAN do it's overwith. They will not slowly just keep randomly getting tiny surges of new players then they'll die down again as more and more people wise up to them. The same thing is happening with facebook itself and it is what happened with myspace they all fall they all slowly go down.

The more corrupt the company the faster it dies. Why do you think that blizzard is still alive right now? Even in the face of activision they have set limits and they tend to keep with them. They have some morals left which is good for the company and it's PR. Has WoW climaxed? Of course it has, everyone's heard about it and at the very least tried it for a month or so. The new expansion won't really push new players into it sure it may slowly go up abit but it'll never go higher. Zynga, however, will die off simply because it has nothing left to feed people. There's not been one single actual game that they've been able to rip that wasn't hte same game with a different skin. Sure it works a tiny bit in most sports games and FPSes but they always improve(for the most part) with each iteration whereas zynga's games stay the same.

Leave the beast to die, for its time has come and it will be within the next two to three years. And by die i mean no longer a "big name" they'll be still around you can never really kill radioactive mutant cockroaches they'll always come back. As long as there are scammers and spammers Zynga will still exist.

[JGadrow]

<snip>... they have behavioral psychologists working for them so that they can get people addicted to their games whether they're "fun" or not ... </snip>

<snip> ... moronic ... </snip>

The above two quotes show's that they're not morons. Immoral: Definitely; Moronic: Certainly not! The only issue I have with the OP is it makes evil and genius seem to be diametrically opposed. But, maybe Zynga is an evil genius.

I've always seen Zynga as what Blizzard would become in a few years if they ever lost their precious millions of subs in WoW.

Zynga should be so lucky to be like Blizzard. I think this statement is horribly wrong. lol You forget, Blizzard built itself up from a small, little-known company based solely on the quality of their games. The first game that powered their rise to success was Warcraft 2. Which received a fair bit of press back in the day because so many people had downloaded and played the original game (Warcraft: Orcs and Humans) and shared it with their friends. So, when the sequel came around, everyone who had played the original was willing to give it a try. Intelligent investors are able to take a previous success to power a second and that's exactly what Blizzard has done. They used the capital they earned to power advertising for their subsequent efforts. Obviously, it worked out quite well for them.

They stand for everything that is the opposite of a true designer and developers everywhere.

Agreed. I'm of the opinion that game design is art. However, there's a reason there are so many starving artists.

<snip>It won't last forever though ... </snip>

Nothing ever does.

The more corrupt the company the faster it dies. Why do you think that blizzard is still alive right now? Even in the face of activision they have set limits and they tend to keep with them.

Blizzard has changed hands a couple of times. Each time, it has been a condition of the takeover that the new parent company not try to impose their own deadlines or management practices on Blizzard. Essentially, Blizzard says, "We know we have to hand somebody the large share of the profits, but we could give them to someone else so if you want a large chunk of pay, shut up and let us run things the way we always do."

Has WoW climaxed? Of course it has, everyone's heard about it and at the very least tried it for a month or so. The new expansion won't really push new players into it sure it may slowly go up abit but it'll never go higher.

I disagree here too. I was surprised, but when I met my girlfriend (only a year ago) neither she or her family had heard of WoW. Sure, WoW is well-known in the geek circle and it's even got a firm establishment in the minds of many non-geeks as well. However, just because everyone you know can easily identify it, doesn't mean everyone has heard of it. And I think the new expansion will win back players because it takes the least enjoyable portion of the game (levels 1 - 60 and old-world travel) and completely revamps the experience.

Whenever the subject of business practices comes up, people have a tendency to blame the big guy. People are even starting to be leery of Google now because of how large it's gotten. I try (sometimes unsuccessfully) to remain logical and not let my fear of big business cloud my judgement. Still, that has no real bearing on the discussion. At the end of the day, Zynga's business practices are immoral but that's not because of "stealing" ideas that's because of their approach. It's one thing to "steal" an idea and do better on the execution of that idea. It's quite another thing to do it and intentionally attempt to crowd out the original developer by throwing money around.