Mobile communication should be a game platform gradually lifted, is it a crisis or a turnaround?

David Ko, the Korean's Zynga chief operating officer, usually communicates with his parents in South Korea using communications KakaoTalk, and he is increasingly aware that these new platforms will have a huge impact on social gaming as KakaoTalk, line, and micro-letters and other communications applications become popular.

More and more users are using these apps as social platforms, and seeing these easy games will want to try it out, by sending invitations to friends and gradually forming a cult. Some games on line and KakaoTalk platforms have been squeezed into the top 10 of the world's top revenue Game rankings at Google Play stores. Is this a crisis or a turnaround for Zynga, which is still sitting on the leading social game?

"I don't think of the rise of such software as an adversary, but as a platform for sending games." With good content, we put the game on the right platform. "David Ko, who took over the new job, said in an exclusive interview with Tencent Technology. "But we want to focus on a big series of games first." "

At a recent San Francisco mobile conference in Business Insider, David Ko said that while a lot of similar games will emerge from different platforms in the short term, the market will naturally eliminate unsuitable games over time.

What are some of the games that will be launched by Zynga, which is temporarily in this field? David Ko revealed that there will be three important plans for 2013, including the upcoming second generation "You draw my guess" (Drew something), and the second is a race game that has been tested in the Canadian market, similar to the "Temple Escape", "Running with Friends" And finally a mobile version of the farm game "FarmVille 2", which is just over six months old.

A relaxed social game with a low profit ratio for many players, and a small but highly profitable professional player game, Zynga is stepping into the "Midcore" field.

Zynga's acquisition of a small game company called "November Software" last November, coupled with the "A Bit Lucky" acquired in September, illustrates Zynga's commitment to expanding the market for the medium-level players.

"Actually in China, we are running the new online solitaire game" Ayakashi ", which is the most profitable of all the daily active users (DAU) in all of Zynga's games, and this metric also means that users of easy games will want to try out new categories of games. David Ko explained that Zynga wants to bring Chinese and Japanese web games that have been in vogue for years to the west.

Companies such as Kixeye and Kabam, which have only hundreds of employees on a smaller scale, are paying a fairly high return on the medium-level player game. Moderate players spend longer and spend more money on the game than casual gamers, which may be a good way to raise revenue for Zynga, who has 300 million of casual gaming users, but is struggling with revenue.

The following is the Tencent technology interview record:

Tencent Technology: You've announced your own way to Facebook, and you want to give users a purely Zynga experience, can you talk about it?

David Ko: We can't say we're going our separate ways with Facebook, we're just saying we can have more flexibility as a company. I would like to stress that Facebook has always been an important partner for Zynga and will probably be. In fact, there are two key points in this decision, one is elasticity, and the other is centered around the player. We want to provide players with a choice. Some people tell them they like to play games with friends, but others say they want a purely player environment. So today's message is not that we break up with Facebook, but that we offer players the best choice.

Tencent technology: You were a mobile officer at Zynga, and we've seen a lot of people criticizing Zynga for moving too slowly on the mobile side, but does it mean that Zynga has identified the "move first" direction?

David Ko: I always tell you that not one person, but the whole company has recognized the change in the situation. Nor is it too slow to start, but to find the right time. We found that a couple of years ago they were all playing games on the site, and now there is a part of it, but there are more and more people moving to the mobile end, cell phones and tablet computers. So our job is to make sure the player has a good experience on any platform, and with more players on the move side, we want to be able to provide them with the same gaming experience. We've got 72 million people playing our game on the mobile end of the month, and a lot of people don't understand how much this number is, I always tell them, it's just a start. Many of our apps are the best quality game apps on the market. According to comscore, we are ranked third in terms of the longest-staying web site per month, after Facebook and Apple. In addition, according to comscore, users spend 10.7 billion minutes a month on our mobile side. Words with friends is still one of the most downloaded game apps, and poker has been the most profitable app in the last 18 months, so we've seen some results on the mobile side, and I've always told everyone that this is just the beginning.

Tencent technology: Many people see the mobile end as one, but in fact, in the game experience, smartphones and tablets are very different. When you talk about Zynga now moving quickly to the mobile, are you talking about a cell phone or a tablet?

David Ko: Both, in terms of numbers, hand opportunities are more than flat. But we also find that some of Zynga's games have a lot of experience on tablets, but some games tend to be more mobile.

Tencent technology: I have previously interviewed the development of the Red Treasure Demolition mobile phone version of the Chinese Zynga, but found that there are not many Zynga games across the platform.

David Ko: It depends on what you say, and some games are what we call "Cross-platform gaming," regardless of which platform has the same experience. Like words with Friends, you can do it in iOS, Android, tablet, PC, or even the Kindle. Poker is the same across the platform, including Google (Weibo) TV. If you just want to put some web games to the mobile side, will never succeed, because the game itself is too big. Today's ecosystem, we find that many times the download of the game will slow down the phone, run out of power, Zynga is particularly careful, so we focus on the advantages of the platform to maximize.

Tencent technology: Zynga is a casual gaming company, but now tends to move toward a midcore game market between casual games and professional players.

David Ko: We are actually running the new online solitaire game "Ayakashi" in the Chinese office, which is the most profitable, even higher than poker, daily active user (DAU) in all of Zynga's games. Dau is a relatively small unit of computing, but this means that users of easy games will want to try new game categories. So we also set up a department that specializes in playing the medium-level players, while some games are developed in China. Because we think China has a strong technology in this part because many of these types of games are popular from Asia, some from Japan or China. So we want to bring these practices to the West.

Tencent Technology: The recent popular Kakao, line, micro-letter in Asia are very popular, but also began to gradually enter the U.S. market. Like line one of the business model that brings revenue is the game, and Tencent is also studying the possibility of a micro-credit game. What do you think of this? Do you think Zynga has a chance in this block? Will they be a cooperative platform or an adversary?

David Ko: For us, the purpose is where our players are on the platform and where the game is going. If there are enough players on the network and enough people want to see our game, Zynga will get involved. Because we have limited ability, we hope to concentrate. Now the company's focus is on a large series of games that can lead to popular games like Hollywood blockbusters.

I am excited about this, the new platform is gradually surfaced, such as instant messaging or chat software has been around for a long time, these networks are emerging, more and more people like to play games on the Kakaottalk, some games are very good, very profitable. So some developers are also very excited, so also began to form the ecosystem of the game, I also highly concerned about the future development of static.

I don't think of this software as an opponent, but as a platform to download games. With good content, we put the game on the right platform.

Like on the platform of Tencent, we also put the Star City (CityVille). It is difficult for us to learn from the Chinese market, and the uniqueness of the Chinese market and other markets, so we also become smarter and hope to improve the user experience better.