Zynga loses: How Data control defeats the game

The author, Cao Jinming, worked for Zynga from 2010 to 2012 as Zynga game producer and product director of the Facebook and Tencent platform release

Introduction

Just after a little at 7 in the morning, I was awakened by the news of the phone's micro-mail. In the "Children's Union" (Zynga China's micro-group of employees) in the first burst of Zynga layoffs 18%, the new closure of three studios, the share price tumbled 12% news, immediately caused the group of a sigh. An old employee who had just left the company called "yesterday just put the stock hanging out to sell, and today it fell so much!" ”

This is not the first time Zynga has laid off its massive layoffs, it has laid off more than 100 workers in October last year and has shut down Boston,austin and Japan's subsidiaries, including more than 10 U.S. dollars in the IPO price of 70%. How could Zynga, a former social-gaming empire and the cult and copycat of other social-gaming companies, embark on such a fast decline? I'm sure a lot of people are interested in this question. Most of Wall Street's analysis has blamed Zynga's decline on a large number of Facebook users shifting from the page, and Zynga has failed to take advantage of the new battlefield. But it seems to me that this is just an external cause of the decline of Zynga, and the bigger problem is within Zynga. As a former "insider", I will also be some friends of the game to ask similar questions, and this really triggered me a lot of memories and thinking.

At its peak

To study Zynga's decline, the first thing to look at is how high he has stood. Strictly speaking, Zynga's heyday should be 1.5 of the time from early 2010 to the first half of 2011. The time for Zynga reports is often seen in major tech headlines, and Wall Street's "biggest IPO since Google Listings" is also a particular concern. And Zynga does look like a young, bright, arrogant-rich general, overlooking the entire social-gaming market. Several of its flagship products, such as "FarmVille" Mafia wars, dominate more than half of all Facebook gaming users, with Zynga occupying 9 seats in the top 10 games And more importantly, in that era, social games also really have a strong ability to absorb gold. How much money did Zynga make? For example, the first week I went to Zynga, I received a mass mailing from the headquarters of Farmville, which has just created a new one-day revenue record-10 million dollars! Yes, you did not hear wrong, not 1 million, not 5 million, is 10 million dollars, 1 days of time, this is only a product. This number can even kill the Coc,pad stream today on the mobile platform. But given that Farmville's day-active users can reach 40 million, such income figures are less sensational.

And the super suction ability accompanied by the company's thriving beautiful scene and the early arrival of the luxury of enjoyment. I was on a business trip to headquarters in early 2011, when the company was filled with a busy but relaxing atmosphere. Many teams work overtime for a week, the weekend department leaders directly with the team straight to Las Vegas happy, of course, the cost is the company reimbursement. Every Friday night, the company has a big meal, the finest Kobe beef in the carved "Zynga" of the inscription on the ice sculpture, or the Alaska snow crab dominated seafood feast. Zynga was not on the market at the time, and it made a lot of money, so there was no pressure on cost control. Although not listed, many of the early employees who took a large share of their shares had already made a fortune by trading in the two-tier market, buying luxury cars.

On the other hand, Zynga's "FarmVille" after the "CityVille" has just released soon, its users have more than the trend of their predecessors, the entire company is up and down in this excitement. To be fair, although "CityVille" is not the first game on Facebook, it's certainly the best. The exquisite picture, the rich plot, the innovation system has laid its five-star production quality. The game finally succeeded beyond Big Brother Farmville to 100 million of the monthly active users, the cumulative Installed capacity of more than 460 million. I remember taking part in the quarterly wrap-up meeting of the headquarters of the 2010 Q4, which invited the guests to Mark Zuckerburg, Facebook's chief executive. The American version of the "Double Horse" (Zynga CEO named Mark Pincus), Zuckerberg said at the meeting, Zynga's "CityVille" to make Facebook employees crazy, "more annoying is that they all play in Full-screen mode, and even do not bother to pretend to be working", caused a roar of laughter. Mark Pincus the podium and announced that Zynga would be in the run-up to the IPO, bringing the atmosphere to the climax.

It can be said that Zynga, from 2010 to early 2011, has no obvious danger in addition to the widely stated "over-reliance on Facebook" short board. It seems that as long as there is no big problem with Facebook's partnership, Zynga will prosper. And Mark Zuckerburg, who appeared at the site of the Zynga quarterly meeting, doesn't mean the worry is superfluous?

The highlight of the product problem

If you have to choose a turning point for Zynga from Sheng-shing, I will choose the fall of 2011. In October, Zynga released the once-hot mafia-themed game "Mafia Wars" sequel "Mafia Wars 2". "Mafia wars" as one of Zynga's early products, its ability to absorb gold can be said to be exceptionally good, there have been many users in such an HTML based development, seemingly simple game extravagantly, fun. So all of Zynga's expectations for this sequel are evident.

However, the entire product on the line before the company's beta stage has appeared some obvious problems, the first is the quality of the product is relatively rough, at least not exquisite. Then there are a variety of bugs, often play for a while, you must refresh the browser restart. But since the game has been developed for nearly two years (half of which is in the development of content management tools), and a variety of previous promotional and warm-up work has been launched, and therefore in the absence of a complete forced release.

A few days after the formal launch, Zynga's powerful flow machine-crossover system-started, with millions of users wars from Mafia and Zynga's many games to Mafia Wars 2, in conjunction with Facebook's advertising campaign, This makes the product almost instantaneous to get up to tens of millions of users (daily active up to 5 million). Remember that the science and technology media at that time to "Mafia Wars 2 set a new record of user growth" as the title of the publicity report.

However, soon the game's mishap was exposed, the retention rate dropped sharply and the user quickly lost. At this time in the powerful data analysis ability can not save the doomed failure of products, but under Zynga had to suspend the cross promotion, and even try to "Mafia Wars 2" User guide back to the Mafia wars, but ultimately proved to be futile, Continued role after the loss of almost no one will go back to play, the final "Mafia Wars 2" only a hundred thousand of users, and the original money of the "Mafia Wars" users also lost.

The loss of this product is the first time Zynga has suffered a major failure since its inception. Prior to this, Zynga's war-themed social Game "Empires & Allies" has also had a poor revenue problem, but at least the product's innovative play has been recognized and users have been good. Mark Pincus himself expressed a number of disappointments and even anger at the results of the Mafia Wars 2, and after that, Zynga also imposed strict rules on the conditions under which new games could be used to Cross-sell resources, at least until the data angle "looks good". No cross-selling resources from other Zynga games are available.

The defeat of "Mafia Wars 2" can be said to have added a shadow to Zynga's IPO. Then, in December 2011, when Zynga was listed on the Nasdaq, some of my colleagues and I watched the live broadcast in the Beijing office. With the previous SEC filings revealing that Zynga's margins are far less speculative than expected (largely due to a sharp increase in operating costs), coupled with a congenitally deficient reliance on Facebook, the IPO was closed at the end of the day, leaving many investors surprised, But this is just the beginning.

In the middle of 2012, another product, the Ville, which Zynga spent a lot of manpower and resources on, went public. The product, formerly known as "Familyville", began to develop as early as 2010, a social game similar to the concept of virtual life. As a result of the design process occurred several times the process of the restart, so the delay can not be online. However, the August 2011 EA's "The Sims Social" on the line has completely disrupted Zynga's position, such a theme is almost the same as the "Familyville" game, with its high production quality and innovative experience model quickly access to a large number of users, So Zynga has to adjust its product planning again and quickly move closer to the design direction of the Sims Social.

As a result, the "Ville", which came online nearly a year later, looks just like a more botched "the Sims Social". If I were Mark Pincus, I would not have allowed this product to be published. However, whether the product is in the charge of Zynga's veteran marks skkags or whatever, Mark Pincus seems confident about the product, and even several times in person to the company's internal Mail on the flag. The product soon gained a huge amount of promotional resources (8 million days active), but the result was worse than the Mafia Wars 2. The user quickly lost, the final operation for six months to shut down, in the subsequent layoffs of the project team is also very much affected. In addition, because of the Sims Social, Zynga was sued by the old rival, EA, and despite the eventual collapse, Zynga was blamed for the "cottage".

It may be that the loss of these two products has made Zynga more cautious, and many of Zynga's subsequent products can see "Cottage + micro-innovation" ideas, which is more obvious is the "Dream Heights" (borrowed from the nimblebit produced by Tiny Tower) and the Bubble Safari (borrowed from King's "Bubble Witch Saga") of these two products, also by the original company's protest. But objectively say, American company again how cottage, also be compared to our domestic that even the art style does not change the pure bullying of plagiarism means to a lot higher. But in any case, the overly homogeneous type of product (such as "Castleville", "FrontierVille", "Tresure Isle", "Adventure World") and the style of play have all made Zynga's products attractive to new users, The ability to retain old users and generate revenue is greatly compromised.

At the same time, Zynga has been overly convinced of the life cycle of the gaming game on the Facebook platform, unaware of the rapid transfer of user interest (or perceived but not quickly reflected), and thus failed to capture the best opportunity for the Mid-core game to rise on Facebook, is not surprising.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)