Zynga CEO: “I don’t fucking want innovation”
SF Weekly, “San Francisco’s smartest publication”, have published a very interesting article about the darker side to Zynga, the social games company responsible for FarmVille, Cafe World, Mafia Wars and many other of the most popular Facebook games.
Peter Jamison, the article’s author, has charted the turbulent history of the company (often covered on Nukezilla) and spoken to several previous employees. The general impression seems to be one we would expect: Blatant copying of competitor’s products, no morals, a dislike for innovation and a thirst for cold hard cash.
One past employee, who remained nameless for the article, said that he’d “tried [his] best to make sure that friends don’t let friends work at Zynga.” Another former game designer for Zynga said of the company’s CEO, Mark Pincus, that the biggest problem he had with him “was that he didn’t know or care about the games being good — the bottom line was the only concern.”
Gonna give context or reason to that quote in the title John, or has Nukezilla gone the way of Kotaku?
@Hawkeyed One: It’s featured in the article I linked to.
@Hawkeyed One:
Context:
‘”I don’t fucking want innovation,” the ex-employee recalls Pincus saying. “You’re not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.”‘
http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-08/news/farmvillains/
OoOoOo.. the seedy under belly of casual gaming. Can’t say I’m surprised, considering their business model’s first commandment is rip off either an existing real game or fellow casual game.
I wonder what what Pincus thinks about Evony. Might not know, otherwise I suspect we’d see “Farm now, my Lord” banner ads everywhere on the Internet.
@John Kershaw:
Read the article, interesting read. What I was trying to get across was that I didn’t understand the point of the article. It seems like you just pointed and went “look what them over there gone done”. Very shitty-game-bloggish.
@Hawk The point of the article is to say “hey, look at this article, we think it’s cool”. The owner of a videogame company saying they don’t want innovation seems like news to me, especially considering his own dodgy background.
On topic, it seems people like this are destined to run large companies. Zuckerberg, Jobs et al all seems like ego driven pricks. I guess you need a certain amount of arrogance.