Raja Jasti’s Blog - Renaissance Thinking

Social gaming seems to be a hot sector these days and zynga has made a name for itself in this space (it allegedly makes more than $100M a year).

Sramana Mitra, a strategy consultent, has a very nice blog (see my blogroll). It has an insightful guest post by cindy weng who interviews mark pincus, the founder and ceo of zynga. It the interview he shares some of his vision, strategies and secrets.

Here are some excerpts:

Pincus started one of the first existing social networks,called Tribe.net, and was also an investor in Friendster and Facebook. “I saw the beginning of this whole social networking movement, and lived through it both as a user and as someone working on creating the product experience. I also felt the pain that users had. If you remember, Friendster was going to be huge, and then it fizzled out. A social network that all your friends come to is like a great cocktail party. If it doesn’t have music or any interesting ambiance or entertainment, it will become boring and fizzle out. You get tired of the same people and not having enough to interact with them around. When Facebook said that they were opening their platform to APIs, I was very excited to bring games to their users. All along, I thought games were the killer opportunity to connect users. What Facebook was doing was so innovative in giving you ways to share more information with people; they called it a social utility. It didn’t give you ways to connect with people. People were just hanging out with their friends online, leaving their browsers open, but without the gaming piece, there wasn’t really a way to connect with them.” 

Zynga first released the Texas Hold’em application to give users an entertaining, live environment in which they could play with their friends. Pincus thought that it would be the best way to introduce users to this new concept of gaming within social networks because it was fun and allowed you to play with your real-life friends in a set community. Zynga still almost completely relies on existing social networks such as Facebook and MySpace as hosts for their games. A user cannot play any games on the company website, Zynga.com, but instead can only access games through applications on social networks. The idea behind this is that Zynga is bringing games to the user, not making the user come to them. These games transcend the boundaries of different networks in the sense that a player on Facebook can play with a player from MySpace or any other network that Zynga supports. This strategy allows friends to interact even if they have different social network preferences, and this certainly helps make Zynga’s games universally attractive. At the same time, by crossing the borders of individual social networks, virality takes on a completely different meaning. News and advertisements about these games spread not only within Facebook but expands to all over the Internet. Because Zynga games are so accessible, it comes as no surprise that every game continues to see growth in user numbers, seemingly unstoppable until every corner of every Internet community has been penetrated. A wide variety of game options also helps attract the large user base that Zynga has. Different games have different demographics but there are enough choices to satisfy everyone, even international players.

Attracting users is one thing, but keeping them interested is another. Pincus reveals how Zynga creates what he says are the best products available on the market: “There are three components that make up a great social game. One is that you’re playing with your real friends. Two is that you have an opportunity to invest in the game over time. Unlike most casual games, you can build up more experience points and you can own more items, and have a deeper, more meaningful experience the longer you play like in an MMO. The third is that you can express yourself in the game. There’s room for creativity—the way you can deck out your house in YoVille or the jobs and weapons that you have in Mafia Wars. Every game should give you a chance to express yourself so that your friends can get to know you better through playing the game. We also run our games as services, something new in the casual game world. Eighty to ninety percent of the development of a game happens after it is launched. We bring out new features and content every week and every game, and our users expect that. Our users see our games as a service and a work in progress. They know that we’re constantly testing new features and looking for things that they want, and I think that’s why they keep coming back.” 

Pincus elaborates on one game that has a newer game model than the others do: FarmVille. “It’s a more mass-market social game. It’s simpler to get into and has fewer moving parts to it. It has a basic concept that most users get, but it still has those three elements in it. FarmVille was able to get to a significantly broader audience because of its simplicity.”The game essentially allows you to run a farm—plant seeds, harvest crops, and raise animals. However, the system runs in real time. If you fail to plant your seeds during a certain season, they won’t grow. If you fail to harvest at a certain time, your crops will spoil. The structured schedule is what keeps many users addicted. There are predetermined goals that they must meet and this is what makes FarmVille interesting. What makes FarmVille viral is when someone says to his friend, “Oh, I’m going to be late to dinner. I need to harvest my corn on FarmVille.” The friend is automatically curious because FarmVille is obviously important enough to keep his buddy from making it to dinner on time. Certainly, the notifications that pop up on your newsfeed when you play Zynga games help make them viral, but virality truly sets in when users talk about the games in real life. Pincus explains, “We work very hard at figuring out how to make games easy and interesting for the user so that they advertise themselves. The best way for a game to be viral is to make it fun so that you want your friends to play with you.”