INSIDE ZYNGA | BETA
UPWARDLY MOBILE Sean Kelly, one of Zynga’s mobile masterminds on the smartphone revolution – and accusations of IP theft
“WE’RE NOT TAKING anyone’s art or source code or anything like that.” Develop is half-way through the question and
Sean Kelly, GM of mobile games at Zynga, is already offering a fairly robust defence of the biggest accusation industry haters have made against the firm: theft. The topic is Dream Heights vs Tiny Tower. The former is a Zynga mobile game, launched in
January, which the developer of the latter (NimbleBit) said had clear similarities to its own award-winning tower-building game. It was just one example out a handful where
other companies have grumbled about Zynga’s games seeming too close to comfort to their own. Zynga has never denied such similarities, but it does bristle at slurs. When we ask Kelly about this attack of the
clones, he’s clear about the company strategy. “People may believe that we sit around talking about individual developers and their concepts – but we focus on a much more service and platform-oriented approach and want to really reach the broadest number of users with the most fun and the best products that we can.” He adds: “Our mission is to be the best. And
when we see a genre or game our players are clearly gravitating towards, we’ll examine it and figure out how to innovate, how to make sure that we’re producing the best quality, and that we’re focused on anything that we need to do that takes a concept or a genre to make it social.” It’s shrewd, yes, but sound thinking. Copycat games are rife in social networking, anyway. In fact, copycat games design is rife games in
general, he points out. “We spend a lot of time looking at what makes something the best quality game on the market and really analysing that continuously –which other games developers do as well, by the way. “That’s constantly happening and things are
constantly being reinvented and repurposed. We’re certainly respectful of IP. We’re not taking anyone’s art or source code or anything like that, and I think that kind of constant reinventing helps the whole industry. It basically moves the bar for everybody.”
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER Kelly points out that Zynga’s scale and the power of the brands it has created makes it an easy target when a rival developer wants to complain.
Our mission is to be the best. When we see a
genre or game our players are gravitating towards, we’ll examine it and figure out how to make sure we’re the best quality.
“We’re certainly a lot more noticeable and people
pay attention to what we do because of our past success, and people are betting on us in the future. But they may ascribe to us more awareness of a specific game or specific market segment than we actually have.” But Zynga is hugely aware of trends both tiny
and gigantic – it wouldn’t be the fastest growing games developer on the planet otherwise. And now part of its focus is on smartphone and mobile games, the only part of the games industry that anyone can claim to have grown faster than Zynga itself. Kelly is vice-president of product development at Zynga Mobile, overseeing new games made at the
San Francisco HQ and at its remote studios. The mobile division is moving at quite a pace – it launched nine games in 2011, and has already released a handful this year. Kelly joined Zynga early, working at first on the less glamorous FishVille. But he was an entrepreneur himself prior, hailing from his own social start-ups and a stint at Microsoft. He says “the fact that Zynga’s always thought of itself more as a service and a platform vision versus a singular product” attracted him to the company. Aesthete developers might be rankled, but his description sums up how Zynga has made a business out of free games, connected together by promoting and encouraging Facebook friends to work together and grow their virtual farms, fish tanks or tower blocks. It’s Kelly’s job to help see those same interactions take place on mobile – an increasingly important platform for Zynga. “These things are cultural shifts. It’s a tidal wave
of shifting emphasis on your connections and the devices are just getting better and better. Smartphone penetration is going to be a gigantic opportunity and I think any company that has a mission, like we do, to be social must go where people are – and that’s increasingly on mobile.”
ZYNGA CHINA Beijing. Zynga bought Chinese social games firm XPD Media in May 2010 to give it its first Asian foothold, and an entry point into a games market driven massively by virtual goods sales.
ZYNGA BOSTON Formerly Conduit Labs and acquired in April 2010. Zynga life dispensed with its music web games and put the team on Adventure World. In 2011 Zynga grew the team with the acquisition of Floodgate Entertainment and the hiring of its CEO – Paul Neurath, also known for founding Looking Glass.
DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET
ZYNGA JAPAN Tokyo. In June 2010 Zynga teamed up with Japanese web giant SoftBank for a joint venture. It bought Tokyo studio Unoh, renaming it Zynga Japan. At first the office localised Zynga titles for Japan. Earlier this year it launched original title Montopia, a ‘monster battle RPG’ made at the studio itself, for Japanese gamers.
ZYNGA DALLAS Texas. Founded in early 2009 as Bonfire Studios by former employees of Microsoft-owned Ensemble Studios. Released FarmVille-like We Farmfor iOS in summer 2010. Acquired by Zynga in October 2010. A year later, the team launched CastleVille for Facebook.
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