

Zynga employee answers questions regarding share prices. - b4c0n
http://www.quora.com/Zynga/How-do-Zynga-employees-feel-about-the-companys-summer-2012-stock-price-drop/answers/1435680?srid=DG

======
patio11
_Within a few months, we were putting in brisk 10 hour days as we started our
new project. Six months in a launch date was handed down from above and we
shifted to 11 hour days six days a week. ... Six weeks before shipping the
studio was flown out to San Francisco to launch our game - 12 hour days seven
days a week, free of the distraction of friends, wives and girlfriends. I
watched alcoholism and substance abuse skyrocket, relationships crumble
(including my own), people slept on office couches, two developers got
divorced, one nervous breakdown._

This is evil.

I don't mean that like Google-don't-be-evil evil, which is a business practice
one finds either unsavory or advantageous to competitors which one dislikes. I
don't mean cartoonishly evil, like a villain killing someone to clue in anyone
still wondering which character to root for after seeing the black cape and
hearing the cackle. I don't mean hyperbolically evil, like the word carelessly
thrown around when one's political opponents suggest +/- 3% changes in
governmental policies.

I mean _evil_ : characterized by sin, injurious to the proper ordering of
society, an offense against the dignity of man, in contravention to the
natural law as discoverable by reason. You could get a Catholic dogmatist, an
atheist Marxist professor, and a hard-core libertarian together in a room, and
they'd all call that evil. Their explanations would proceed from different and
frequently incompatible axioms but they'd focus on the same parts of the act
and come to strikingly reconcilable conclusions.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Not arguing about the evil. Just noting that, unless 95% of the entries on
<http://trenchescomic.com/tales> are fiction… this degree of evil is not
uncommon in the games industry.

Zynga does seem to take the cake, though.

I'll never forget the Zynga promotional video that they showed at Startup
School several years back. I think it helped that I hadn't really heard the
name "Zynga" when I saw it. And, as I recall, the video didn't really explain
what Zynga actually did. It had this very odd tone, reminiscent of the
greatest hits of 1999. Smiling faces, Nerf darts, quick cuts, breathless
optimism, and lack of introspection, just like (as I see in hindsight) a
recruitment video made by Lucifer. "We're a hot company! Hot, hot, hot!"

------
rosenjon
Wow. If those reviews are true, Zynga is going to fold like a cheap suit.
Can't imagine anyone is working 11 hour days for peanuts when the stock is
heading to $0. Weird, too, because I thought virtual cows was a pretty good
business model. I guess consumers have caught on.

