
Zynga Analytics at its Peak - doppp
http://blog.amplitude.com/2015/06/24/zynga-analytics-at-its-peak/
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Ensorceled
_" Based on this insight, Zynga optimized for monetization by creating
buildables that had a number of parts just a bit out of reach of a users’
friend network. That way, a player would get most of the parts from their
friends, but would be unlikely to gather all of the parts from their network.
Since they were so close to completion, they would just pay for the last one
or two parts to complete the buildable."_

If there is a Gamer's Hell; once a day George and Charles Parker, Gary Gygax,
and Milton Bradley will come down from Gamer's Heaven and kick these guys in
the balls.

~~~
ufo
I don't understand how that works, since each user has a different number of
friends. Does the number of parts for each buildable vary from person to
person? Or did they just make the number of parts be slightly higher than what
the average user would have available?

~~~
Jare
If the typical person has 5 friends actively playing, and there are 5
different parts, the chances that a person can get one piece from each friend
is 3%? There were also limits on the amount of times that players can help
friends daily; it encourages a tit-for-tat dynamic of helping only those who
help you. But without built-in tools to track this (mark fav friends, etc),
there was always some tension about who "deserves" your help, and players
would not spend all their help options right away so they could save some to
give back to helpers later in the day, etc... All of these simple mechanics
(or lack thereof) interact to create additional scarcity in a very natural,
subtle and organic way. And all of it guided, adjusted and optimized via
metrics and A/B tests.

(different games worked differently and evolved over time, the above is not
meant to be a precise and exhaustive description)

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soup10
Zynga is a painter that makes every brush stroke while looking at a
spreadsheet instead of the canvas. They've now been outcompeted by painters
who keep one eye on the canvas and one eye on the spreadsheet. That's progress
I guess.

~~~
bunderbunder
You mean like King? Nah, I'm not seeing a whole lot of progress there.

And I think there's some risk to trying to retrodict these kinds of events.
It's just too easy to pick up on coincidences and assign too much importance
to them. It becomes especially dangerous in light of this big data fad in
which it's become common to believe that you really _can_ infer causation from
observed correlations, and then feel confident betting entire businesses on
it.

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yshalabi
I am a bit concerned with the direction of in-game purchases. Games are being
designed to push users to spend money. Whats the difference between this and
gambling in casinos? Are users aware that algorithms are being gamed to
maximize profits? Is this ethical? I think we really need some oversight here.
I think an entire generation is being exposed to gambling and exploitation --
and I am not sure if its healthy.

~~~
coldpie
I never thought about it that way. Interesting insight. One aspect is that
users don't receive a cash payout. They pay money in, but never receive money
in return, like you would expect from true gambling. This falls apart when you
allow trading within a game though, as you can exchange real money for a
virtual trade. Then it does involve a payout.

~~~
Retra
An unregulated casino would never give payouts either. (But they would
generate as much false hope as they can afford.)

It's a promise of happiness in exchange for addictive behavior.

~~~
jsprogrammer
>An unregulated casino would never give payouts either.

An unregulated casino would not see many patrons then.

~~~
Retra
Why is that? You don't think an unregulated casino could stage wins to make it
look like it was giving payouts? Or just make up stories?

~~~
jsprogrammer
Do you have an unlimited number of stooges? Such a facade can only be kept up
for so long.

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return0
To call Zynga a pioneer is a huge insult to the vast number of game makers
they stole from.

~~~
Jare
To ignore the ways Zynga was a pioneer is a huge insult to the vast number of
non-game makers they employed.

~~~
return0
now you are saying that zynga invented analytics.

~~~
scott_karana
No, but they successfully translated the addictive, mindless, money-flushing
dopamine rush of gambling into the gaming world, all while neatly avoiding the
US's "no paid online gambling" laws.

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jmduke
It's hard for me to critique or analyze Zynga from an unbiased perspective.

There's no question that what they were able to create this monstrous flywheel
of engagement around a strong core concept but from my vantage point (read: I
know they printed money with FarmVille and CityVille and have more or less
floundered in the past year), they were only really good at the "let's take
this already successful concept/hook and turn it into a cash cow" side of the
equation.

Has Zynga had any successes in the past twelve months? Were they able to break
into mobile at all beyond paying $180M for Draw Something?

~~~
PopeOfNope
You have to take FarmVille and CityVille's so called "success" with a grain of
salt. Social games companies don't measure success by revenue, they measure it
by daily active users (DAU). What you don't see is how much money they spend
on advertising to attract users to the game. I know at one point, they were
spending much more per user than the game was bringing in. You also don't see
the churn rate, which is typically high in social games.

There's a real possibility Zynga was never as successful as it appeared to be,
from a cash perspective.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _" There's a real possibility Zynga was never as successful as it appeared
> to be, from a cash perspective."_

No need for speculation, they went public in 2011. You can read their
financial statements.

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dsugarman
This is where focusing too much on data and moving things up and to the right
without any overall thought goes wrong. This is how you become evil and being
successful and evil is extremely hard if you don't have a monopoly on
infrastructure (eg. Comcast)

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pbreit
“an analytics company masquerading as a games company.”

I'm wondering if that was responsible for it's downfall? I get that gaming is
somewhat of a hit-driven business but not nearly like, say, movies. Incumbents
have humongous distribution advantages. I'm amazed that Zynga relinquished its
commanding position so thoroughly and so rapidly.

~~~
shostack
I've always wondered if Zynga would have been more successful now if they had
pivoted and turned into an analytics and monetization SaaS platform with
consulting services.

They are clearly masters at the mechanics and psychology of this, and the
technical implementation as well. When your mine runs dry, there's still often
quite a bit of money to be made selling shovels to the other miners.

~~~
fasteddie
I'm a former Z employee -- one of my friends worked on proposals for a spinoff
of the analytics platform, but he never got anywhere.

Obviously this is very hard to to do for a number of reasons. Mixpanel
employees more salespeople than they do engineers or designers, and Zynga is
still 2-3x their valuation just on the core games business.

~~~
shostack
That's really interesting--thanks for sharing those insights.

Zynga is in a hits-based industry, so having a reliable recurring revenue from
a b2b SaaS product could enable them more flexibility with their approach on
the gaming side from a pricing an user acquisition standpoint. But of course
I'm speculating without any hard numbers. Sounds like people much more
informed than I am have decided it is not a valid opportunity, and given how
far it is from their core business, I can easily see why.

Thanks again.

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tehwebguy
All the ways gambling takes advantage of human nature, but without slight
chance of a payout. Gross!

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ucaetano
"During its peak, Zynga was a powerhouse at using data and analytics to
optimize their games for virality and revenue."

Guess they didn't optimize well enough. Or optimized only for the very-short
term.

~~~
lmm
The original owners pumped it up, IPOed at the peak, and walked away with
their money. They're probably very happy with the outcome.

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jamra
It's good info, but I can't help think about all the creatives that these
suited finance guys ripped off. So they got rid of the need for creativity by
stealing. Now, all they had to do was apply metrics to their widgets and watch
the money roll in.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _but I can 't help think about all the creatives that these suited finance
> guys ripped off._

Ah yes, good guys versus bad guys. Has it ever crossed your mind that they're
one and the same? Must be nice to live in a world where "sides" can be chosen
so naively.

