On: Zynga shuts down FarmVille after 11 years

[harryf]

Remember wandering up to the Zynga booth at LeWeb years ago - perhaps 2010 - and asking them if employees at Zynga ever wondered if what the were doing might be evil or if the games were actually any good. It was unfair as the booth was actually manned by people from Dextrose AG who Zynga had just bought.

To cap it off I made them watch this FarmVille parody which they were awkwardly amused by https://youtu.be/odBDAcOEKuI

In retrospect I was being a righteous prick but I couldn’t stand Zynga - their games or their addiction based business model.

[cyberlurker → harryf]

I did something similar to a Google employee once at a conference. Sorry to that person, I was also a righteous prick. Definitely not the right way to go about it.

[wpietri → cyberlurker]

Don't be too hard on yourself. Given that these companies are structured to keep criticism from reaching the people profiting from the bad decisions, there aren't a lot of good options. Giving an earful to somebody paid to be their buffer isn't great, but neither is just accepting the awfulness.

[ricksunny → wpietri]

Not sure why the parent comment to this is downvoted - orgs use layers to shield management the world over.

[birdyrooster → cyberlurker]

I think making people uncomfortable can be good for them, I am a xoogler and I share my shame with them.

[kordlessagain → harryf]

I actually had coffee with one guy who started and was acquired along with Farmville by Zynga. Can't remember his name, but I do remember I considered how useful a time machine would have been to go back to stop them from stealing so much of so many people's lives.

[x3n0ph3n3 → harryf]

I see the heavy influence from Powerthirst in that video.

[adamcharnock → harryf]

I also did something kinda similar at a conference years ago. The Microsoft stand were proudly demoing a new security feature of the latest Windows (Vista?). Their demo basically boiled down to: no one reads the security warning dialog boxes when opening an application, so we added another dialog box.

I pointed out the obvious flaw in this (won’t they just not read the second dialog either?). They looked a little peeved and said they’d take my comment back to Redmond.

I still feel a bit bad about that, they we ok people and it wasn’t their fault.

[mslip → adamcharnock]

lol that’s actually a great point though, valid criticism should be celebrated.