Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

You know what the right play on Zynga was? Cashing out and putting the money elsewhere. Instead, Zynga is the classic case of thinking that growth is basically infinite and there is unlimited demand. There are a limited number of gamers willing to buy virtual goods on Facebook games, and there is nothing special that Zynga does on mobile that other companies don't do as well or better.

Take the money and run. Now it might be too late.



Isn't that what upper management did? At least to the extent legally possible.


Well, can't really know for sure, though from the outside it didn't really look like there was much innovation outside the addictive game model they first implemented. And then they got into defensive mode buying up competitors / talent, however individual developers can always do things cheaper and create breakaway games that will slowly take from the pie.


Were they in any way connected with kingdom of loathing? If not, then their only innovation was integrating kingdom of loathing with nicer graphics and facebook (i.e. not the game mechanics or business model).


No; Kingdom of Loathing is run by Asymmetric Publications (http://asymmetric.net/), which is only a few people: http://asymmetric.net/people.html .

And if Zynga didn't steal game mechanics or the business model from KoL, what did they take? While KoL was an early browser-based game, it certainly wasn't the first (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiplayer_browser_ga...).


Browser is nothing to do with it. KoL's mechanics are exactly those of Mafia Wars and the like (including both the core concept of "energy" and the business model around it).


And those mechanics are exactly like dozens of BBS door games from the 80s and 90s, so...




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: