Zynga's head man in NY has been talking about the practice of "making" games at the company's studios around the world. However in attempting to explain why Zynga games look similar to others, he does a horrible job and simply sounds as if he's covering for the fact that everyone knows that Zynga rips off small developers.
"All games are derived from other games," said Dan Porter, boss of Zynga New York, in an open letter. It was published in response to an article that he felt misrepresented how he felt. He goes on to claim that game copying has been ongoing for decades, it didn't' start with Zynga.
While we can all agree on that, it hasn't really ever been as obvious or as repetitious as Zynga, which has repeatedly stolen concepts from smaller developers and turned them into social network games filled with micro-transactions. Farmville, Cityville, Dream Heights, all of these were once games made by other people which Zynga made blatant copies of.
Apparently though, the "genius" of Zynga is keeping people playing its games:
"After making games for years, it was joining Zynga that made me understand the art, science and special sauce running games as a service. When someone on the ZNY team came back from spending two weeks with Bill Allred and the WWF team and schooled us on all best practices of keeping a game popular for four years, I really started to get it. It's been a huge learning experience."
"I was at the all hands. I saw all those game demos. There is great stuff in the pipeline. I really do believe that Zynga is the best in the world at creating and socializing games, and running the [sic] as a service that people love. Ultimately that is the huge factor in what makes Zynga a sustaining company."
Of course all this blustery talk doesn't hide the fact that Zynga has been closing studios left and right over the past year and has seen its stock price crash down from its initial IPO.
