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[Ethical Game Development] Is Zynga evil? What about EA? Activision?
Melkster
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I read an article today, and it knocked me off my feet. It was written by Shay Pierce, who just lost his job. He’s a game developer who used to work for Omgpop, a game company that made this awesome iPhone game called Draw Something. Last week, Omgpop was purchased by Zynga for $210 million. But Shay decided he’d rather become unemployed than work for Zynga. Why?
Because Zynga is evil, he says.
His criticism is scathing.
Zynga’s greatest sin seems to be that it copies other games. Multiple lawsuits are pending and Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus is reported to have said, "I don't fucking want innovation. You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers." (Source: FarmVillains, SFWeekly)
A leaked memo seems to confirm that Zynga’s business strategy includes copying competitors. (Source: Leaked Zynga Memo Justifies Copycat Strategy, Forbes)
Zynga’s work culture appears to be quite hostile, as well:
Other employees have spoken out, one going so far as to say, “Zynga's motto is 'Do Evil.’ … It is one of the most evil places I've run into, from a culture perspective and in its business approach. I've tried my best to make sure that friends don't let friends work at Zynga.” (Source: FarmVillains, SFWeekly)
Now, I’ve only played one Zynga game: Words with Friends. But from what I’ve heard and read about their other games – Farmville, for instance – this unethical culture does not seem surprising given the types of games they create. Tarn Adams, the developer of Dwarf Fortress, said as much in an interview with the New York Times:
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So yeah, I thought we could discuss this. Questions for thought:
1. Is Zynga evil? Are they unethical? Bad for the industry? Bad for gaming/gamers?
2. What about other game companies? I've been bothered by both the lack of innovation in some games, as well as some reports of terrible work environments at some games.
3. What should we do about this as players/consumers?
Because Zynga is evil, he says.
So what is 'evil'? Can a company be evil?
When an entity exists in an ecosystem, and acts within that ecosystem in a way that is short-sighted, behaving in a way that is actively destructive to the healthy functioning of that ecosystem and the other entities in it (including, in the long term, themselves) -- yes, I believe that that is evil. And I believe that Zynga does exactly that.
(Source: Turning down Zynga: Why I left after the $210M Omgpop buy, Gamesutra)
His criticism is scathing.
Zynga’s greatest sin seems to be that it copies other games. Multiple lawsuits are pending and Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus is reported to have said, "I don't fucking want innovation. You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers." (Source: FarmVillains, SFWeekly)
A leaked memo seems to confirm that Zynga’s business strategy includes copying competitors. (Source: Leaked Zynga Memo Justifies Copycat Strategy, Forbes)
Zynga’s work culture appears to be quite hostile, as well:
Led by the hard-charging Mr. Pincus, the company operates like a federation of city-states, with autonomous teams for each game, like FarmVille and CityVille. At times, it can be a messy and ruthless war. Employees log long hours, managers relentlessly track progress, and the weak links are demoted or let go.
… Employees are constantly measured and game designers are pushed to meet aggressive deadlines. While some staff members thrive in this environment, others find it crushing. Several former employees describe emotionally charged encounters, including loud outbursts from Mr. Pincus, threats from senior leaders and moments when colleagues broke down into tears …
But that culture, which has been at the root of Zynga’s success, could become a serious liability, warn several former senior employees who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals. (Source: Zynga’s Tough Culture Risks a Talent Drain, New York Times)
Other employees have spoken out, one going so far as to say, “Zynga's motto is 'Do Evil.’ … It is one of the most evil places I've run into, from a culture perspective and in its business approach. I've tried my best to make sure that friends don't let friends work at Zynga.” (Source: FarmVillains, SFWeekly)
Now, I’ve only played one Zynga game: Words with Friends. But from what I’ve heard and read about their other games – Farmville, for instance – this unethical culture does not seem surprising given the types of games they create. Tarn Adams, the developer of Dwarf Fortress, said as much in an interview with the New York Times:
Tarn sees his work in stridently ethical terms. He calls games like Angry Birds or Bejeweled, which ensnare players in addictive loops of frustration and gratification under the pretense that skill is required to win, “abusive” — a common diagnosis among those who get hooked on the games, but a surprising one from a game designer, ostensibly charged with doing the hooking. “Many popular games tap into something in a person that is compulsive, like hoarding,” he said, “the need to make progress with points or collect things. You sit there saying yeah-yeah-yeah and then you wake up and say, What the hell was I doing? You can call that kind of game fun, but only if you call compulsive gambling fun.” He added: “I used to value the ability to turn the user into your slave. I don’t anymore.” (Source: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress, the New York Times)
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So yeah, I thought we could discuss this. Questions for thought:
1. Is Zynga evil? Are they unethical? Bad for the industry? Bad for gaming/gamers?
2. What about other game companies? I've been bothered by both the lack of innovation in some games, as well as some reports of terrible work environments at some games.
3. What should we do about this as players/consumers?
Melkster on
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This sounds like a D&D topic.
1. "Evil" isn't really a word I would apply to a company that is messing up the games industry or something, in the way that Pierce uses the term, because there's nothing "good" about having a healthy functioning game industry. "Evil" is for people like Hitler and Dahmer. Zynga is definitely unethical: copying other games? Treating employees like shit? That's unethical. Making horrific games is not unethical, and making addicting games, if it's unethical, isn't anywhere near as bad as making cigarettes or alcohol or anything like that, and I don't hate all the craft breweries in my city. Zynga probably isn't bad for the industry because it's making a shitton of money and that's just what the industry is. I guess maybe it's bad for gaming/gamers? I think it's probably neutral, at least if we're talking about "proper" gaming/gamers like those of us on these forums and not the majority of "gamers" who are people who play games like this. I don't know if Zynga is having much if any of an influence on us and our games. Is Assassin's Creed III learning the lessons of farmville?
2. Yeah, it sucks that most games are derivative pieces of crap and that the industry is a horrible place to work. 90% of everything is derivative crap, though (go to your local library and check out the paranormal romances section, for instance) and nobody has ever been forced into working in the game industry: it's a horrible place to work in part because people want to make games, and if they didn't want it so badly, they wouldn't put up with the bullshit.
3. Well I for one am not playing Farmville or any Zynga shit like that, so that sounds like a pretty good first step. And last step.
They can certainly practice unethical business practices, and certainly upper management can be evil...but I'm not sure if a company can be evil. You could swap the upper management of Zynga for the upper management of say, Blizzard (this is just an example), and it would be a different company overnight, because the people running it would propagate their vision, their ethics, throughout the company.
TL;DR: No, Zynga isn't evil...but Mark Pincus is a douche and his company reflects that.
I wasn't sure. Games and Technology ... or Debate and Discourse. It's both!
Yeah, I think using the "evil" word causes some problems. Maybe it might be better to merely say "unethical," "bad for game developers," "bad for gamers," or whatever.
And would agree that the weakest criticism here is the quality of Zynga games themselves. I find I'm not persuaded by the notion that games like Farmville are inherently bad. I've heard the same about World of Warcraft, for instance, but I thought that game was a rich experience.
Anyway, I guess two things worry me: First, the drain on resources. Both in terms of talent drain -- You have thousands of developers working at Zynga, wasting their time and creativity in a company that can't use it -- and also in terms of squandered market share: Money is going to the terrible Zynga rather than a more creative, more ethical company.
More importantly, however, I would argue that Zynga really has affected the games we play. Take the Age of Empires franchise, for instance. The latest installment in the series was a free to play game that tried to blend Farmville with that classic game we all love. I would say that attempting to follow the Zynga model really destroyed that franchise.
Look, Zynga makes money doing Zynga things. This is why it can afford to hire all the thousands of developers and this is why it has such a large market share. It's also why some other games look like Zynga games: they want Zynga money. To argue that this is wrong and that Zynga shouldn't do this because if Zynga wasn't around, all this money would be going to create games and all these developers would be pouring their effort into innovative new franchises is, I think, wrong. Zynga isn't selling to the kind of people who would play Limbo, Space Funeral, Dwarf Fortress, Don't Take it Personally, Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story, or any of the other dozens (even hundreds) of groundbreaking indie games that push the media forward. Zynga is selling to people who play worthless piles of shit for fun, and if Zynga and their ilk didn't exist, these people just wouldn't play games. The developers would not be free to make Murder Dog IV and Octopus Dad and Spelunky. They would be out of a job. The money would not flow into The Whispered World and Dear Esther and Fez. It wouldn't go to any videogames.
The thing is zynga is known for making direct copies of games by smaller developers and using their masses of money and existing customer base to make even more off their stolen games with next to no development cost,totally fucking the smaller devs b ecause everyone ignores their original creation for zyngas better marketed carbon copy. And these devs are small enough they can't go against the zynga behemoth legally with any success.
They bootstrapped themselves into their current dominant position by purposely exposing their players to scam advertisers.
But that's not the worst thing.
They hired Brian Reynolds so he's not working on Alpha Centauri II. That's the worst thing.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
You're right, that really is the worst thing. I'm actually sad to hear that.
Copying game ideas on the other hand seems absolutely acceptable. Someone makes a better jump-and-run then you? You lose business. Welcome to capitalism 101.
I don't think you realize how closely games get copied. On iOS and Facebook, a lot of the time all the details of the game are being copied, from in game prices to every detail of the mechanics, etc. It can be someone releasing your game with just new sprites and a new title.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
If it's 'someone made a similar game but of higher quality', then yeah, I'd agree.
By and large, though, it's 'here's a game that's ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME but we have an existing market share and a significantly larger marketing budget, suck it'.
Reynolds could almost certainly get a job at any number of companies if he wanted with his pedigree, even if he didn't want to do firaxis I'm sure Stardock or Paradox would be quick to hire him. If he wanted to do strategy games there's plenty of opportunity there, I'd assume he really just isn't very interested in the genre anymore or is more interested in raking in huge amounts of cash on facebook games.
Slothman's Home Tree
The thing is, copying ideas from video games has a "right way, wrong way" thing to it. And it's not necessarily something with a middleground. You either do it in an acceptable way or a way that's totally a ripoff.
An example of "right way" is, say, the reload mechanic in FPS games. That showed up in the mid 90's (I think Outlaws for the PC was the first game to do it, maybe), and then ever since FPS games just do it. Nobody necessarily barked at it being copied over to other games, because it just made sense and the how-to was figured out. So why not do it? It's a quality worth sharing and taking part in. Or even mouselook can be in the same boat. Yes, why NOT have it? It just makes sense.
But then you get Zynga, who isn't just lifting mechanics or features. They're taking an entire product and putting a new presentation layer on it, and that's it. That's going beyond copying, that's just outright theft. Some companies don't even have the decency to put in the effort to change the presentation layer either; what's that one WoW-clone - or realy, ripoff- name?