Zynga Chief Financial Officer Leaves For Facebook

I read "Zangief Financial Officer" at first glance.

Ultimate Atomic Buster ftw

There's a lovely article on cracked that describes this situation.

"6 Emails You Get When Your Company is About to Go Under" by Dan Seitz.

Good article.

My favorite part of that story is every officer of zynga sold their shares when the PPS was around 12, days before their earnings report came out and the stock tanked. Then, after the PPS was hovering around 3 dollars they offered deffered options to rank and file employees in place of cash. Nice guys.

Gaming websites need to stop talking about Zynga like any of their readers actually play Zynga games. Maybe we just like to watch it fail because it represents our nemesis, casual gaming? Much to think on, I have...

Zynga is an object lesson in everything wrong with game development today. It's not the 'casual' versus 'hardcore' distinction. It doesn't matter what kind of games they make. What matters is how they make them and their overall behavior in their industry. Industries are less like machines or circuits and more like ecosystems. Zynga is a parasite in this analogy. It offers nothing new, offers no iterative improvements, and possesses no native talent for innovation. What it cannot buy it steals. Enough companies acting like Zynga would kill the industry outright.

I don't disagree. They are a corrupt company that makes unoriginal, and in some cases blatantly stolen, games. But why do we keep hearing about them when we (gamers) don't care about the company?

I think a lot of gamers, particularly those concerned about what Zynga is and what it signifies, are following news of its downfall with a mixture of shadenfreude and hope. If this kind of blatantly parasitical activity is consistently punished with financial ruin it will decrease. It does represent the seemingly implacable foe of every conscientious gamer out there; a degenerate corporate culture that is eating itself and ensuring the collapse of its own ecosystem.