Leaked Zynga Memo Justifies Copycat Strategy

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/02/01/leaked-zynga-memo-justifies-copycat-strategy/

by azazo • 14 years ago

106 90 14 years ago

thesash3• 14 years ago

This reminds me of the whole Curebit debacle from this weekend. Is outright copying of design/creative/game mechanics illegal? Maybe, maybe not. Is it wrong? Hell yes!

What makes me really sad is thinking about how many talented engineers and designers there are working at companies like Zynga, doing a kick-ass job of building clones for companies with no values.

rhizome• 14 years ago

I wonder whether it's something that only benefits from the economies of scale available to money. That is, can entrepreneurs benefit from copying? Is it democratic?

pfraze• 14 years ago

I'm not sure it's that black & white. I don't love the argument I'm about to make, so feel free to counter it:

The only tangible I can sense with content (code, media, etc) is how it's provided, and that means that service is the entirety of our business. Zynga isn't producing original content, but they are producing a valuable service. Do I think it's ethical? No way. But should it be illegal? Not unless you want to limit how we can use data.

Lazare• 14 years ago

Certainly the world is full of things which are wrong, but should not be illegal because the "solution" would be worse than the problem it tried to solve. (coughSOPA/PIPAcough)

In this case, what Zynga is doing is copying game design. And in a perfect world...I think it should be perfectly legal to copy game design, because the alternative is software patents, and do I really need to spell out why that sucks?

But it's still ethically and morally wrong, and we should name and shame Zynga, their developers, and their enablers. How about a boycott of Amazon until they yank Zynga's hosting? (And yes, I realize their isn't the slightest hope of such a thing...)

thesash3• 14 years ago

You're absolutely right, copying creative ideas is not illegal, and making it illegal wouldn't solve anything. Unfortunately, the reality is that as long as it is possible to make make money by operating unethically (read: forever), businesses will do it.

Call me naive, but I would at least like to believe that these types of practices cannot sustain a business forver, and eventually a player who does things the right way will win out.

samstave3• 14 years ago

Basically the way I feel right now is that any employee associated with Zynga is just as much a slimy douchebag as is Pincus.

officemonkey2• 14 years ago

Basically, I read the memo to say: "We're thieves and I'm okay with that. If you want to work with thieves, then Zynga is the place for you."

cubicle67• 14 years ago

would it be fair to draw an analogy to the London bus on a bridge photo story from a short while back?

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWPCC/2012/1.html

joshu4• 14 years ago

Horseshit.

The similarity between SimTower/YootTower (same developer/designer!) and TinyTower is that they both have towers; the differences is basically everything else. Zynga's game is basically identically TinyTower with no other elements or changes.

tzs• 14 years ago

The Forbes author explained it well on page 2:

"To use an analogy I’ve drawn on before, the gap between Tiny Tower and Sim Tower might be the difference between James Cameron‘s sci-fi Avatar and the similarly themed Dances with Wolves. However, the space between Tiny Tower and Zynga’s Dream Heights would be the difference between Dances with Wolves and another film set in the 1800s about Native Americans with the exact same plot, lookalike actors and titled 'Cavorting with Bears.'"

ericd5• 14 years ago

That's a wonderful analogy. I was a bit confused by people saying "So? Tiny Tower was just a SimTower rip", and I didn't know how to express the gap difference which that analogy does so well.

kevinh• 14 years ago

Perhaps not SimTower, but Tiny Tower shares a lot in common with flash game Corporation Inc[1] by well known flash developer jmtb02, which came along before it. Nimblebit was called out by drumcowski for doing so[2]. Tiny Tower isn't really all that original itself (it took the Sim Tower/Corporation Inc. framework and added social gaming/Skinner's Box type reward to keep people playing). What does this mean? People steal/borrow/improve upon game ideas all the time. Is this bad? That depends on your point of view.

For the record, jmtb02 disagreed with some of drumcowski's comments in his response to drumcowski's response to Nimblebit's message[3].

[1] http://armorgames.com/play/7348/corporation-inc [2] http://i.imgur.com/ajaYt.jpg [3] http://i.imgur.com/eSEt7.jpg

joshu4• 14 years ago

Thanks for reminding me about jmbt02, his stuff is great.

mbrzuzy2• 14 years ago

Didn't Zynga sue some chinese game that was basically a copy of farmville? And here they are saying there is nothing wrong with copying...

jmaygarden• 14 years ago

The article refers to a lawsuit against a Brazilian company.

mbrzuzy2• 14 years ago

Yea you're right. Here is an article I found regarding it.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/16/zynga-sues-brazilian-copyc...

I have no words for Zynga's hypocrisy.

kmfrk2• 14 years ago

It must be nice for companies to Google and Facebook to always have one company to top them all in the category of unrepentant corporate spawns of Satan.

aaronblohowiak• 14 years ago

Walmart? McDonald's? Goldman? Halliburton? Blackwater?

kmfrk2• 14 years ago

Since when was Hacker News not implicitly about software companies?

pluies_public• 14 years ago

cough Monsanto.

Apocryphon• 14 years ago

This is the sort of thing that leads to companies resorting to patents or copyrights.

prbuckley4• 14 years ago

This is sure to be down voted but here I go anyway... Doesn't this just indicate that having distribution is the most important element of the gaming market? It isn't enough to have a great game or design if you can't win at distribution.

elliottcarlson• 14 years ago

Not necessarily - though there is a lot to be said about what distribution and marketing can get you. Look, however, at games such as Minecraft, Q.U.B.E., Terraria, SpaceChem, Bastion and many others; granted the last 4 now have distribution on Steam, and Minecraft has become a household name, but without great game design and having something the actual gamers want, they wouldn't be where they are now. The biggest risk is that your game, if not picked up quick enough, can be cloned by someone like Zynga and distributed like crazy - so make sure your product is better and always evolving - don't be bullied around.

billpatrianakos7• 14 years ago

I'm not going to downvote you (disagreement isn't any cause for a downvote) but what you're saying still rubs me the wrong way. Yeah, Zynga's success does show that distribution counts for the majority of gaming success but you say it like what they're doing is okay. That came off to me like "Yeah they steal, but whatever it's the distribution that counts anyway so it doesn't matter who they rip off". At least that's what I heard. Is Zynga really deserving of what they have? I don't care how much logic and economics you throw at the issue, we're dealing with people here. People aren't markets, margins, profits, distribution channels or anything else. They're flesh and blood and what Zynga does is not okay. The guys who they're ripping off are the ones deserving of all the money Zynga is making off them.

This doesn't just indicate that great game design takes a back seat to distribution, it promotes the idea that the fine line between plagiarism and inspiration doesn't exist and that they're one and the same. Businesses that operate like Zynga aren't new but what's new, at least to me, is seeing such a business, despite the criticism it gets, become such a media darling. They had Pinkus on the Today show or some other morning show the other day making him look like he's some genius mythical Zuckerberg type. Businesses with the rip off model are often successful as there's a sucker born every minute but I've never seen one get praise like Zynga as if they're doing something that's one iota innovative.

chii2• 14 years ago

Cloning a game idea is totally valid form of doing business.

No one gets to have a monopoly on an idea (i m also against patents). Distribution (or more correctly, marketing and operations) is one of the more difficult, non-game-design related problems a gaming company faces, and all else equals, the company that profits is the one that can scale.

I feel like you are just critizing zynga simply because they got successful based on game ideas that others have failed to profit from. I don't see that as a problem - this is what nature intends, and the fittest survive. Those who makes the money deserves it.

prbuckley4• 14 years ago

I don't agree ethically with what Zynga's strategy is but I would not go so far as to say...

"The guys who they're ripping off are the ones deserving of all the money Zynga is making off them."

Zynga outsourced being innovative to the market and focused their resources on building distribution. You have to work hard to build distribution and it is an important part of a business strategy. It is not enough to just design a great game and expect it to be a huge business success. It might be a huge creative success but that is different from being a business success.

Lets use Mcdonald's as an example (I am not a fan of their food but I think they illustrate a business that is built on distribution not quality product). People were making hamburgers before Mcdonalds, no innovation in the product. The value of the Mcdonalds business is in the vast network of restaurants that they built to deliver their product. Does the person who made the first hamburger deserve all the money that Mcdonalds is making? I would say no.

I think a lot of people on HN ignore the importance of the simple fact that distribution is a competitive advantage in business and it is something you have to work hard for. I think Zynga is taking advantage of a resource they worked hard to build, their distribution.

loceng• 14 years ago

It's the same thought of "It's execution that matters, not ideas" that rubs me the wrong way too -- a lot of VCs and successful entrepreneurs seem to promote this saying.. justifying (to themselves) of these less than ethical behaviours.

earl• 14 years ago

Another interpretation is visual polish matters. Zynga's game definitely looks better to me.

benologist3• 14 years ago

Not at all. You can see this theory played out on sites like Armor Games, a platform where a new game launches directly in front of a huge audience and in its first days either:

- it'll get a crap rating and 10s of thousands of plays

- it'll get a great rating and hundreds of thousands or even millions of plays

Ultimately they succeed or not based on their own merit, having a ton of traffic to throw at them just helps it happen faster.

prbuckley4• 14 years ago

What about the great games that never get onto Armor Games? You could have made the best game in the world but if you don't know how to get it on Armor Games or similar sites you won't have a business success, in fact the crappy game that did get on Armor Games will have done better. In your example Armor Games has all the power.

lionhearted• 14 years ago

It's an is/ought thing. For years, I hated that marketing/sales/distribution beat out production/quality consistently. It just seemed wrong.

Yet, that's how it is. Adjusting and knowing that is empowering... "build a better mousetrip" isn't enough by itself; you also need to understand and connect with people who would benefit from the mousetrap, get the word out about the mousetrap to those people, and then find a sales/delivery mechanism so those people can buy the mousetrap and have a mouse-free life.

extension2• 14 years ago

Obviously they think a great design matters or they wouldn't steal them.

alexqgb• 14 years ago

The notorious bandit Willie Sutton was finally apprehended, and as he was being led away from the courthouse in irons an outraged woman asked him WHY he robbed all those banks. "Because, Ma'am" he replied "that's where the money was."

Distribution works the same way. It's where the money is.

Alcedes• 14 years ago

There's a simple solution since this will be a freemium game. Have every Tiny Tower player download the Zynga junk and rate it 1 star. That'll send a clear message to any players and give a nice middle finger to Zynga. We can call the process go daddying an app. A more amusing tactic would be for Nimblebit to offer tower bucks to do the deed. That would be a lot of 1-star reviews...

chii2• 14 years ago

But then the zynga players would vote it back up. And guess who has more users?

earbitscom2• 14 years ago

I'm still not sure when this forum switched to thinking that infringing on IP (in this case, not even illegally) is immoral. If I didn't have better things to do I'd love to cross-check all these comments and see how many people previously said that copying bits is the natural order of things and should just be embraced.

billpatrianakos7• 14 years ago

You totally stole my thunder! My thoughts exactly! There's such a disconnect when it comes to this and I can't understand why. When it's copyright and patents they need to be abolished but when an IP matter like this suddenly it's wrong. I hope they understand they can't have it both ways. Either both are okay or neither are.

arbitrarywords• 14 years ago

Or there's a shade of grey, where patents and IP are a useful idea, but the current implementation in certain areas (e.g. IT) are broken and need reform. Most people here don't seem to be purely black or white on this one.

mikeash2• 14 years ago

From what I've seen, the message here and in many other places is a pretty consistent one that unauthorized copying for personal use is OK, and unauthorized copying for commercial gain is not. Have I missed something?

earbitscom2• 14 years ago

Yes, you've missed the relatively consistent support of sites like Pirate Bay, which commercially benefit from the distribution of copyrighted material.

shawndrost• 14 years ago

Interesting story! Too bad the comments are full of unadorned, witless vitrol. I don't even mind if you hate Zynga and its employees -- could you just not tell me? It's not very interesting.

joering1• 14 years ago

maybe its not to you, but if users/observers stop judging what they use or see, one day everyone will be ripping off (not "getting inspired", but copying or stealing) each other, because, well noone says a bad word so its a good thing to do.

fragsworth• 14 years ago

Zynga's strategy is probably not sustainable. Hear me out:

The company that made the original game normally has enough time on the market to accumulate most of the users that are worth accumulating via open-market advertisements. It is likely that they hit "market saturation" prior to Zynga being able to clone the game.

Zynga has a massive existing userbase. When they clone an existing title, they're able to cheaply migrate some portion of their existing users over to the new title through cross-promotion. This is an effective way to retain users, but there is a significant problem: The original company (probably) already hit market saturation. The result, for Zynga, is that they can't really use this cloned game to grow their existing userbase. They can only use it to retain some users.

Fortunately for the original company, they aren't hurt all that much by Zynga's strategy - as long as they had enough time on the market before their game was cloned, the net effect of Zynga cloning their game isn't all that negative. The users that play Zynga's version tend to already have been Zynga users, and would only ever have played the Zynga game.

Unfortunately for Zynga, if this is their company vision, they will never grow their userbase. They will only ever struggle to keep hold of their existing users. They need to take risks and build unique, interesting games or they will face a slow death.

benologist3• 14 years ago

The problem with that is people don't care about clones, they care about quality. If you love tower defense games you are going to love a heap of them that are more similar than different. If you love physics puzzle games then there's a virtual orgy of same-games out there waiting for you (eg http://physicsgames.net/ ... there's like 3 or 4 games there, done dozens of times).

All Zynga has to do is get a same-game in the charts or viral and they get new users.

billpatrianakos7• 14 years ago

Zynga is knowingly spewing BS about their products. They know full well they're stealing and we all think they suck for it. Personally, I'd be a cheerleader for them if they were just honest about their business model. It's their attempt to even try to deny the obvious that I think is creating such animosity toward them even more than their douchebagery

ambler0• 14 years ago

In particular, it's his use of the word "innovate" that enrages me.

plinkplonk• 14 years ago

The interesting thing about the Zynga approach is not the copying but the hypocrisy

From the memo

"A few of you have asked how our approach to genres relates to the situation we faced with Vostu. There are rules of engagement in our industry. Companies have to respect each other’s legal and IP ownership rights in the form of copyrights and trademarks. In the case of Vostu, you can see for yourself that Vostu crossed the line and chose to use our copyrighted IP and artwork. That’s different than competing to build the best product or out-innovate us in the City category."

So copying others artwork is ok when Zynga does it to others, but not when others do it to them.

See "Zynga stole everything they are suing us for Says Vostu" http://www.businessinsider.com/vostu-zynga-stole-everything-...

kenrik• 14 years ago

I'm so glad my gut told me not to buy stock in Zynga.

ansy• 14 years ago

Disclaimer: I don't use any Zynga products nor have I ever.

With regard to the situation, I don't think Zynga gets nearly enough credit for its success. It is not that easy to copy software and get the same degree of success. Yet Zynga routinely copies and gets greater success. There is something there that deserves attention.

Zynga has operational chops that should not be underestimated. Whatever it is doing is cutting edge and enough of an advantage Zynga can even flourish doing nothing but blatantly derivative designs.

Eventually, those operational practices will spread to other game studios that do original designs and it will be harder for Zynga to do as well. But much like McDonalds, Zynga could enjoy its market superiority for a long time to come as long as it continues to innovate operationally even if it lags creatively.

extension2• 14 years ago

It's not easy to crack a safe, but doing so does not entitle you to the contents.

richardw• 14 years ago

IIRC they have an app-list at the bottom of each of their games, that they can use to introduce users to any new creation. I assume they probably have ads up as well. Copying enables them to make a game that has already been proved and simply leverage their existing user base to get views. Other companies do their research for them. I think their ability to leverage their user base explains them getting 'greater success'.

What could go wrong?

They could make a bad copy, but they already should have enough in-house skill to make the suckiest game pretty polished. They have tons of reusable code. Tons of cash.

They could copy a game but miss out on some secret sauce that makes the original work better. I think they can control this by releasing to smaller groups and fixing mistakes early, or just dump a game if there's no traction.

So...what else could go wrong when copying a game?

HalibetLector• 14 years ago

It's well understood in the social gaming industry that if you want a hit game, you have to do one of two things: get an underground viral hit (very hard and impossible to predict) or you buy users through ads. According to a recent story, Zynga may be spending as much as $300 per user to be on top [1]. The actual number is irrelevent. The important part is they're paying more in marketing and ads than their competitors and see better conversion rates because of it.

Operations does play a huge part in keeping the customers playing (user retention), it's true. The game has to look slick and not crash. Their ops teams must be wizards. Their design teams, not so much.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494617

ryanjmo4• 14 years ago

There are tons of comments saying that copying these games is wrong and imoral, but no one is explaining why it is so wrong and imoral.

Please explain to me why, because I literally don't get why it is so wrong and imoral.

Disclaimer: I don't work for Zynga, but I do copy the shit out of stuff.

billpatrianakos7• 14 years ago

Really? Okay, well is it okay to paraphrase someone else's thesis paper and submit it as your own? You've changed every word but did none of the research. That's kind of how Zynga operates. When you plagiarized the thesis you typed every word into your text editor, obtained the original work, transcribed it as your own, printed it and handed it in but really, you didn't do the work. Zynga codes the games and changes the graphics ever so slightly then publishes the games but they don't do the real work. They're like every other scum developer that blatantly leeches off the success of another, barely making an effort to make it their own.

ryanjmo4• 14 years ago

But doing what you described with the paper, certainly would be considered cheating by a university. But, what is morally wrong about that? What makes the university rules, the correct rules to act by? Certainly, if you choose to go to a University you are agreeing to follow their rules, but outside of breaking your agreement with the university, what is wrong about that?

Why can't we use other people work to create our own. If someone took my thesis and turned it in and got an A, I would be psyched for them and happy they used my work. It doesn't hurt me at all.

stoney• 14 years ago

It's not okay to plagiarise someone else's thesis paper, because the entire point of a thesis paper is to demonstrate your own ability to think/research/etc. If you plagiarise a paper you can fully expect your university/college/school to reject the paper, and you suffer the consequences.

I don't think the same set of moral constraints apply in Zynga's case. They aren't trying to prove themselves to some 3rd party. The whole point of Zynga is to make money for the people who own and work at Zynga. And apparently duplicating other people's games is working pretty well as a way of meeting that objective. There's definitely nothing noble about what they're doing. And I don't know how much effort they are putting in, but certainly seem to be doing what they are doing (which is distributing games, not producing innovative games) better than everyone else.

rbanffy• 14 years ago

To play devil's advocate a bit, re-implementing a game is not as easy as paraphrase-typing a thesis. Zynga copied the gameplay from other game, but wrote the underlying code, did the art and tied it to their backend. That's a non-trivial amount of work.

It's like saying Seattle Computer ripped off Digital Research because Q-DOS was very similar to CP/M. In some ways, they did - they were really similar - but one is a reimplementation of a superset of the other.

Having said that, I'm mostly uncomfortable with these "second mover" (or "first copycat") companies. It's not that hard to come up with original ideas and the process you use to come up with those will give you both an insight on what makes an idea good and a number of ideas you may be able to use later. It's definitely worth the try.

strags• 14 years ago

For a "leaked memo", this sure reads a lot like a press release.

Splines3• 14 years ago

Personally, I think Pincus wrote the memo intending for it to be leaked. I'd like to be wrong, but I'd be surprised if somewhere there's a Zynga engineer truly surprised that the design of their game isn't fresh and new.

I do wonder if there's any internal tension between design and development - surely there's someone there thinking "We're ripping of game X. This can't be right."

andr3w321• 14 years ago

Isn't this a case of the small app developers not iterating quickly enough? If you look at the side by side screen shots the Zynga graphics DO look significantly better than the original game. Isn't the lesson here that if you do somehow manage to make a hit game you better reinvest as much as you can as quickly as you can back into future versions of the game to keep it as fresh and good looking as possible?

How many updates has angry birds made since their first release? They're always releasing new levels and updates.

I'm not defending what Zynga does in any way, but success brings copycats and first to market does not guarantee dominance of that market by any means.

EricDeb• 14 years ago

What would happen if the company that created tiny tower sued Zynga? Do they have any legal argument?

moondowner• 14 years ago

What is sad is that developers who make Android/iOS/Flash/Whatever games see how Zynga is making money and is copying other people's games, and they start to justify this and eventually start doing it too.

nixle• 14 years ago

As a small business owner ( 3 peoples) working our asses of trying to publish a game for tablets, I can't help but hate Zynga for having unlimited resources and no regards for those that actually make an effort. Here's to their stock plummeting and that douche living in a box.

n9com• 14 years ago

I found the whole Tiny Tower situation pretty redicolous. Tiny Tower clearly copied a lot of concepts from games in the genre before it.

Leaked Zynga Memo Justifies Copycat Strategy

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