Zynga: forget games, let’s just do viruses

http://flirtatiouslabs.com/post/31401127751/zynga-game-virus-farmville-2

by VSerge • 14 years ago

175 61 14 years ago

Interesting position, thinking of Zynga as a commercial business virus.

talmand3• 14 years ago

I wouldn't say that Zynga is using virus tactics, I would say that viruses have been using marketing tactics that everyone knows works for short term gain.

But there's plenty of blame to go around for this stuff being out there. Zynga for doing it, Facebook for allowing it, and the user for not reading about what they're clicking.

Draiken• 14 years ago

I'd say you can't blame the user for not seeing a hidden checkbox in the corner.

Same thing with advertises and their little asterisks in the bottom with unreadable letters. It's just a shame that this is pretty much the only business model that you see today in "social" games.

Never understood what is social about sharing a predefined message that you have harvested a crop.

saraid2165• 14 years ago

> Never understood what is social about sharing a predefined message that you have harvested a crop.

Nothing. This is a misunderstanding of the history of the term. A "social game" is a game built on top of a social network site (authoritatively defined here: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html ) that makes actual usage of the SNS mechanisms. Farmville was the genre-definer (social games fitting the definition pre-Zynga were not categorized as such), so it's not surprising that the term is basically bullshit.

Wikipedia has an article that differs a bit from my explanation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_game

ianferrel• 14 years ago

You can blame the user for not noticing that they're spamming their contacts and deleting the offending app once they notice it.

talmand3• 14 years ago

In this case I can blame the user if what was described is true. While correct that the checkbox is off to the side, not really hidden, the problem surfaces when they get to the next screen. There they are supposedly offered an explanation of what's going with an option to say no that is all provided by Facebook, not Zynga. If at that point the person quickly clicks yes just because they want to get back to the game then I would say that's their fault.

If moving forward required clicking an okay with no other obvious out, then I would agree. But in this case they had two chances; the first with a not-so obvious opt-out while the second had the obvious opt-out.

mdonahoe• 14 years ago

I agree, but you can blame the users that then click on the spammy posts and install the promoted apps. They are the reason this is an "effective" technique for viral growth.

robbiemitchell• 14 years ago

I would describe these more specifically as psychological tactics that many exploit, including marketers, advertisers, and product developers. Calling disdainful exploits "marketing tactics" is inaccurate and prevents healthy discussions around acquisition and retention.

talmand3• 14 years ago

I would assume that the people who use them would describe them as "marketing tactics" and not "disdainful exploits". Not that I disagree with you.

kanamekun• 14 years ago

The author nails it in their last bullet point: "Facebook, STEP UP and stop your big partners from hurting your product, users and whole ecosystem once in a while!"

If Facebook doesn't police a major partner from abusing its API like this, they are effectively condoing this behavior and inviting their other app partners to do the same.

I can't believe that Facebook has become another MySpace. Its product/market fit was so strong just a few years ago that they seemed unbeatable: a true anti-MySpace. Since then, it seems like in their pursuit for growth they've basically completely gutted their product/market fit and worked to destroy the trust they'd built up with their users.

brendanobrien• 14 years ago

Absolutely agreed. Given the magnitude of the platform at this point, I'm assuming some of the 'MySpace vibe' is a necessary byproduct.

Pruning overgrowth from companies like Zynga & co is my number one request as a facebook user.

brador• 14 years ago

How big a piece would it take from Facebooks user count if Zynga dropped Facebook entirely and started it's own social network with Zynga game exclusivity?

kevingadd2• 14 years ago

Zynga moving away wouldn't make users stop using Facebook. It might drop usage numbers or hurt other metrics, but nobody's going to quit Facebook just to play Farmville 2. The vast majority of users on Facebook are there because it's Facebook, and their friends have accounts, etc.

wtracy• 14 years ago

Zynga experimented with that by having a gaming portal that bypassed FB entirely. It seems to be attract almost no traffic.

adwf• 14 years ago

Unfortunately it's a bit tough for Facebook to do that, given that Zynga make up something like 15-20% of their total revenue.

They probably should do; but it's a tough decision to make now that they are answerable to shareholders.

r00fus• 14 years ago

> I can't believe that Facebook has become another MySpace.

I can. I know many social app development groups (outsourced in India) who worked on MySpace and are now working on Facebook - though they say the real money is moving to iOS, Android and Windows8 app dev.

meritt• 14 years ago

A very substantial portion of Facebook's revenue is derived from Zynga customers buying virtual currency -- FB takes a 30% commission of every dollar redeemed into Facebook Credits.

While it obviously needs to be remedied for the benefit of user-experience FB also has shareholders who want to continue to see positive revenue gains.

eric-hu• 14 years ago

I was somewhat skeptical of this claim, so I did some googling.

TLDR: FB made about 10% of its 2011 revenue, $4270 M, from Facebook Credits, $470 M.

Their projected 2012 revenue is $5042 M, of which $811 M is expected to come from 'Facebook Payments and other revenue'.

This doesn't say how much of that revenue comes from Zynga specifically, though

Sources:

http://venturebeat.com/2011/09/20/facebook-revenue-2011/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2012/08/30/poof-1-bill...

momma-joe• 14 years ago

isn't profit a motive anymore in this form? this is just a method to make profit, well thought out and executed. Good word play.

sp332• 14 years ago

Making profit should be about convincing the user of the value of the product, so that they willingly give you stuff. It shouldn't be about tricking users into giving you something.

saraid2165• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick

kevingadd2• 14 years ago

I've seen those 'OK'/'Yes' button-only modals in a few social games now and they're goddamn disgusting. It will probably catch on since I have no doubt that it's effective, but it's the worst kind of manipulation and a great way to ensure that customers never trust you.

saraid2165• 14 years ago

I feel like this is the kind of thing that will someday be explicitly illegal.

Travis2• 14 years ago

It's rather hyperbolic to say it's "the worst kind of manipulation", and that it will ensure "customers never trust you." (Disclaimer: I'm not on facebook/zynga in part because of these concerns...)

I also guess that tactics like these will erode user trust over time.

But most users are neither savvy nor concerned with things like this, in my experience. They may be annoyed with it, but the majority of people simply don't apply any meta-analysis to the sites they use, as we so often do here on HN.

I'd guess that they use these techniques because they are successful. So that's an interesting dilemma -- how can a (public) company decide which ethical path to take? If they don't use these techniques, they are doing their bottom line a disservice. If they do use them, they are crossing into a grey area of ethics.

What are companies (startups, especially) supposed to decide, between a slightly grey area success or an ethical failure?

PS - I know that's a bit of a false dichotomy, but making it a black-and-white issue simplifies it for discussion.

saraid2165• 14 years ago

This is roughly why I said it would be illegal someday. The price mechanism is really bad at giving acceptable answers to ethics. Whenever all the current enterprises agree to be ethical, there inevitably comes some whippersnapper who has no such qualms and undercuts them all. And while they can form a cartel to fight back, the only real recourse is stepping outside the market system for a final arbitrator: the law.

gokulk• 14 years ago

A good UI engineer always gives an option to close any popup box or else users just close the window and dont return

theorique• 14 years ago

I think it's definitely manipulative, but on the scale of manipulation, this is worse: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025913/

ameyamk• 14 years ago

Whats the best way? Avoid creating spam? or let there be spam, but build algorithms to detect the spam. FB seems to be choosing latter.

It seems like apps like these are basically destroying "open graph" fabric that FB wants to put in place. Its a great concept in general, but I do not see any legitimate use of "auto publishing" functionality for any app. If there is, potential abuse far bigger than any gain from the legitimate use. Although this puts Open graph with its actions and auto sharing etc in jeopardy.

darkarmani• 14 years ago

This is a very good reason for a second facebook account for playing games.

propercoil2• 14 years ago

i hate it when people exaggerate - a virus? really? i think people are influenced by government exaggeration. maybe next time someone will classify this as "terrorism".

rwallace• 14 years ago

A virus is a piece of information that exploits a security vulnerability in an existing complex system, tricking the system into propagating the virus to its own detriment. Remember the word originally only applied where the target was a living cell. The usage where the target is a digital computer might have been considered a metaphor, but the deep structural similarity outweighs the difference in substrate, sufficiently to merit considering the new usage a valid extension.

Zynga 'games' are viruses that exploit security vulnerabilities in the human mind. The extension of usage is just as defensible as the original extension to digital computers.

propercoil2• 14 years ago

terrorism is a "systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal" (dictionary.com). Zynga 'games' are acts of terrorism that attack the human mind to achieve their goals.

What a bunch of fluff

ghempton• 14 years ago

Being as Zynga is very metrics driven, it's funny to think about this in terms of A/B testing: trying variations on design which increase sharing. The optimum will be with when there is no opt-out at all.

ceejayoz2• 14 years ago

> The optimum will be with when there is no opt-out at all.

Not necessarily. You may lose someone immediately who would've eventually given in and opted-in after the 50th dialog.

VSerge• 14 years ago

Hey guys, thanks for the comments, this wasn't that thought out, more of a venting moment against this kind of behavior by these that are supposedly in leadership position.

Its compounded by the fact that I'm trying to launch a game called Flirtatious, that is attempting to make meeting someone online fun, as non-creepy and not too fake either (check it out here apps.facebook.com/flirtati - feedback will be read and thought through).

Launching a game as an indie dev is difficult to start with, and even more so when the ecosystem is being kicked in the face by the big boys on a regular basis.

gizzlon• 14 years ago

Off topic, but the "PLAY FLIRTATIOUS ON FACEBOOK" link (upper right corner) is dead.

mindstab• 14 years ago

You know what? Facebook gives users the tools to block this stuff. You can block all content from an app. Now I know zynga makes a few apps, but not that many Any time some new one pops up in my feed I block it. I haven't had a problem with this junk in my feed for a very long time. I can barely believe its bugging smart technical people.

tomkit• 14 years ago

I have the same work flow.

In addition, these "OK/Yes", "OK/(auto enabled toggle)", "YES-only" dialogs are not unique to Zynga and not unique to Farmville 2; it's been around for a while. I suppose the author of the blog was only recently compelled to try out the game?

j_s2• 14 years ago

> I suppose the author of the blog was only recently compelled to try out the game?

The post is on the blog of a social gaming company; their key take-away seems to be:

   Developers beware the backlash with yet less discovery for quality games

myhf• 14 years ago

True, if you spend enough time on Facebook that you can block social viruses as they appear, then you will never see more than one or two at a time.

But there is no technical reason why Facebook doesn't allow users to categorically block a virus developer. It's a political reason: new viruses entering the system get new eyeballs, reinforcing the business model.

j_s2• 14 years ago

> I can barely believe its bugging smart technical people.

I doubt they're complaining on behalf of smart technical people... instead, it's all their friends who fill news feeds with junk because they don't know any better!

cpeterso• 14 years ago

Why does Facebook insist on spelling OK as "Okay"? Do any other websites or applications use "Okay"? OK is a jocular abbreviation for "oll korrect", not a word.

Dove• 14 years ago

The etymology of OK is far from settled -- just check the Wikipedia page! I remember an etymology book of mine describing the puzzle as the holy grail. It's not even agreed that it was originally an acronym.

And regardless of where it came from, "okay" is certainly a word now, at least in the sense that it's widely used and in dictionaries.

AgentConundrum• 14 years ago

Wikipedia, for one. I went looking to confirm what you said, and found that the canonical page for the word/abbreviation on Wikipedia was 'Okay'[1] with a redirect to that page when you ask for 'O.K.'.

The page itself says there is no consensus as to the origin of the word, and links to another page[2] with a list of possible origins. 'Oll Korrect' seems like it's the definition with widest acceptance, but it's not the only contender.

I've seen 'Okay' used on other websites, though none come immediately to mind, and have never given a second thought to Facebook's spelling of the word.

Even if 'oll korrect' was the origin of the word, 'okay' is still perfectly acceptable to me. It would hardly be the first English word to make such a transition.

ceejayoz2• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okay: "There is no consensus on the origins of "okay." Several possibilities exist."

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/OK: "OK (also okay)"

danielweber• 14 years ago

So we are exactly where we were 6 years ago, with "I bet somebody got a really nice bonus for that feature."[1]

Those checkboxes look exactly like what they came through after testing dozens or hundreds of different combinations, optimizing for acceptance rather than honesty.

[1]http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/11/01/92244...

Pongo_the_Great2• 14 years ago

This struck me as an interesting take, due to your analogy: (some) viruses[1] can be inoculated against. Looking at this through a 'real world' lens, rather than a mimetic one, suggests something stronger.

Your argument is that is, Facebook has an interest in providing inoculation against viruses to their users, while the viruses themselves (Zynga) have a vested interest in removing possible inoculating effects within their ecosystem. i.e. Facebook should provide inoculation against Zynga. Now, your argument revolves around the "active/positive" end of this, where you make an appeal to Facebook to reduce the most egregious examples of this[2], as it will increase user pleasure, enhance the ecosystem and provide you with healthy users. To be fair, this approach has produced some movement from Facebook on the more obvious ones (such as the early phone ads).

This is all well and good ~ however, you're ignoring the "negative/passive" way in which this is done.

Zynga actively creates an ecosystem that ensures that the most successful viruses (i.e. your social game) have to conform to the most successful strategies, precisely because it is so metric / psychologically driven. If you want to compete against a dominant virus, aping the same Skinner-driven models (http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/11/28/1931246/more-on-why-...) makes sense, both in market terms and ecological terms.

But you're aiming at the wrong target. Facebook isn't purely a host, it's also a virus. In fact, it benefits from a relationship where it isn't the "worst" virus, as this makes it more attractive to users (i.e. changing security / functionality / sharing of user data being the more obvious examples), while the ecological impact Zynga provides allows it to act more aggressively as a virus (i.e. your user base becomes used to virus tactics). The relationship is mutalistic, as the market well knows.

Your real target needs to be inoculating the user, so that they either recognise the strategies of the viruses and produce anti-bodies against them (the "Steam model", where your user will only react favourably to positive behaviour by a virus, because they react violently against negative behaviour, forging a symbiotic relationship[3]) or by producing a product that is more suited to your environment. i.e. is better at virus intrusion than Zynga, either in camouflage ("we're-nice-but-secretly-screwing-you") or by creating antibodies against other viruses ("I get such an empathetic bond with this virus, I'm not sure why, it just makes me feel good"). (The distinction is purely in the awareness / active interest of the user).

Wall of text: right gripe, wrong target. Facebook and Zynga both know their core market, and the real question is: why don't most users have such antibodies against viruses automatically?

Answer: probably due to culture & this being the first true generation of users experiencing such viruses. Of course, without being too cruel, there's some that will never produce antibodies, as we all know. http://www.bogost.com/blog/cow_clicker_1.shtml

[1] Never virii, never. [2]Which, as we all know, was/is Zynga, especially in the more outspoken criticisms at certain Cons.(http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091108/1122426850.shtml - please note, I might well be making a joke from where I'm getting my sources from), [3] In a purely user<>host example here, there's problems with Steam just as any other DRM / software provider [4] This example broke down in the first instance by not treating Zynga as a producer of viruses, and multiple other problems due to me typing quickly and not wanting to turn this into ecology 101. I hope that it was at least a little bit interesting / useful.

Pongo_the_Great2• 14 years ago

Note: I'm aware that this analogy is metaphorically and intellectually broken.

If I had time / inclination, we'd re-work the OP's example into Facebook and Steam etc being protozoa, Zynga would be some bacteria living inside Facebook with our users as the host and introduce all kinds of biology comparisons. Zynga-as-Virus as an analogy wouldn't be too useful as it's not a case of simple self-replication in attacks / predation on the host; it's also camouflaging itself as other fauna to fool the hosts' current anti-body set, as EA, a much larger protozoa, is trying to eat it for as competition. There's also the fact Zynga would have to live inside Facebook in a mutalistic relationship, while they both feed off each others' intakes from the host.

Would be fun, modelling it all.

Now I urn for the Spore-that-never-was, damn, but we wouldn't want to scare the hosts when they realised the real lions, tigers & bears out there, I suppose.

jpdoctor• 14 years ago

I haven't found a compelling reason to enable any app in facebook, and I suspect I'm not alone.

jff• 14 years ago

Watching a massive stream of app notifications fill up my Facebook account until I finally got the last of them blocked convinced me that I'd never want to enable any app.

anxman• 14 years ago

This title is misleading. Opt-out behavior is common all across the Internet and by itself doesn't make Farmville2 suddenly into a virus.

Sure, the flow isn't as transparent as it could be, but the title is clearly linkbait by piling on Zynga.

There are tons of applications on Facebook that post stories without the user's realizing, and calling all of them viruses too would meet the metrics of the author but would be inaccurate.

Zynga: forget games, let’s just do viruses

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