Game Industry News
Why Zynga ticks off the games industry
Monday, 12, March 2010
Being the 800-pound gorilla in the social games room, it's no surprise that there are a lot of gripes about Farmville publisher Zynga.Usually, people inside an industry with strong feelings about a specific company keep those sentiments to themselves because they don't want to burn bridges. So what might surprise some is how easy it is to find games industry professionals with an ax to grind about Zynga.
Those tend to have to do with issues ranging from the company's propensity to imitate others' game concepts to a perception that it is both insensitive to the indie game development community and committed to profit above design principles. And, some designers charge that Zynga's games, frequently built around users repeating a few rote tasks again and again in search of reward, are watering down the idea of what games are.It's hard to pin Zynga down, mainly because it is so young. The company, which was founded in 2007 by former Tribe.net head Mark Pincus, is the undisputed champion of the Facebook games wars.