Zynga通过不断开发《CityVille》之类的热门游戏，巩固了其在社交游戏领域的王者地位。据Zynga北京工作室总经理田行智所称，扩大运营规模是公司最关心的事——为用户提供合适的内容和功能更是重中之重。这也正是Zynga收购田行智与他人联合创办的XPD Media工作室的原因所在。

据游戏邦了解，田行智曾在Google任职，他的运营理念是：根据分析工具和用户反馈结果开发游戏。他认为游戏是一项工艺，而不是艺术，至少社交游戏的情况是如此。

他表示，最好是根据用户反馈来设计游戏，而不是凭开发商的自我感觉创建游戏。

虽然他的工作室最近在Facebook上发布了中文版《FarmVille》，但他们主要针对西方市场开发游戏，东方市场并非关注的重点。游戏邦获悉，田行智还在上个月的游戏开发大会·中国专场上，针对社交游戏如何发展发表了自己的看法，他在本文的访谈内容中进一步阐述了这些见解。

问：Zynga在中国成立工作室最看重的是哪些优势？是否有意借用中国游戏以及网页开发者的技术条件，在游戏微交易等市场领域发挥作用？或者只是为这里的低开发成本而来？

节约成本完全不在我们的考虑范围内，我们重视的是人才和扩张潜力。这就是我们为何不断收购新公司的原因，我们在快速扩张的同时还要兼顾人才质量。我的意思是说，不只是我们一家在这么做，其他公司也会选择这种途径。

问：在游戏开发大会·中国专场的演讲中，您谈到了《Mafia Wars》和《FarmVille》这两款游戏，您认为成功没有什么捷径，如果想满足用户对游戏内容日益扩大的需求，就必须扩充自己的团队。我觉得这种观点很有意思，因为从某种程度上来说，在扩大团队规模的同时又要保证人才质量并不是一件容易的事。招聘也并不是一件轻松的事，最终都会达到人口上限。

每个快速发展的企业都会面临这个问题。你有大量的机会，但真正要派上用场时，却又发现你的资源其实非常有限。我发现就连Google这样的公司也难免如此。你认为Google掌握了许多资源，其实没有。能给我们派上用场的资源实际上非常之少。

所以，这完全是优先选择的问题，比如说你是否把资源投入到了最急用的地方。这就是为什么要根据用户反馈、分析工具不断开发和完善游戏的原因，我们实际上只能实现一小部分自己原来想做的事情。但要怎么分清这些事情的轻重缓急呢？在这一点上，我们的判断标准并不是游戏本身是否很出色，而是因为它可以真正推动业务发展。

问：您说游戏就像工艺，反馈参数实际上只是打造工艺的工具，这种说法让人印象深刻。这就是你的运营理念对吗？

没错，我的意思是说，我们的运营理念是通过网页渠道建立起来的。我们实际上创建的是基于网络的娱乐内容。我认为微软MSN和腾讯QQ等即时通讯工具也是一种网络娱乐产品，因为聊天也能让大家找到乐趣，同时又可以实现人与人之间的沟通。我们做的事也没有什么不同，只不过在这一过程中注入了更多趣味元素。

游戏行业有很多人因为喜欢游戏，所以才而从事游戏开发工作。他们热爱游戏，也是铁杆游戏玩家。我们的用户实际上并不是真正意义上的游戏玩家，这2亿的用户可能只会玩很初级的游戏。

所以作为一个游戏爱好者，你得想法针对学生、会计、律师、家庭主妇、孩子等非游戏玩家，开发能够长期吸引这类用户的游戏。

问：你们为Zynga开发游戏时，主要考虑扩大用户规模，还是提高现有用户的满意度？

我想这两者都要考虑，最近刚发布的《CityVille》就是这种情况。《FarmVille》也一样，它进军日本时也将目标锁定了许多新用户。作为一家游戏开发公司，你总是得两头兼顾，考虑周全。

最后，你得开发产品——只要你对产品开发目的、目标用户、游戏风格、市场方向有了清晰的概念，就能使产品开发成果与之对应。

你不能有这种想法，“哦，我想这应该就是我的发展方向，我们先做了再说。”这种观念通常会带来很多问题。

问：你们是否在面向Facebook之外的其他平台开发游戏吗？还是说你们只针对Facebook开发游戏？

我们目前专注于Facebook平台。

问：这么说来，你们并不关注本土市场？

（笑）没有。我们当然很关注这个市场，但我觉得现在还不到采取行动的时候。

问：您谈到了病毒式传播在中国还不是大家关心的话题。我不知道您的意思是说，这是因为中国用户的习惯不同，还是说这里的平台运作方式不一样。

因为平台运作方式不一样。病毒式传播并不是免费的，就像我说的，它的发展有赖于良好的传播渠道，但仅仅像病毒一样具有传染是不够的，Facebook在这方面就做得很好，所以说他们是很棒的合作伙伴。因为Facebook不但有这些渠道，还能够高效管理。我认为中国的平台在这方面还有很长的路要走。

问：即使Facebook近来在沟通渠道的政策上有了不少变化，你也仍然对Facebook感到满意吗？

当然。Facebook实际上是面向西方用户开放的社交平台，不过在我看来它针对的是全球用户。所以开发游戏的是我们，而不是他们。也正因为如此，它们管理平台的方式与我们所预期的当然会有所偏差。但是随着公司的发展，我们只需要接受这一切并适应他们的情况，以最后总有些事我们可以做的更好、更完善，我们也希望Facebook的业务持续繁荣发展。

问：我对您关于正确与错误反馈参数的论述感到很好奇。以错误方式处理事情，或者对于事情进展的理解错误。你们是否发现，获取用户反馈等参数的方法也难免出现错误？

嗯，我觉得经常是这样的，所有事情都是有时做对，有时做错。但是如何正确处理事情确实是一个难题。我认为有很多时候，你并不需要知道你在做什么。

我认为避免获取错误参数的方法，就是将这些参数集中到一起——就算这样可能让问题变得非常复杂，但最重要的是让大家清楚地看到其中的因果关系。

如果有人在分析后仍无法明白你的意思，那就说明你的工作做得不到位。分析并不是把事情变得更复杂，而是让事情变得更简单和容易理解，方便大家做出决定。如果分析得不简单，不轻松，那就有可能是你的分析不正确。我想我只能这么说。

问：您曾经谈到《Mafia Wars》加入了大佬战斗机制，但并没有实现预期的指标，而《FarmVille》加入了抽奖游戏机制后效果却很理想。听起来，您似乎认为这些机制适用于多款游戏。您是否觉得开发社交游戏更重要的是定义成功的游戏机制，然后通过不同的表现形式使同一机制能够取悦不同的用户？

这应该是看游戏指标和机制设置是否能够彼此呼应。我想这一点并没有什么明确答案。有一些东西可以在各种游戏中运用，因为它们同样是为用户而设置，用户都有相似的心理作用。

但有些东西是没办法应用到其他游戏的，因为游戏种类不一样，用户对于游戏的期待也会有所不同。例如，如果我在《FarmVille》中卖枪或者坦克，用户一定会说，“这是什么东西啊？”（笑）这种做法会让他们觉得很突兀。

但为每天定期访问的用户提供奖赏这种机制，就能同时适用于《Mafia Wars》和《FarmVille》，具体情况要具体分析。

问：随着新平台的涌现，人们似乎开始寻找新平台的运作方式，接着就有一些运作方式成功了，有许多资源就开始向这类平台靠拢。您认为社交游戏领域也是这样吗？

我觉得现阶段就是如此。可以这么说，目前社交游戏似乎是有好多不同种类，其中有些种类和风格还不能算是实现了“社交化”。所以我觉得你所说的应该是对的。

问：您对Zynga所开发的《Guild of Heroes》这款游戏的看法很有趣，这款类似于《暗黑破坏神》的游戏算不上成功。您认为单人游戏难以实现社交化。

我并不是说它无法实现真正的社交化，而是认为要做到这一点真的非常非常困难。因为你虽然可以采用多种游戏机制，但要让纯粹的单人游戏加入5个社交游戏机制就宣布大功告成，几乎是不可能的。

我的意思是说，这只是许多人的想当然看法。但它实际上并不可行，因为不同用户对游戏的期望也大为迥异。用户希望从游戏中看到什么内容，你的项目延伸计划能否与之对应？这正是单人游戏难以变成社交游戏的原因之一。

问：《FarmVille》从本质上来说也是一款单人游戏，对吗？你得管理自己的农场，与其他玩家交流，但这并不是基本的游戏互动方式。首先，它是用户不同步的游戏。那么它与传统游戏的单人玩法有何不同？

在传统游戏操作中，用户不需要任何互动，除非是进入多人玩家战斗模式。单人游戏是相对独立的，就像你并不希望24小时都泡在舞会中一样，我认为社交游戏的互动频率和速度控制是恰到好处的。

因为用户的游戏体验并不同步，大家就可以避免“哦，我得回应这个人”这些社交压力，只需要作出“我稍后再回应”的决定，同时这种设置并不会减少用户的社交义务或者社交资本。

我想正是游戏的不同步因素，让玩家产生“我可以随时回到游戏”中的心理，因为社交游戏并不是MMO这种同步游戏——我们不期望、不要求或者设计一款让玩家每天都耗上数个小时的游戏。用户每天只需要玩10分钟或者15分钟就好。

问：我知道总会有些事情会与开发商的设想出现脱节，例如用户访问的持续时间有时候并不如开发商的预期。请问通过应用设计和用户反馈参数，你们是否发现玩家的行为符合预期，你们如何保证用户留存率？

我想再过几年，你就可以通过反馈参数了解更多玩家行为，以及他们的想法。另一种方法就是咨询用户的意见，获取质量回馈。

定量测量和质量回馈需要同步进行。反馈参数可以让你了解用户操作游戏的方式，而不是他们操作的原因。但也有些现象却很难解释清楚——从用户口中获取的质量回馈信息并不能真正代表他们的实际行动。

问：我觉得这一点非常有意思：游戏设计者觉得很好的东西并不一定是玩家喜欢的。但玩家觉得他们自己想要的东西，其实也未必是自己真正想要的。

对极了。如果你问玩家，“你想要这东西吗？”，然后严格按照玩家所说的去做，多半会设计出失败的游戏。每一种操作都会引起异议，我们所收集的任何数据也是鱼龙混杂，总是需要经过筛选和整理才可以使用。即使是质量回馈的结果，也会有不少用户反馈的杂音，所以我们只能有所选择地吸收。

问：你们是如何获取质量回馈信息的呢？仅仅是通过与用户在游戏社区中的互动吗？

是的，正如你所看到的那样，我们有一个非常活跃的论坛。社区用户随时会向我们回馈信息。

他们的反馈信息多得超出了我们的处理能力，所以我们从来不缺这些质量反馈，对此我们深表感激，因为用户对我们的游戏充满热情，他们只是告诉我们，“嘿，这就是我们希望你们改进的地方。”

问：你觉得社交游戏可以无限期地运作吗？从本质来说，是否只要保持更新，《FarmVille》就可以永远运营下去？或者说它的发展会在特定时间达到饱和？

《FarmVille》目前已经运营一年半了，但我们也不知道它的生命周期是多长，我想我们最终会找到答案的。

问：大众电视节目也有走到头的一天，MMO游戏的用户也在逐年递减，而社交游戏行业的情况如何仍然存在争议。

这是一个存在争议的问题，也是一个我们致力寻找答案的问题，我们也希望像用户所期待的那样，无限延长这些游戏的生命周期。目前，似乎还没有用户有所抱怨，所以……

问：留存率这个问题很关键。

是的。

问：你们是否一直尝试新方法以保证用户留存率？是通过内容更新吗？

是的。这是必须得做，也是最基本的事情，但光做到这一点还远远不够。不断更新内容是一项基本的功课，不仅仅是内容需要更新，游戏功能也不例外。以我们发布的农场游戏为例，它刚发布时已经有了不少功能，经过不断更新后现在又有了更多功能。这也就是它为什么能保证高留存率的原因之一。

其次，要保证游戏的质量。游戏运行是否稳定？加载速度是否够快？玩起来是否容易上手？所以内容是否都向用户准确地传达了信息？基本的用户体验也需要跟上步伐。

再次就是用户反馈层面的问题。你是否重视倾听用户的意见？当他们抱怨时，你是否给予关注并及时做出回应？是否确信没有人是故意抹黑游戏？

要想保证用户留存率就需要做好多方面的工作。我相信我们可以做得更多，尽管我们所处的是一个新兴的行业，我们的资源很有限。

问：Playfish认为创造性和反馈参数同样重要，所以他们的用户反馈信息可以同时反映这两种内容——这两者是相对独立的，并不是让其中一者指导另一者的工作进展。Zynga是否也有同样的理念？

我认为我们主要以反馈参数为出发点。那么，什么是“创造性”呢？人们对于创造性的定义各不相同。对我们来说什么是创造性呢？多数时候，对于游戏设计者来说，“创造性”就是指新的东西，“我所认为的有创意的东西”。

我们更愿意让终端用户来判断什么是创造性。终端用户会反馈他们喜欢什么，什么才叫创意。他们也会给我们出许多主意。所以我想这正是我们和Playfish的不同之处。我们希望通过反馈参数实现更多目标，从一开始就将反馈参数与创造性紧密结合。我想这两者是可以共存的，这一点毋庸置疑。

问：许多传统游戏开发商害怕自己的创意停止了，但我想如果你这样看问题会更妙，“我有些想法，现在我可以找出哪个是对的，哪个能吸引用户”。

确实如此。一切工作都可以再加强和提高，因为这并不是在画画，用户并非坐着不动原地欣赏你的作品。你所开发的是一项产品。用户会使用、触摸、体验它。在这种情况下，你的产品是处于不同范畴的概念，大家并不是在讨论一个艺术家多有创造性。

这也正是我认为游戏开发是一项工艺，不是画画的原因。比如说制作一个漂亮的碗，首先它得是一个碗，得体现它的用途。不同的人会以不同的方式使用这个碗，看待这个碗。你听取他们的意见，继续完善这个碗的制作工艺。

每个人都是有创意的。如果你想问的话，我今天就有100万个想法。但用户是否会喜欢这些想法，还是他们说了算。反馈参数就是通过正确的渠道征求用户的意见，用户会告诉你该选择哪个有创意的想法，你采用了这个想法后要如何改进，持续完善它。

我认为在传统的和掌机游戏行业，发行新游戏的成本非常高，发行续集的成本也是如此，但我们开发的是基于Flash和PHP的社交游戏，我们的优势在于可以持续改进想法。本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

A Philosophy That Extends Eastward: Social Games Zynga-Style

[In this extensive interview, the general manager of Zynga Beijing expands on the company's creative philosophy -- rely on metrics, not on what game designers think is "cool" or creative, and always serve the users.]

Zynga has firmly established itself in the social games space as it continues to launch hits like CityVille. But according to Andy Tian, scaling up is the company’s primary concern — delivering the right content and features to the company’s audience is paramount. This was why Zynga acquired the company Tian co-founded, XPD Media.

Tian, who has a background with Google, has a philosophy of letting analytics and user feedback drive game content. He believes that games — or social games at the very least — are a craft, not an art.

Therefore, he believes they are best designed using feedback from the users than relying on what game developers think is “cool” or “creative”.

His studio is primarily concentrated on developing games for the Western market, not Eastern — though his firm recently launched an adapted Chinese version of FarmVille currently growing on Facebook.

Still, Tian spoke at GDC China last month about his ideas on how social games development must be undertaken, which he expands on in this extensive Gamasutra interview.

What’s the primary focus of setting up in China? Is it using the expertise of Chinese game and web developers with things like microtransactions in a market that can capitalize on it? Or is it the cost savings gained from developing here?

Andy Tian: Cost saving is never a focus. It’s a matter of talent. It’s a matter of ability to scale. This is why we’re acquiring some new companies, because we wanted to scale faster and at higher quality. I mean, we’re not the only ones, right? Everyone else has that option, too.

In your GDC China presentation, you were talking about Mafia Wars and FarmVille, and you said there’s no shortcut; you have to scale up your team if you want to provide the content that the increased audience expects. And I found that to be interesting, because at a certain point it’s not easy to scale with high quality staff.

It’s not easy to recruit. Eventually you’re going to reach a ceiling.

AT: Any fast-growing company faces that issue, right? Your opportunities are enormous. And in time, your resources are always very, very limited. This is what I found even at Google. You think that Google has a ton of resources, right? No, very, very limited resources to do what we actually want to do.

So, ultimately, yeah, it’s all about prioritization, like where do you actually put resources where it really, really matters? That’s why metrics-driven game design and ongoing game improvement is so important to use, because we can only do a portion of what we actually want to do. But where do you prioritize? Not because it’s cool games, but because it actually drives the business forward.

I was really struck by your statement about games being a craft, and that metrics are a tool to hone that craft, essentially. And that is your philosophy.

AT: Yeah. I mean, our philosophy is always that we take a web approach to building. What we’re actually building is web-based entertainment. So, I would say, you know, MSN Messenger and [Chinese instant messenger] QQ, these are also web-based entertainment products too, because chatting is also entertaining and also contacts people, too. We’re doing the same thing, but infusing that process with fun.

A lot of people in the game industry, like they want to build games because they’re gamers, right? They like games, they play a lot of games. Our audience is actually in fact not gamers. The 200 million users out there who maybe play just a very, very basic kind of game, and that’s it.

So, how do you, as a gamer, build a game that can be continually enjoyed by the really, really non-gamers, like the students, like accountants, lawyers, like housewives, househusbands, children, etcetera?

When you look at making a game for Zynga, is it more about expanding to audiences that you haven’t tapped before, or is it increasing the satisfaction of the audiences you’ve found so far?

AT: I think it’s always both. Like CityVille, which recently launched. That’s a new category for Zynga. And, you know, FarmVille for Japan, it’s a new market and a new set of users. So, as a company, you always do both.

At the end of the day, you need to build products that — as long as you have a very clear idea of why you’re building a product, whether it’s to target a new segment, a new genre, or a brand new market, then you can shape the product development toward that.

You don’t want to be confused about it, a fuzzy idea. “Oh, I think this is where I want to go. Let’s build it first.” That always, you know, has a lot of problems.

Is your studio building games for platforms other than Facebook, or are you concentrating only on Facebook?

AT: We’re focusing right now on Facebook.

So, you’re not really concentrating on properties for the local market, where we’re physically sitting right now?

AT: [laughs] No. Of course, we’re watching this market very carefully, but I think it’s still early.

You talked about how virality isn’t as much a concern in China. I don’t know whether you were trying to that it’s not a concern in the sense that Chinese users behave differently, or it’s not a concern because the platforms behave differently here.

AT: Because the platform behaves differently. Because virality is not for free. Virality, like I said, needs to be supported by good communication channels, and making them to be viral. You can’t just be viral So, Facebook has done an awesome job of that. This is why they’re awesome partners. Because it’s about having those channels and being able to manage those effectively. I think that China’s platform still has a way to go toward that.

Do you feel satisfied with Facebook even given the changes they’ve made to their policies for communication in recent times?

AT: Sure. Facebook is the de facto platform for the Western audience — I think for the global audience. So, they’re not in a business of making games. We are. So,

obviously, there will be some differences on how they manage the platform versus how we want it to be. But as companies go, we just take that and we work with that. At the end, there are always things that we can do better and we can optimize more, and we expect Facebook to continue to evolve, too.

I’m very curious about your use of metrics in light of the discussion of bad metrics versus good metrics. Tracking the wrong thing, or tracking things, and getting the wrong interpretation of what’s going on. Have you found there have been a lot of pitfalls with the way you’ve approached metrics?

AT: Well, I think that’s always the case, right? Everything can be done the right way, can be done the wrong way. But how you track things the right way is a difficult question for sure. I think that a lot of the time, you don’t necessarily know what you are doing…

I think maybe the way to avoid having bad metrics is to always tie everything at the end — even though the problem may be very, very complex, at the end, the conclusions, the cause and effects have to be really crystalline clear to people.

If someone cannot understand what you mean after analysis, you haven’t done a good enough job. Part of analysis is not to make things complicated. It’s to make things simpler and easier to understand for people to make decisions. If it’s not simple, if it’s not easy, probably your analysis is not right. I think that’s probably all I can say.

You discussed how, with Mafia Wars, the team implemented boss battles, and that didn’t really increase the metrics you wanted to increase, versus adding a simple lottery system to FarmVille. You made it sound like these mechanics could be repeatable across multiple games.

Do you feel that developing social games is more about defining successful mechanisms and then targeting different audiences with the same mechanism via different ways of presentation?

AT: You should always look at best practice metrics and mechanics. You always see how they can apply. I think it’s one of those things where there’s no clear-cut answer. Some things can be applied across games, because people are people, right? People are people, and they have the same psychological drivers.

But some things cannot be applied to other games because game types are different. People’s expectations of how a game will behave is different. For example, if I start selling guns or tanks in FarmVille, people are going to say, “What the hell is that?” [laughs] That’s beyond people’s expectations.

But things like daily returning rewards, that can be applied to both Mafia Wars and FarmVille. Again, it’s kind of a case-by-case basis.

With every new platform that comes out, it seems that people start trying to define new ways to go with it, and then a couple approaches become successful, and things start to coalesce around that. Do you think that’s happening with social games?

AT: I think that’s the [current] stage of development, too. So, right now, social gaming seems to be a couple different categories, but still many, many categories and genres have not been “socialized” yet, shall we say? I think what you said, actually literally, may be right.

It was interesting that you talked about that game [Guild of Heroes] that Zynga worked on, the Diablo-ish game that ended up not really panning out. And the concept that you can’t really “socialize” a single-player game experience.

AT: I don’t want to say you can’t really socialize… [but] It’s really, really hard. I think it’s really, really hard because you can definitely take a lot of mechanics, but it’s really hard to take a whole single-player game, add five social mechanics, boom, voila, you have it.

I mean, that’s a simplistic view that many people have. But ultimately that will not really work because people have very different expectations. Again, it’s about player expectations, what they want to see with the game. Do your future expansions jive with that? And that’s one of the problems which makes single-player games hard to work as social games.

FarmVille, ultimately, is a one-player experience, right? You manage your own farm. You interact with other people, but it’s not fundamental to the core gameplay interactions. First of all, it’s asynchronous. What separates that from a traditional game in terms of a single-player play path?

AT: Traditional console games, you don’t have any interaction unless you go into multiplayer battles, during campaigns. The single-player is self-contained. But like you may not necessarily want to be at a party 24 hours a day, I think there’s something cool about the pace and tempo of social gaming interactions.

Because it’s asynchronous, you don’t have the huge pressure you [could] have, “Oh, I must respond to this person,” [instead, it's] “Okay, I can respond to them a little later.” But that doesn’t lessen the social obligation or social capital that you have.

I think it’s precisely because it’s asynchronous that people feel “I can come back to the game anytime.” Because remember, for social games, unlike MMOs — a synchronous game — we don’t expect, require, or design a game for users to play hours a day. It’s like 10 minutes, 15 minutes a day.

I know there have been some surprises, like session duration not necessarily at first being the same as developers anticipated. Through metrics and through application of design, does player behavior now align with what you anticipate, and can you maintain that?

AT: I think after a couple years, you understand more about player behavior through metrics. One way the metrics can definitely help you is to understand how players really behave, how they really think. Another way is you always ask your user to get qualitative feedback.

Quantitative measurement and qualitative feedback need to go hand in hand. Metrics can tell you how they’re doing it, but not why are they doing it. Sometimes you may not be able to answer that — like qualitative feedback from users sometimes doesn’t really represent what they actually do.

That’s what I find really fascinating. It’s a well-known fact that what game designers might think is cool is not necessarily what users might like. But it’s also true that potentially what users might think they want isn’t exactly what they want.

AT: That’s exactly right. If you ask users, “Would you want this thing?” If you just base your entire game design evolution based on strictly what your users tell you do, you’ll probably fail. Any input has noise. Any data we collect has noise that needs to be filtered and cleaned up. With qualitative feedback, users also have noise that we can filter and then take that as input.

How do you obtain qualitative feedback? Is that just simply community interaction?

AT: Yeah. We have a very, very active forum, as you’ve probably seen. Community users usually give us feedback all the time.

They give us more feedback than we can process. So, there’s never a lack of qualitative feedback from users, which is one thing that we really appreciate, because they are really passionate about our games, and they just tell us, “Hey, here’s what I’d like you to change.”

Do you think games can run indefinitely? Can FarmVille last forever, essentially, as long as you keep updating it? Or is there a certain saturation point?

AT: So far, it’s been running for a year and a half, so we don’t know. I guess we’ll find out!

Popular television shows come to an end. MMO audiences drop off after years. It’s an open question for the social game industry.

AT: It’s an open question. And the one that we’re also looking to find out, and we’re also looking to expand our lifetime as much as users want us. So far, users don’t seem to be complaining, so…

Retention is a real concern, obviously.

AT: Yes.

Have you honed in on like the right ways to retain users? Is it through content updates?

AT: Yes. Well, that’s one of the basic things that must be done, but it’s definitely nowhere sufficient. It’s a basic thing that you need to have constantly updated things — not only content, but also feature updates. Like I said before, like our farm game at launch had this many features [gestures, expanding his hands] it now has this many features. That’s one of the reasons why you see the retention there.

And two, is to kind of be able to keep up the quality of games. Is it stable? Is it fast to load? Is it easy to play? Is all the content clearly labeled, to users? The basic user experience needs to be kept up to speed.

And third, it’s just servicing on the community side. Are you listening to users? When a user complains, are you listening to them? Are you responding to them? Are you ensuring that there are no people trying to hack the game?

It’s a lot of those things combined that eventually result in this thing called “retention”. So, you need to do all these things right. I’m sure we could be doing a lot more things. Again, it’s a matter of being in a young industry. We have limited resources.

Playfish has discussed having creative and metrics at the same level, so there’s a feedback between them — no one’s telling the other what to do. Do you have a similar philosophy at Zynga?

AT: I think we are metrics-driven. It depends on what you mean by “creative”. Like, what is creative? People’s definition of creative is very, very different. We ask different people… What is creative to us? [If] people like it. Many times, to a game designer, what is “creative” is what is new. “What I think is creative.”

I think we want to leave that judgment to the end users more. The end users will tell us what they like, what’s creative. In fact, they’ll give us a ton of ideas, too.

So, I think that’s where we differ. We want to drive as many things as possible through metrics and achieve, in the very beginning, not a balance, but a really, really integrated effort between metrics and creative. I think they can exist both in the same time. Very much so.

A lot of traditional game people sort of recoil from this idea, this sense that their creativity is being shut down, but I think if you look at it as, “I have some ideas. Now I can find out which one’s right, which one people respond to,” it’s more appealing.

AT: Exactly. That’s exactly right. Everything can be improved, because you’re not doing a painting where everyone can just sit back and appreciate it. What you’re building is a consumer product. Users have to use it, have to touch it, have to play it. As soon as that happens, you’re in a different category than how creative an artist is.

And this is why I say game building is a craft; it’s not painting. To build a cool looking bowl, first of all it has to be a bowl first. It has to be functional first.

And different people have different ways of using that bowl, of looking at it. And you take that feedback and continue to improve it.

Everyone’s creative. I have 10 million ideas if you ask me today. But whether or not users will like those ideas, well, let’s ask the users. And metrics is a way to ask the user in the right way. They’ll give you the answer to pick which creative idea, and once you’ve implemented that idea, how to keep iterating, keep on improving it.

I think in the traditional and console mobile industry… new releases are very, very expensive. New sequels are very, very expensive. But for us, we’re Flash-based, PHP-based. We can change like that. That enables to continually improve an idea.（Source：Gamasutra）