作者：Cormac Foster

Zynga的《黑手党战争》、《Farmville》和《Bubble Safari》是颇为热门的消遣活动，这些作品协助我们定义社交/休闲游戏。但面对持续变更的市场和不受欢迎的领导者，Zynga是否能够创造性跳脱公司自己制造的困境？

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基本情况

Zynga变成社交游戏领域佼佼者并未经历很长时间。2007年，Mark Pincus于Facebook推出《Texas Hold’Em Poker》（游戏邦注：即现在的《Zynga Poker》）。1年里，他获得近4000万美元的风投资本。1年后，Zynga在推出《Farmville》不久后活跃用户增至4000万，一个游戏帝国就这样诞生了。Zynga 2011年底开始上市，之后公司股票逐步提升，这主要依靠《CityVille》、《Bubble Safari》和《Words With Friends》等作品杰出表现的支撑。自2012年3月公司股票达到15美元/股的高峰水平后，丑闻和失败数据促使Zynga的股票跌到约3美元/股。Zynga目前正在极力挽回公司几个月前享有的市场估值、名声和主导地位。

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主要问题

Zynga的问题主要有4个。有些错在Zynga自己，有些则不是。

1. 品牌问题。《黑手党战争》拥有忠实的粉丝基础，还有就是《Words With Friends》、《Hidden Chronicles》和《Pioneer Trail》。这些都是Zynga游戏，但Zynga本身没有收获任何的忠诚度。社交玩家只对游戏本身，而非开发游戏的公司感兴趣。这就是为什么OMGPOP《Draw Something》之类的作品能够在短短几天里突然问世。《Draw Something》让Zynga心生战栗，致使他们以1.8亿美元收购这家公司。在资金耗竭前，你能够采取这一策略的机会非常有限，且热门应用的消亡速度和发展速度一样迅猛。公司维持主导地位的唯一方法是，持续炮制出大量热门新作品，这是项不易维持和扩展的业务。

2. 收益问题。Zynga和Facebook基于不平等合作关系绑定在一起。显然，Zynga依然主导Facebook的游戏渠道，但玩家还有众多其他选择，且Facebook愿意进行试水。当Facebook提高其他非Zynga游戏的曝光度时，Zynga业务及其股票一落千丈。

在最近的业绩发布会上，Mark Pincus承认Zynga遭遇的Facebook问题，他表示，“将公司的Facebook Web足迹延伸到移动平台将给他们带来更多发展机会。”就长远来看，事实也许就是如此，虽然众所周知，通过移动平台流量创收是项艰巨任务。就短期来看，Zynga需尽可能抓住Facebook给予他们的机会。

3. 泡沫问题。Zynga并非唯一遭遇挫折的社交游戏公司。EA的PopCap收购举措似乎也将以惨淡态势收场。社交游戏已深入人心，但其估值似乎有些过高。Zynga在泡沫中获得融资，在泡沫中树立自己的期望，现在他们需要在重新修正市场的现实世界中满足泡沫状态的预期。

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4. 领导问题。谈到管理人员，该公司前高级管理层并没有太多支持者。尽管Mark Pincus称所有人都是CEO，但据悉他本人有控制癖。当他成为游戏决策主宰者时，所有人都听其自然。然后事情逐步恶化，用户也日益消失。

2010年末，我们听到公司股票期权追回的传言，据称Pincus要求某些员工归还他们的期权，否则就会被开除。当Zynga高管在股价暴跌前将手中股票兑现时（游戏邦注：普通员工的股票依然保持冻结），Pincus成为某指控内幕交易集体诉讼的瞄准目标。

Pincus似乎毫不在乎普通员工，当你靠制作电子游戏谋生时，你的员工就是你唯一的实质资产。这给竞争对手挖走杰出人才创造了可趁之机。

参与者

Mark Pincus, CEO：Mark Pincus是个聪明的人，他依托社交媒介，创建推送消息服务Freeloader和社交网络Tribe Networks。此外，为了创收，他大胆变通规则。除股价挫折外，Pincus承认他们在用户的电脑中装入间谍软件，旨在获得创收：

我很清楚我希望能够控制自己的命运，因此我需要获得收益。同样，我现在需要获得创收。所以我自己投资我的公司，但我在创收上动用小伎俩，旨在立即获得收益。我指的是，若玩家下载此Zwinky工具栏，我就给予他们扑克筹码，这就像是，我下载内容后，就无法摆脱它。为了获得收益，我采取各种办法，这样我们才能够获得发展，成为真正的企业。所以要掌控你自己的命运。这是个很大的经验收获，控制你的公司。因此待到我们募集资金时，我们就是家有利可图的公司。

Pincus持续走在前沿，进而将公司推向当前状态。他目前面临的挑战是，随着行业日益商品化，如何确保维持公司的当前位置。

预后分析

Zynga股票未来几年都不会回到高峰状态。公司的当前游戏作品将继续主导他们的市场份额，制作之中的作品也许会获得突出表现，但竞争性将侵蚀公司的主导地位。在未来几年里，
Zynga也许依然是最庞大的社交游戏发行商，但它的市场份额将逐步缩减，且这片市场的估值也将有所降低。除非该公司在某个新方案中取得圆满胜利，否则我们将没有理由收购Zynga，因此公司的估值将持续走低，直到同其实际价值持平。

公司是否能够获救？

Zynga应该继续制作相关热门游戏，但要维持其社交领域的稳固地位，Pincus需要采取两个举措，方能取得突出成绩。

首先是朝提供基础架构的方向迈进。这是条艰难道路，且没有什么有效方式能够锁住Zynga平台的杰出开发者。

第二个，同时也是更具风险性的举措是，转投在线赌场题材，这是Pincus 7月重新挖掘的旧题材。鉴于在线赌场游戏最近面临内部困境，因此在Zynga将赌场题材变成主要创收来源前，他们多半还需依靠《Farmville》续集很多年。

其他主流公司的窘境

Research In Motion：面对公司的巨大损失（游戏邦注：有11次的表现比预期糟糕），据悉公司着手向运营商推广公司一再推迟的Blackberry 10设备发布日期。有谣言称，公司也许会和三星达成授权协议—–或者甚至是出售。

HP：公司上周公布糟糕创收成绩，电脑和打印设备收益下滑，108亿美元的资产记录中有89亿美元的亏损。据报道称，HP正在成立新部门，企图进军用户平板电脑市场，这此消息尚未得到进一步确认。

Nokia：这一手机巨头的季度收益和收入超出预期，有效降低公司的资金消耗率，但公司再次遭遇资金损失情况，债务评级降至垃圾级。该公司在美国智能手机市场依旧难以取得突破，他们不得不将旗舰产品Lumia 900的零售价减半，降至49.99美元。

38 Studios: 没有变化

Barnes & Noble：没有变化

Groupon：Groupon的股价随发展步伐的减缓进一步降至历史新低。T-Mobile USA：公司的困境持续恶化，第二季度流失55.7万高价值合约用户，用户净损失数量达20.5万。

Netflix：没有变化

EA：没有变化

Best Buy：在于周末拒绝了Richard Schulze的收购邀约后，Best Buy聘请Hubert Joly担任公司CEO。Joly是个懂得扭转时局的商业人士，过去在EDS等公司中取得不俗表现，但他的经验主要集中在酒店业。Best Buy的股票初步下跌7%。

Motorola Mobility：没有变化

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

ReadWriteWeb DeathWatch: Zynga

By Cormac Foster

Zynga’s Mafia Wars, Farmville and Bubble Safari are enormously popular pastimes that helped define social/casual gaming. But faced with a changing market and an unpopular leader, can Zynga innovate its way out of the hole it keeps digging for itself?

The Basics

Zynga’s climb to the top of social gaming didn’t take long. In 2007, Mark Pincus launched the Texas Hold’Em Poker app (now Zynga Poker) on Facebook. Within a year, he had acquired nearly $40 million of venture capital. A year later, Zynga reached 40 million active users on the back of Farmville, and an empire was born. Zynga went public in late 2011, and its stock took off, bolstered by strong performances from games like CityVille, Bubble Safari and Words With Friends. Since it peaked in March 2012 at nearly $15 per share, scandals and missed numbers have driven Zynga’s stock down to just over $3 per share. The company is now fighting to gain back the valuation, reputation and dominance it enjoyed just a few months ago.

The Problems

Zynga’s biggest problems break down into four buckets. Some of them are Zynga’s fault, and others aren’t:

1. The Brand Problem Mafia Wars has a loyal following. So do Words With Friends, Hidden Chronicles and Pioneer Trail. They’re all Zynga games, but Zynga itself does not command any loyalty. Social gamers are interested in individual game, not the companies producing them. That’s how something like OMGPOP’s Draw Something could come out of nowhere in a matter of days. Draw Something scared Zynga enough to prompt it to buy the company for $180 million. You can only do that so many times before the well runs dry, and hot apps can die as fast as they grow. The only way to stay on top is to keep churning out new hit games. That’s a tough business to maintain and scale.

2. The ‘Book Problem Zynga and Facebook are tied together in a very unequal partnership. Sure, Zynga still dominates Facebook’s gaming channel, but there are plenty of other options for gamers, and Facebook is willing to test the waters. When Facebook made non-Zynga games easier to discover, Zynga’s business – and its stock – took a dive.

On a recent earnings call, Mark Pincus acknowledged Zynga’s Facebook problem, noting that “getting beyond the Facebook Web footprint through mobile is going to give us more growth opportunities.” In the long run, that may be the case, though monetizing mobile traffic has been notoriously difficult for everyone. In the short term, Zynga has to hang on to as big a piece of the pie as Facebook will let them eat.

3. The Bubble Problem Zynga isn’t the only social gaming company that’s disappointed. Electronic Arts’ PopCap acquisition is also starting to look like a bust. Social gaming is here to stay, but it seems tremendously overvalued. Zynga was funded in a bubble, built its expectations in a bubble and now has to meet bubble-sized expectations in a world that’s made a market correction.

4. The Boss Problem Speaking of management, the former wunderkind at the top of the org chart hasn’t made a lot of friends. Despite all his talk about everyone being a CEO, Mark Pincus has always been known as a bit of a control freak. When he was on top of his game, everyone let it slide. Then it got ugly, and so did the public.

In late 2010, we heard rumors of stock option clawbacks where Pincus allegedly demanded that certain employees return their options or be fired. Then, when Zynga executives cashed out before the stock tanked (and while everyday employees remained locked up), Pincus became the target of a class-action lawsuit alleging insider trading.

Pincus doesn’t seem to care about the common employee, and when you make video games for a living, your employees are your only real asset. That helps competitors to swipe your best talent and makes it really easy to mock you in videos like this one from Kixeye (language not suitable for work):

The Players

Mark Pincus, CEO: Mark Pincus is a smart guy, and he gets social media, having founded the push news service Freeloader and the social network Tribe Networks. He’s also not afraid of bending the rules to make a buck. In addition to the stock clawback, Pincus admits to dumping spyware on his users’ computers to turn a profit:

I knew that I wanted to control my destiny, so I knew I needed revenues, right, f*cking, now. Like, I needed revenues now. So I funded the company myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this Zwinky toolbar which was like, I don’t know, I downloaded it once and couldn’t get rid of it. *laughs* We did anything possible just to just get revenues so that we could grow and be a real business…So control your destiny. So that was a big lesson, controlling your business. So by the time we raised money we were profitable.

Pincus got the company this far by being ahead of the curve. His challenge now is coming up with a way to stay there as the industry becomes more commoditized.

The Prognosis

Zynga’s stock will not return to its peak for years, if ever. Its current franchises will likely hold onto a good deal of their market share, and the titles in the pipeline should perform well enough, but competition will eat into the company’s dominance. Within a few years, Zynga may still be the biggest social game publisher, but own a far smaller portion of a market valued far more conservatively than it is today. Unless it hits a major home run with one of its new initiatives (see below), there’s really no reason for anyone to acquire Zynga, so the company’s value will continue to float down to a point justified by its actual profit.

Can This Company Be Saved?

Zynga should continue to produce relevant, popular games, but to remain a power player in the social world, Pincus needs to win big with two moves.

First is his push toward becoming an infrastructure provider. This will be an uphill climb, and there’s no good way to lock in developers who become successful on the Zynga platform.

Second, and much riskier, is a jump into online gambling, a recurring theme that Pincus resurrected in July. Given the recent domestic troubles online gambling has faced, Zynga will likely be relying on years of Farmville sequels before gambling becomes a major revenue source.

The Deathwatch So Far

Research In Motion: Amid Massive losses – more than 11 times worse than expected – the company has reportedly started pitching its long-delayed Blackberry 10 devices to carriers. And rumors are swirling that the company may do a licensing deal – or even a sale – with Samsung.

HP: The company reported disappointing earnings last week, with declines in computer and printing revenues – and an $8.9 billion loss on a $10.8 billion writedown. Reports that HP is creating a new division to take another plunge into the consumer tablet market did not reassure anyone.

Nokia: The mobile phone giant’s quarterly revenue and earnings exceeded expectations and it has reduced its cash burn rate, but the company lost money yet again and saw its debt ratings cut to junk status. And it still hasn’t cracked the U.S. smartphone market as it halves the retail price of its flagship Lumia 900 to $49.99.

38 Studios: No change

Barnes & Noble: No change

Sony: No change

Groupon: Groupon’s stock price continues to hit all-time lows as growth slows. T-Mobile USA: The company’s troubles continue to mount, reporting second quarter losses of 557,000 high-value contract customers, and a net loss of 205,000 customers.

Netflix: No change

Electronic Arts: No change

Best Buy: After rejecting Richard Schulze’s takeover bid over the weekend, Best Buy hired Hubert Joly as its CEO. Joly is a turnaround mercenary who’s done good work in the past with companies like EDS, but whose primary experience is in the hospitality industry. Best Buy’s stock dropped 7% in an initial response.

Motorola Mobility: no change（Source：readwriteweb）