社交游戏发行公司Zynga现在堪称是硅谷发展最为迅速的公司，这一切都是因为它有一个对每款游戏每一次点击都十分计较的“数据狂人”老板。现在，Zynga开始投注更多的精力在许多资深游戏设计师长期以来的一个问题上，即研究如何开发热门游戏。

以上是游戏开发公司Zynga首席执行官Mark Pincus及其合作伙伴兼Zynga公司董事会成员Bing Gordon在旧金山Techcrunch Disrupt会议中一段评论。这次对Pincus, Gordon及其Kleiner Perkins公司合作伙伴John Doerr的采访节目中涉及了Zynga几位领军人物对公司快速发展和社交游戏发展方向的看法。

首先，Pincus表示现在Zynga公司发售的社交游戏在Facebook上拥有2亿1500多万的月活跃用户。在这4年来，Zynga公司逐渐发展成拥有员工1200人，每天需增长1千兆兆数据的主要社交游戏公司，仅仅在昨天一天就有3300万人玩Zynga公司游戏。

对此，Doerr也认为Zynga是业内发展最快，收益最高、最能取悦玩家的游戏公司。 在他看来，Zynga公司可以称得上是货真价实的“网络财富”。

Mark Pincus

Picus将Zynga的成功归功于公司的两重性。首先，Zynga公司中有很多经验丰富的网络老手，譬如Pincus自己，Zynga就是他成立的第四家网络公司。同时Zynga还汇聚了Gordon等游戏业资深人员。对此，Gordon也表示将提升Zynga公司的游戏设计当作自己的奋斗目标。因此，Zynga公司现在在全球8个地方建立了13个游戏工作室，拥有600多名游戏工程师。虽然Zynga多次被批判抄袭竞争对手的游戏。但对此Pincus则认为Zynga还正处于慢慢学会如何尊重游戏和网络设计原则的过程中。

Pincus目标是创造出某些与人们生活息息相关的事物，比如Zynga公司的社交游戏，虽然它们还不足以令玩家无法自拔，也还不能成为真正的大型市场，但对此Gordon表示，当自己还在艺电有限公司（EA）任职时，他认为所谓的大型的视频游戏市场应该有1000万到2000万游戏玩家。但之后随着手机用户突破10亿大关，他不得不重新定义何谓“大型市场”。

Pincus认为，我们现在正慢慢走向“应用经济”，人们接触应用就像打电话一样简单。为了坚持尽可能争取更多游戏用户这一长远目标，Zynga公司要决定其对Facebook等平台的依赖程度。现在Zynga也开始向多样化发展，但这一进程受到了Facebook等社交网站的制约，因为这些网站本身就能为Zynga吸引更多的游戏玩家。

在Pincus看来，电脑和视频游戏等大型市场的顾客正是最基本的Zynga游戏玩家。Zynga可以降低玩游戏的门槛，玩家只需点击几下鼠标便可以开始畅玩网络游戏。

现在，Zynga每天都对上千万次的点击逐一进行分析测量，每天都在衡量用户对游戏的满意程度。这种方式有益于游戏开发团队更好地迎合玩家的需求。从而令Zynga更加接近自己的目标，即令每一个员工都可以成为自己工作领域的“CEO”。

Gordon表示自己每天都可以从Zynga学到很多东西。他认为这家公司十分具有投资吸引力，融合了当今四大最具争议性的时尚主题：网络游戏，社交媒介、应用经济和虚拟商品新型支付方式。

Pincus曾被踢出自己的一家公司，因此在Zygna创办之初，Pincus的一个目标就是要控制住Zynga。虽然之后他为Zynga争取了Kleiner Perkins等好几位投资商的加盟，Pincus仍尽力把握公司的控制权。随着Gordon提出了多个建议，Pincus指出过去自己从不采取投资商的意见，他认为明明是自己控制着公司但最后却不得不听从别人的意见有些讽刺。他认为企业不仅应该重视那些可以带来大量投资金额的投资商，还要重视那些能够分享长远计划的投资商。

Gordon认为Zynga就好比早些时候的EA，“我好像回到了童年，但不同的是，成长历程更快速、更有趣也更变得聪慧。”（本文由游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译）

Social game publisher Zynga has become the fastest-growing startup in the valley in part because it is run by “data junkies” who measure every click in every game. At the same time, Zynga is paying more attention to the long-term efforts of its veteran game designers, who have developed an intuition about what games will be popular.

That’s one of the comments made today by Mark Pincus (pictured at top), chief executive of Zynga, and Bing Gordon,  a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a board member at Zynga, at the Techcrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco. The on-stage interview between Pincus, Gordon and Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr covered how the company’s key leaders view Zynga’s rapid growth and where social games are headed.

Zynga’s social games have more than 215 million monthly active users on Facebook, Pincus said. In four years, the company has grown to more than 1,200 employees and it adds more than a petabyte of data per day as it measures the activities of its users. The company’s games were played by 33 million players just yesterday. Doerr said Zynga is the fastest growing, the most profitable, and the company with the happiest customers of any Kleiner Perkins company in history. He added that Zynga could be considered a true “internet treasure.”

Pincus credited Zynga’s success in part to the company’s two-fold DNA. It is full of web veterans such as him (Pincus is on his fourth web company), and game veterans such as Gordon, whose personal goal at Zynga is to “level up” the company’s game design. That’s why Zynga now has 13 game studios in eight locations with more than 600 game engineers. Zynga has been criticized for copying the games of its rivals. But Pincus said the company’s “journey” has been to learn to respect both the disciplines of game design and of the fast-moving web.

Pincus said his goal is to create something people can’t live without. As popular as the company’s games are, they aren’t yet indispensable to people, nor have they hit a true mass market yet. Gordon said that, while at Electronic Arts, he used to think that mass market video games had audiences of 10 – 20 million users. But as cell phones reach far past 1 billion users, he has come to think of the mass market in new ways.

Pincus said we are headed for an “app economy,” where getting an app to start is as easy as picking up a telephone to make a call. By sticking to a long-term vision of reaching as many users as it can, Zynga can make its own decisions such as how dependent it should be on platforms such as Facebook. Zynga has begun to diversify, but it has stuck with social network platforms because they help it get its games to the largest numbers of users.

Pincus targeted those mass market consumers with his original vision for Zynga. What if, he said, Zynga could lower the barriers to entry for playing a game, allowing users to start playing an online game in just three clicks of the mouse.

Now, Zynga measures every click of every user playing games every day by the tens of millions. Pincus said that Zynga measures its customer satisfaction every day. By doing that, it allows its team members to do the right thing for customers more easily. It thus enables Zynga to better live up to its goal of allowing every employee to “be a CEO” in their own area of responsibility.

Gordon said he learns a lot from Zynga every day. He was attracted to the company as an investor because it combined four disruptive themes: online gaming, social media, the app economy, and new payment methods such as virtual goods.

Pincus has been thrown out of one of his own companies before. In starting Zynga, one of his goals was to keep control of it. He managed to stay in control, yet he invited big investors such as Kleiner Perkins to join. With Gordon offering so much advice, Pincus said he has never taken and acted on so much advice from his investors before. He considers it ironic that he kept control but ended up taking so much advice. Pincus said that entrepreneurs should focus on investors who can bring not only the highest pre-money valuation but a shared vision for the long term.

Gordon said that Zynga was like Electronic Arts in the early days. “It’s like a return to my youth, but three times faster, more fun, and smarter people.”（Source：GamesBeat）