据irishtimes消息，社交游戏开发商Zynga讨得了数以亿计用户的欢心，但却无法让自己的邻居满意，硅谷有太多的人不喜欢Zynga。这看起来很奇怪，因为在硅谷以外，有数以亿计的用户喜欢这家公司，或者至少会喜欢这家公司的产品，比如Facebook热门游戏FarmVille、Mafia Wars和PetVille。

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每个月有超过2亿的人在玩这些热门的社交游戏，而且Zynga还很会赚钱。来自Inside Network的数据显示，Zynga今年的营收有望达到5亿美元。该公司员工超过了1000名，在硅谷有两个办公室，在都柏林也有相当的规模。

部分抱怨可能是因为Zynga的产品过于可爱了，游戏开发商在3月份举行的游戏开发者大会上谴责Zynga的游戏理念。当FarmVille游戏经理Bill Mooney在讲台上呼吁开发者去Zynga工作的时候，台下嘘声一片，有个人甚至高呼，“你又不做游戏！”

这是很奇怪的，Zynga的产品不但受欢迎，而且有利可图，但却被认为不是真正的游戏。批评者将Zynga的旗下产品比喻成鼓励用户强制性完成任务，并命令朋友施以援手的消磨时间的东西。游戏评论家Ian Bogost甚至发明了一款名为Cow Clicker的Facebook游戏来讽刺Zynga的作法。Cow Clicker对Zynga的讽刺相当辛辣，但是如果人们喜欢，能说它不是一款好产品吗？

也许对Zynga的坏感觉并不仅限于游戏精英。当Zynga首席执行官马克-平卡斯(Mark Pincus)参加苹果全球开发者大会并进行主题演讲时，一提到FarmVille观众就发出了嘘声。有人指责这家公司模仿了其它热门游戏，但是模仿在硅谷可以说是一个完全被接受的技术。从一开始，马克-平卡斯的Zynga很快实现营收。在平卡斯面向其它创业公司发表演讲的时候，他也承认，做了很可怕的事情，即马上就赚了钱。马克-平卡斯和他那堆游戏还受到了观察家迈克尔-阿灵顿的抨击，可是赚钱在硅谷并不是道德犯罪。

为什么会出现这样的状况，总结一下就是：在硅谷，如果想获得强烈的赞扬，就必须具备“一个伟大的事业”的因素，不能仅仅贪图赚钱。你需要像修女般谦逊，或者有理由证明这是一个更广泛的、更鼓舞人心的巨大社会工程。苹果做出了漂亮的产品；谷歌组织了全世界的信息；Mozilla释放了网络；维基百科解密了知识；即使甲骨文也能被称为创新了销售方式。

对于Zynga，该公司需要一个使命，要超越出让人们不断点击下一头奶牛。该公司已经努力创造“友善”形象，去年该公司效仿先贤开通了 zynga.org，这是一个非盈利的业务，主要用于慈善。说实话，这家公司会不会继续遭遇麻烦？当你将快乐带给全球数以亿计的用户时，谁还在乎邻居在想什么？

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也许，当所有人等待这家公司失败的时候却意外展示了一个令人难以置信的成功，那些人被证明是错的，并且将他们那些所谓的真正游戏全打败了。到底什么决定了一个部门的成功？关于Zynga最持久的批评是Facebook的游戏模式只不过是个噱头，终将昙花一现，即将被下一个大片所取代。Zynga 的投资者们，包括谷歌和软银，显然不这么认为。

但是Zynga背后的压力很大，那些人盯着该公司每次的新举动，等待着在该公司动摇的瞬间将其击败。Zynga很善于讨得Facebook用户的喜爱，也很有可能成为第一个难以取悦硅谷程序员、评论家、企业家的企业。

THERE ARE many people in Silicon Valley who really don’t like Zynga. That’s odd because outside the Valley, millions of people love the company – or at least their more famous products, Facebook games like FarmVille, Mafia Wars and PetVille. Over 200 million people dabble with its products every month. The company also makes a great deal of money, which is usually the way to warm the hearts in the Bay Area: according to the Inside Network, its revenue is set to approach $500 million this year. It has over a thousand employees, including two offices in the Valley, and a sizeable presence in Dublin.

What’s not to like? Perhaps part of the complaint is Zynga’s products are too likeable. Game developers at the opinionated but influential Game Developers Conference here in March railed against Zynga’s gaming philosophy, when they won one of the conference’s key awards. When the general manager for FarmVille, Bill Mooney, called on stage for game developers to come work at Zynga, he was booed. One even shouted, “But you don’t make games!”

That’s what you might call the gamer insider critique of Zynga: that whatever it is that makes their offerings popular and profitable, it isn’t really gaming. Critics characterise the flagship Zynga products as challenge-free time-occupiers that merely encourage their users to compulsively complete tasks, and then commandeer friends to help them. Gamer critic Ian Bogost even invented an actual Facebook game of his own, an embodied criticism of Zynga’s approach called Cow Clicker.

In Cow Clicker, you get a cow. You can click on it. In six hours, you click it again. Clicking earns you clicks, but you can also buy “premium” cows, and buy your way out of the six-hour time delay by spending more money. You can also publish stories about your cow to the rest of your friends, to encourage them to become cow clickers too.

As a satire of the Zynga way, it’s pretty damning. But if people enjoy the product, might it not be a little elitist?

It has to be said bad feeling toward Zynga doesn’t seem to be exclusively from the gamer elite. When Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus joined Steve Jobs for one of his famous keynotes at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, he faced audience boos just for mentioning FarmVille (no one ever boos Steve’s keynotes).

Some have accused the company of imitating other popular games that preceded it. But imitation is a perfectly acceptable technique in the Valley. From the start, Pincus pushed Zynga to make revenue very quickly, including accepting deals where players signed up for credit cards in order to earn in-game tokens. When Pincus gave a speech to other start-up entrepreneurs he admitted that he “did every horrible thing in the book. . . just to get revenues right away”, and was slammed for it by Valley-watcher Michael Arrington. But making money isn’t a moral crime in the Valley either.

I think all of these things combine to turn the average Silicon Valley inhabitant against Zynga, in public at least. My own theory, though, is that it’s not what Zynga does that gets them unfavourable internal reviews: it’s what it lacks.

Almost every company that gets the glowing praise in the Valley, has some element of a “Great Work” about it. You can’t just be money-grubbing. You have to veil or justify that avarice with a wider, more socially inspiring project. Apple makes beautiful products; Google organises the world’s information; Mozilla frees the web; Wikipedia unlocks knowledge; Oracle . . . well, even Oracle mutters about innovation between making sales.

For local acceptance, Zynga needs a mission and an image beyond getting people to click the next cow. They’ve made some effort to create goodwill. Last year, the company took a leaf out of Google’s book, and started zynga.org, a non-profit spin-off that uses in-game sales to fund charities in Haiti and, closer to home, for a San Francisco animal welfare charity.

Really, though, should they even bother? When you have hundreds of millions of happy customers across the world, who cares what your neighbours think?

Perhaps. Having others waiting for you to fail can be an incredible inspiration to show them up, prove them wrong, and beat them all at the real game of business survival. But for a sector that prides itself on its rationality, a lot of what determines success here is image. About the most persistent critique of Zynga is that its central business of Facebook gaming is a gimmick, a temporary boom that will vanish as soon as the next blockbuster games come along. Zynga’s investors, which include Google and Softbank, clearly do not think so.

But that pressure from behind to prove yourself with every launch, and the wind of opinion waiting to beat you down when you waver even for a moment, is a hard combination to beat.

Zynga is the master at getting Facebook users to buy love. It may be the first company to show you can’t simply buy the love of the Valley’s coders, critics and entrepreneurs.(source:irishtimes/techweb)