作者：Dean Takahashi

姗姗来迟的IPO文件

5月末，有消息透露Zynga已经决定申请首次公开募股（游戏邦注：下文简称IPO）。LinkedIn的IPO效果很不错，因而行业普遍认可Zynga走这条路线。（点击此处阅读第一、第二、第三、第四、第五部分）

6月末，有传言称该公司将募得20亿美元，Zynga的市值将从150亿美元提升至200亿美元。这样看来，Zynga的市值将是EA的3倍。最后，Zynga于7月1日在证券交易委员会签署了注册表格，所募资金逾10亿美元。随着IPO的大门逐渐开启，当时筹备申请上市的科技公司已超过80家。

对于游戏行业的人来说，看待此事的想法各不相同。那些讨厌Zynga的人提出众多理由，表示这个只会复制原创作品的公司根本没有如此大的升值潜力。但是，Zynga的S1文件公布了此前从未对外公开的财务信息。

Zynga的S1文件中谈到，在4年的时间里，公司营收逾15亿美元，现已累计现金达9.956亿美元。公司旗下玩家每天使用公司服务的累积时间达到20亿分钟。公司有2268名雇员，月独立用户数有1.48亿，分布在166个国家，月活跃用户数量逾2.32亿（游戏邦注：某些用户玩多款游戏）。以每天为单位来计算，Zynga的日活跃用户数从2009年9月的2400万提升到现在的6200万。这个数值比Facebook上其他社交游戏公司都要高得多，这也是为何Zynga如此受期待的原因之一。所有用户每天的互动次数为4.16亿。Zynga每天处理的游戏数据达到15TB。

Zynga在这份文件中透露了其他有趣的指标。根据文件所述，有2.5%的用户在游戏中付费购买虚拟商品，也就是说付费用户数量仅为770万。从某种程度上来说，这意味着Zynga是十分脆弱的。如果有其他公司抢走这770万用户，那么Zynga的盈利就会迅速下降。但是从另一个方面来说，这也是个巨大的机遇。Zynga只需要将付费用户比例提升到5%，就能够让公司的盈利翻倍。这便是Zynga不断寻找多种盈利途径的原因。此类数据对行业来说是极有价值，Zynga上市似乎让行业开始认清哪些是对其自身至关重要的东西。

Zynga在文件中公布的另一个有趣内容是，公司声称其从《FarmVille》中赚得的钱比以往更多，即便这款游戏的发布时间可以追溯到2009年。《FarmVille English Countryside》之类的扩展内容促进了盈利的提升，尽管游戏已经发布两年之久，《FarmVille》目前仍然拥有巅峰时期的半数用户。相比之下，多数主机视频游戏在出售仅数周后，玩家便开始转向其他的新游戏。因而，就用户积累和留存情况而言，Zynga做得很不错。

广告盈利只占总盈利的5%左右。Zynga也有机会在这方面获得提升，但是自从“ScamVille”事件之后，公司在这方面变得小心翼翼，因为上述事件危害到Zynga与用户间的良好关系。

但是Zynga并没有在公布文件后直接上市。证券交易委员会还有些疑问，Zynga必须修改其文件，让监管者满意。随后，股票市场逐渐开始波动。2011年8月5日，随着欧洲经济危机逐步扩散，股票市场再次呈现下滑态势，情势不容乐观。

修改文件中的某些内容给公司带来更大的困难。当Facebook游戏开发商发现Facebook和Zynga之间的紧密关系后，他们感到极为愤怒，原因是Zynga透露和监管者签署的新内容显示，Zynga从平台处获得了其他游戏公司显然无法得到的实惠。在文件中，Zynga阐述在1年前同意让游戏采用Facebook虚拟货币Facebook Credits时，与Facebook达成1项特别交易。在这项交易中，Zynga同意按照Facebook Credits的标准费用比率，将游戏中虚拟商品盈利的30%支付给Facebook。

同时，Facebook必须同意帮助Zynga实现游戏的成长目标。正如最初所报道的那样，就Facebook上放置于Zynga游戏页面的广告而言，Facebook并不同意向Zynga支付广告收入回扣。根据Facebook发表的声明，Facebook表示双方曾经的确商讨过广告盈利分享交易，前提是Zynga选择将自己的Facebook游戏移出平台，但是这项交易最终并未达成。每个开发商支付的费用比例都是30%，Facebook表示平台平等对待所有的开发商。

但是令其他开发商感到不快的是Facebook对Zynga发展目标的支持。据报道，Facebook承诺在5年的协议期内保持Zynga游戏的发展。

Digital Chocolate首席执行官Trip Hawkins曾对此表示：“我们都知道Zynga存在合同上的优势，但是居然达到让其他开发商难以在Facebook立足的程度。今年的政策改变已经影响到了盈利和市场占有，现在发现这个市场还缺乏公平竞争，这着实令我们感到心寒。他们之间的关系极为复杂，就像是场夫妻双方仅为金钱而组建起的婚姻。你丝毫感觉不到双方真正从这场婚姻中享受快乐或自由。讽刺的是，他们居然还能够利用更多的好友。”

在与游戏开发商的交谈中，Facebook努力让开发商冷静下来，解释称平台并非以某种损害其他开发商的方式偏袒Zynga。事实上，Zynga此前已数次表现出对这种关系的厌恶。

同时，Zynga时断时续的IPO渐渐变成一场笑话。自8月份起，大量IPO最终都没有实现。最后，有传言称Zynga将在11月上市。接下来，时间又推迟到了感恩节之后。但是，Zynga最后决定将自己的首次记者招待会延迟到新总部建成之后，这栋被称为“狗屋”的高楼可以容纳1700名员工。

大爆发

Zynga在短期内拥有了2700名雇员，需要大量的工作场所，许多人移到旧金山市场南附近的前世嘉美国总部大楼中。但是随即便有问题浮现出来：Zynga在2011年只发布了数款游戏。那么，这些游戏开发者都在干什么呢？如果10人左右的小团队花费6周的时间就能制作出《FarmVille》，那么从理论上来说，Zynga现在拥有的雇员数每年足够制作出1600款左右的《FarmVille》。

当然，游戏开发的成本逐渐提升。游戏制作需要耗费更长的时间（游戏邦注：《FrontierVille》耗费1年左右时间才制作完成），所需团队也变得更大。Zynga从未对外公开每个团队的成员数量，这个信息算是商业秘密。但是许多观察者认为，Zynga公司存在严重的冗员现象。

据VentureBeat报道，《Mafia Wars 2》这款Zynga最成功的游戏之一的续作，由80人耗时18个月完成。Zynga于9月20日对外公布这款游戏，10月10日正式发布。游戏以3D Flash动画为特色，但是总体来说仍为二维游戏。游戏的用户量增长到1700万以上，但是随后开始下滑。

但10月11日的Zynga盛会表明，这些雇员显然都很忙。这次盛会就像是Zynga的小型E3游戏展览。在餐厅举办的记者招待会中，Pincus透露了10款手机和社交游戏原创作品。这些作品并非都处在准备发布的阶段，但是可以想象到，未来将会出现产品大爆发的情形。

这次盛会是精心为媒体、分析者和投资者准备的，公示了即将出现的诸多正面消息。每个新作品都显示，Zynga正打消投资者怀疑公司是否还有能力稳居榜首的疑虑。数个月以来，Mark Pincus这位身价即将达到数十亿美元的人首次出现在舞台上。

首先，他讲述了Zynga在2007年的辉煌岁月，那时公司刚开始针对Facebook制作游戏。他说道，那时团队从街对面的Culinary Academy中雇佣了某些学生，在公司的小总部内烹制食物。Amelia属于这批学生之一，她随后成了Zynga游戏《Cafe World》中的虚拟主厨，现在她成为了真正的主厨。他让记者们转向上方看，成排的雇员站在建筑物上层的开放走道上。Pincus为当天占用餐厅向他们道歉。

Pincus并没有主持完整场盛会。Pincus只是为其他Zynga高管的陈述做个铺垫。他让各个领域的专家上台描述他们自己的游戏。当他介绍到公司的首席运营官John Schappert（游戏邦注：他此前在EA工作）时，他表示Schappert实现了自己的目标，成了他的接班人。

Pincus说道：“我们每天都在挑战自己，说服你们玩游戏。你们很忙，没有时间做下来玩游戏。但是，我们确实认为玩乐是生活中必不可少的主题和行为。我们正在构建的所有产品背后都潜藏着一个任务，那就是构建玩乐的平台。”

Pincus表示，Zynga的基本设计原则是初次用户体验（游戏邦注：可简称为“FTUE”）。让玩家对Zynga产生印象的最佳机遇是游戏中的前3次点击。他表示，对休闲游戏而言，你需要在前3次点击时吸引到玩家，前5到15分钟的游戏体验应当像是“享用丰盛晚餐”。

Zynga Direct和Project Z

在记者招待会上，Pincus提到公司的创新项目Zynga Direct，公司在这个项目上已经投入了两年时间。这是个围绕Zynga游戏创造更多社交互动的平台，无论用户使用的是电脑网络还是移动设备。Schappert随后描述了Zynga Direct的部分内容，可称为Project Z，这是个Zynga玩家可以用来玩Zynga游戏的在线站点。Schappert表示，Project Z是个“社交游戏游乐场”，玩家可以在享受自己选择的游戏。但是，他对该项目的描述也仅仅止步于此。

Project Z将是个独立的网站，只含有Zynga的游戏。网站将使用Facebook Connect功能来构建玩家好友社交图谱。随后，你可以直接访问Project Z玩Zynga的游戏，而不用登录Facebook。这是Zynga的自有平台，类似微软的Xbox Live在线游戏服务。在这个平台上，Zynga无需支付30%的盈利费用。

Schappert说道：“Project Z是个Facebook Connect平台，让Facebook好友在自己独立的环境中玩游戏。我们通过数据和交谈掌握了大量的玩家相关信息，这就是玩家们想要的产品。”

1年多之前，整个世界都未曾听说过这些脱离Facebook的项目，当时Zynga正因Facebook Credits的问题威胁要离开Facebook。Zynga从未停下开发这些项目的步伐，尽管公司与Facebook的关系有所缓和。但是，这些项目经历了数次暂停和重启。问题在于，致力于此就意味着Zynga要创建自己的社交网络。而这种做法面临的难题就是，Facebook已经成功建立起了大型社交网络，用户数量正在向8亿迈进。Zynga需要弄清楚，如何能够让自己的社交网络有足够的差异化，将Zynga粉丝吸引到这个独立的网站平台上。

现在看来，Zynga当初声称想要脱离Facebook，与玩家建立起没有中间人的直接关系，这并非是公司威胁Facebook的说辞。

手机部负责人David Ko描述了5款新的手机游戏。手机游戏市场比Facebook游戏市场更大，所以Zynga必须努力提升公司在该市场中的份额，才能保持快速成长、脱离Facebook并在上市前持续良好的表现。Ko已经在这个新部门中投入了5300万美元，正在不断收购更多的手机游戏开发商。

Zynga还展示了其他新的Facebook游戏，比如《Zynga Bingo》、《Hidden Chronicles》和《CastleVille》。该公司声称，《Mafia Wars 2》将登陆Google+平台。这场新闻发布会都旨在向外界表明，Zynga的雇员此前都很繁忙，公司现在正向各个领域扩张。

Pincus最后为大会做了总结，称Zynga始终坚持自公司成立以来从未改变的目标，那就是成为社交游戏领域最大的公司。

他表示，未来几年内社交游戏将更为生活化和移动化，这样你就可以在5到15分钟的时间内获得如《魔兽世界》般的体验。

发布《CastleVille》

10月和11月末，股票市场依然波动剧烈。11月末，新的IPO机会显现，Yelp等公司申请IPO，Angie’s List成功上市。但是Zynga利用《CastleVille》打出漂亮的一拳，这款游戏的目标是将大型多人在线角色扮演游戏带到大众市场中。

2010年10月，Zynga购买了Bonfire Studios公司。这个公司中有大量曾经在微软Ensemble Studios（游戏邦注：《帝国时代》的开发商）中工作的经验丰富的开发者。在微软关闭Ensemble后，Bonfire诞生了。Zynga收购了这家公司，将其命名为Zynga Dallas。

Zynga Dallas创意总监Bill Jackson是前Ensemble雇员，他带领工作室开发这款游戏已1年有余。现在，Zynga Dallas发布的Ville系列游戏最新产品《CastleVille》已经成为Zynga旗下模拟游戏的骨干。这款游戏摒弃了Zynga常用的卡通风格，有着比以往更为有趣的游戏玩法。

Jackson说道：“《CastleVille》将Zynga的Ville系列产品提升到新层次。”

游戏的灵感来源于《怪物史莱克》之类的电影，但是其玩法风格却不同于市场上的任何其他产品。Zynga于11月14日发布这款游戏，当天便消除了《The Sims Social》对公司构成的巨大威胁。Zynga在Facebook的社交游戏市场份额约为40%，日活跃用户逾4500万，而EA只有1250万日活跃用户。

6天之后，《CastleVille》的用户量达到500万，将近68%的玩家每天玩两次游戏。《CastleVille》发布17天后，月活跃用户数量达到2080万。在《CityVille》发布整整1年后，《CastleVille》取代前者成为历史上成长速度最快的游戏。根据AppData统计数据显示，截止2011年12月12日，《CastleVille》拥有的月活跃用户数为3160万。这又是款轰动市场的游戏，足以让投资者感到高兴。而且，这只是公司旗下2号人物John Schappert所称的“公司历史上最活跃的发布时期”的首款游戏而已。

上市

回望2009，曾经有段时间Zynga除了良好的媒体形象外毫无收获。当时，Mark Pincus表示他本应该为《财富》、《福布斯》和《商业周刊》都报道公司正面形象而感到高兴，但是他却做不到。

他说道：“我本应该感到高兴，但是我却做不到。我觉得自己就像那个没穿衣服的皇帝。”

他认为，社交游戏和Zynga都有着巨大的潜力，但是离真正的成功还有很长一段路。

Pincus说道，当你面对即将到来的失败时，能做的最好的事情是在理智和情感上先接受失败。他说道：“这样，你知道自己可以控制自己的命运。”

但是到2011年，这种失败的威胁不再那么明显。

在今年IPO季度临近尾声之际，Zynga完成了细节的修改工作。Zynga表示截止9月30日，公司第3季度净收入为1250万美元，比去年同期下滑54%。盈利为3.07亿美元，与去年相比提升80%。彭博社报道称，Zynga将在感恩节后上市。此后，Zynga的命运将掌握在投资者手中。

竞争者对外公布Zynga对待雇员的负面做法。几乎在一瞬间，Mark Pincus又成了那个没穿衣服的皇帝。《华尔街日报》报道称，Zynga的Pincus逼迫表现不佳者退回他们的股票。11月17日，首席商务官Owen Van Natta辞职。《纽约时报》报道称，Zynga雇员对公司很不满，PopCap Games因担心Zynga的文化而拒绝了其9.5亿美元的收购出价，转而支持EA的7.5亿美元及5.5亿美元追加款项。据报道，Rovio也拒绝了Zynga伸出的24亿美元收购公司的橄榄枝。

但是，Zynga似乎并不担心这些负面的媒体报道。12月2日，公司提交募资多达10亿美元的计划，市值为89亿美元，每股价格从8.5美元增加至10美元。公司计划开展9天的路演来吸引投资者。股票在12月15日定价，12月16日开始交易。这是今年最后1次上市的机会，公司觉得要把握这次机会。

募集的资金数和市值比外界150亿到200亿美元的估计要低得多。更为糟糕的情况是，在公司的首轮资金募集中，市值比预定的更低，这意味着多数近期投资者要眼睁睁地看着他们在Zynga中投入的资金逐渐缩水。如果股价上涨到14美元每股，这些投资者兴许才会感到满意。

但是即便市值下滑，Zynga的市值依然比EA要高，尽管后者的盈利是前者的4倍，但是市值却只有70亿美元。Comcast Ventures合伙人Andrew Cleland回忆称，Pincus曾经告诉他Zynga的市值将在5年内超过EA。事实上，Pincus只花了几年时间就实现了这个目标。

Cleland估计，2012年Zynga将花5亿多美元来进行调研和开发，Pincus明年可能不会将公司主要目标定在盈利上。要实现公司的长期愿景，就必须要加大投入资金，而不是急于取得盈利。

Cleland写道：“该公司即将到来的IPO也是游戏行业的重要时刻，这意味着休闲和免费游戏引领西方游戏市场的时代已经来临。该公司路演的时间现在似乎已经确定了，对于Zynga的上市我们应当抱何期望呢？这个问题的答案可以反映出Pincus卓越的抱负，同时也暗示着投资者应当对公司抱何想法以及其他开发商应当如何统筹他们的上市战略。”

但是Cleland的看法似乎并不被投资者认同，欧洲经济危机和Zynga自身放缓的成长速度似乎吓住了投资者。Zynga要从哪里获取新用户，才能够使公司重新恢复竞争力？从7月到12月，公司市值从200亿下滑到100亿，其速度堪比Zynga当初的成长速度。现在，公司必须尽其所赢得投资者的尊重和信任。雇员之所以会产生不满的反应，部分原因就在于他们发现自己持有股份的价值已减半。

只要该公司开始为其投资者路演，Pincus就有机会向业界阐述Zynga有着光明未来的缘由。他表示，自己预期游戏领域的玩家数量能够在接下来的5年内从2011年的10亿增加到20亿。2011年应用下载量约为180亿次，5年内这个数量可能会增加4倍。2011年用户花费在虚拟商品上的金额数为90亿美元，5年内会增加2倍。

在手机市场方面，10月份Zynga拥有的日活跃用户数量为1110万，与1年前的99.1万相比大幅增加。公司目前在整体手机游戏市场中所占份额还很小，但是成长率是很可观的。Zynga在该领域的用户大部分来自于收购Newtoy，但是仍然存在发展的空间。

Zynga的广告盈利为5500万美元，与去年相比增加了162%。百思买之类的广告商都曾与公司合作，他们在《CityVille》中开展的活动使玩家在游戏中建造了800万个百思买商店。现在，广告盈利只占公司总盈利的5%，但是还在不断增加。这表明，公司还有着很大的盈利机遇。如果Zynga的2亿用户每人每月能够为公司带来1美元的广告盈利，那么年盈利就将达到24亿美元。

Wehner表示，广告盈利的优点在于，游戏发布很长时间后依然可以插入广告。《FarmVille》发布于2009年6月，但是Lady Gaga的赞助起始时间为2011年5月。因而，Zynga有大量通过广告来提升盈利的机遇。

在路演期间，Pincus表示Zynga或许也可以让公司旗下付费用户数量翻倍。现在，付费用户比例为2.5%，数量约为770万。让付费用户数量翻倍不是件简单的事情，但是如果Zynga可以实现的话，或许公司的盈利也有可能翻倍。

Michael Pachter（游戏邦注：他是专注于游戏和数字化媒体的Wedbush Securities调查分析师），他表示1到2年内有多种情况可能导致Zynga的付费用户数量翻倍。其中，两个关键的驱动因素便是Facebook和移动设备的发展。

Pachter说道，如果Facebook用户的数量增长到10亿，那么玩Zynga游戏的玩家数量自然也会随之增加。如果发生这种情况的话，即便Facebook中玩公司游戏的用户总比例保持不变，Zynga依然可以大致实现付费用户数翻倍的目标。

Zynga的John Schappert表示，公司会发布新游戏，进军新的国际市场，扩张到Google+、腾讯和Zynga.com等新平台上，同时增加公司在手机市场上的份额。

Schappert说道：“我们正在进入公司历史上最活跃的发布时期……我们相信，公司所选择的道路将成为娱乐行业中最强大的业务模型。”换句话说，如果你将Zynga视为投资产品，那么100亿美元的市值是其打折时期的价格，还有很大的增长空间。

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2011年12月12日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。（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）

How Zynga grew from gaming outcast to $9 billion social game powerhouse

Dean Takahashi

The long awaited IPO filing

In late May, word leaked that Zynga had decided to file for an initial public offering. LinkedIn did so well with its IPO that Zynga was considering diving through the same open window for IPOs.

It was a false alarm. Then, again, in late June, rumors surfaced that the company might raise as much as $2 billion at a valuation of $15 billion to $20 billion. That would have made Zynga worth as much as three times the value of EA. Finally, Zynga filed registration papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 1 to raise more than $1 billion. By that time, more than 80 tech companies had filed to go public as the window for IPOs opened wider.

For the rest of the game industry, there were mixed feelings. Those who hated Zynga had even more reason to whine about the injustice of a company with copycat origins having such a huge potential valuation. On the other hand, Zynga’s S1 revealed a treasure trove of information about the company that had been secret so far.

Zynga’s S1 said that in four years, the company generated more than $1.5 billion in bookings and it had amassed $995.6 million in cash. Its players created and stored more than 38,000 virtual times every second and spend 2 billion minutes a day with the service. The company had 2,268 employees, an audience of 148 million monthly unique users in 166 countries, and more than 232 million monthly active users (as some users play more than one game). On a daily basis, Zynga had 62 million daily active users, up from 24 million in September 2009. That was far more than any other social game company on Facebook and a reason why Zynga’s IPO was so highly anticipated. Those users interacted with each other 416 million times a day. Every day, Zynga processed 15 terabytes of game data.

Zynga revealed some other interesting metrics in the filing. It said that 2.5 percent of its users paid for virtual goods in games. That was only 7.7 million paying customers. In one sense, that meant that Zynga was vulnerable. If someone stole away those 7.7 million users, Zynga’s revenues would plummet. On the other hand, it was a huge opportunity. Zynga could double its revenues simply by increasing the number of payers to 5 percent. That was why Zynga was pursuing alternative monetization techniques. This kind of data was invaluable to the industry, and it only seemed that, because Zynga was going public, the industry was now learning critical things about itself.

One of the interesting parts of the filing was that Zynga noted that it was making more money from FarmVille than ever, even though that game had been launched in 2009. Expansions such as its FarmVille English Countryside helped boost revenues, and even after two years, FarmVille still had half of its peak users. By contrast, most console video games sold for a few weeks before gamers moved on to something new. So Zynga had done a good job getting a broad group of users and holding onto them.

Ad revenue was only about 5 percent of total revenue. Zynga had opportunities to increase that as well, but it had been wary ever since the ScamVille incident, which jeopardized Zynga’s relationship with consumers.

But Zynga didn’t go public right away. The SEC had questions and Zynga had to amend its filings to make the regulators happy. Then the stock market became increasingly unpredictable. Throughout the summer the news about the world economy started to turn sour. By Aug. 5, 2011, everything was looking sour again as European economic fears bled into everything else, knocking the stock market down again.

Some of the amended filings raised hell. Facebook game developers were furious when they found out about the tight relationship between Facebook and Zynga. The developers were angry because of a new disclosure by Zynga, filed with regulators, which showed that Zynga gets benefits that apparently no other game company gets. In the filing, Zynga said that it received a special deal when it agreed to support Facebook Credits, a new virtual currency from Facebook, a year ago. In that deal, Zynga agreed to give 30 percent of its virtual goods game revenues to Facebook, the standard fee for using Facebook Credits.

In exchange, Facebook had agreed to help Zynga hit growth targets for its games. Facebook did not, as initially reported, agree to kick back revenue to Zynga from ads placed by Facebook alongside Zynga games on Facebook. Facebook said there was a deal to share ad revenue with Zynga if it chose to move its Facebook games off of Facebook, but that ad deal never kicked in, according to a statement by Facebook. The 30 percent fee is what every developer pays, and Facebook told developers that everyone was treated the same.

But other developers were upset about Facebook’s support of Zynga’s growth targets. Facebook reportedly (in a redacted section) promises growth by the end of the five-year agreement, according to a source familiar with the agreement.

“It’s an outrage,” said an executive at one Facebook game developer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, at last week’s Casual Connect game conference in Seattle, where the Facebook-Zynga deal was the subject of much conversation. “It means we can’t move to Google+ soon enough.”

“We all knew Zynga had contractual advantages, but the extent of it makes Facebook a tough platform for everyone else,” said Trip Hawkins, chief executive of Digital Chocolate. “Policy changes have made revenue and margins more challenging this year, so it is a bitter pill for all of us to find out that the market is neither competitive nor fair. Their relationship could not be more complicated. It’s like a bad marriage that is staying together for the money. You don’t get the feeling that either side really feels happy or free. Ironically, they could both use more real friends.”

In conversations with game developers, Facebook tried to calm developers down and explain that it really doesn’t favor Zynga in a way that is unfair to the rest of the development community. There were, in fact, times when Zynga hated the Facebook-Zynga relationship.

Meanwhile, Zynga’s on-again, off-again IPO started becoming a joke. Lots of IPOs were yanked altogether starting in August. Finally, rumors surfaced that Zynga would go public in November. Then it became after Thanksgiving. But first, Zynga decided to hold its first-ever press conference at its new headquarters, a high-rise building that could fit 1,700 employees and was affectionately named “the doghouse.”

The Big Bang

Zynga’s huge staff of what would shortly become 2,700 employees needed a lot of space, and many of them moved into the old Sega U.S. headquarters building in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood. But the question arose: Zynga had only launched a handful of games in 2011. What were all of those game developers doing? If it took six weeks to make FarmVille with a staff of maybe 10 people, then Zynga theoretically now had enough developers to make around 1,600 FarmVille games in a year.

Of course, the ante for game development was getting higher. It was taking longer to make games (FrontierVille had taken around a year to get right), and the teams were getting bigger. Zynga never told anyone publicly how many people it took to do games. It considered that information to be a competitive secret. But a lot of observers thought Zynga had too many people.

VentureBeat has learned that Mafia Wars 2, the sequel to one of Zynga’s most successful games, took 80 people about 18 months to complete. Zynga announced the game on Sept. 20 and launched it on Oct. 10. The title featured 3D Flash animations, but it was still mostly a two-dimensional game. The game grew to more than 17 million users, but then the audience started dropping off.

But finally, on Oct. 11, it was evident that those employees had been busy. The event was like Zynga’s own little E3, the big video game trade show. At a press conference in its sprawling cafeteria (with everything from Zynga french fries to cafe mochas offered for free), Pincus unveiled 10 mobile and social game initiatives. Not all of the titles were ready to launch, but it was the sort of Big Bang you expected out of talented development teams that had been busy toiling in secrecy.

The event was orchestrated to give the press, analysts and investors a taste of what was to come on a number of fronts. Each initiative showed that Zynga was hammering a way at the concerns investors might have about its ability to stay on top. Mark Pincus, the would-be multi-billionaire, made his first appearance on a stage in months. In the past, he hadn’t been careful or scripted. But that day, he was pretty polished.

He started out with a story about the good old days at Zynga in 2007, when the company first started making games for Facebook. He said the team hired some students from the Culinary Academy across the street to create food in the company’s small headquarters. One of those students, Amelia, later became the fictional head chef in Zynga’s Cafe World game, and she was now the head chef. He asked the journalists to turn around in their seats and look up. Thereupon they saw rows of employees standing on the open walkways of the building’s upper levels. Pincus recognized the staff and apologized for taking away their cafeteria for a day.

Pincus didn’t hog the stage. Pincus laid the groundwork for all of the presentations by senior Zynga executives. He allowed each domain expert to get on stage to describe their own games. When he introduced the company’s chief operating officer, John Schappert, who was recruited away from Electronic Arts, he said Schappert had fulfilled Pincus’s goal of finding his own replacement.

Pincus said, “We challenge ourselves every day to … get you guys to play. You are busy. You are on the move. You don’t have time to sit and play games. But we really think play is this macro theme and activity that we all need to fit back into our lives. Everything behind what we are building is this mission to build a platform for play.”

Pincus said Zynga’s basic design principles focus on the FTUE, or first-time user experience. The best opportunity for Zynga to make an impression on a player is in the first three clicks of a game. He said that in casual games, you have to sell the player on the whole game in the first three clicks and that five to 15-minute experiences of playing should “feel like a meal.” You shouldn’t have to change your routine for Zynga’s sake.

Zynga Direct and Project Z

At the press conference, Pincus mentioned one new initiative, Zynga Direct, which the company has been working on for two years. It’s a platform for creating more social interactions around Zynga games, whether they’re played on the web or on mobile devices. Schappert later described a part of Zynga Direct, dubbed Project Z, as an online destination where Zynga players can go to play Zynga games. Schappert said Project Z was a “social gaming playground,” where players could play under their own gamertag names. But he didn’t go into much detail, either.

Project Z would be an independent website that exclusively hosted Zynga games. It would use Facebook’s connect feature to build a social graph of your friends on Project Z. You would then be able to go directly to Project Z to play Zynga games instead of playing them on Facebook. It was Zynga’s own platform, like Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming service. And on this platform, Zynga wouldn’t have to pay 30 percent of the proceeds to anyone.

“Project Z is a Facebook Connect platform that leverages your Facebook friends to play in an environment tailored with just your friends,” Schappert said. “We learn a lot more about our players, not just from stats but from talking to them, and this is what they wanted.”

The world hadn’t heard about these off-Facebook projects since more than a year earlier, when Zynga was threatening to move off Facebook in the showdown over Facebook Credits. Zynga had never stopped doing work on these projects, even though it established a detente with Facebook. But these projects were stopped and started multiple times. The problem was that the job amounted to Zynga creating its own social network. And the difficult thing about that was that Facebook had succeeded in creating its own broad-based social network that was heading toward 800 million members. Zynga needed to figure out how to differentiate its own social network enough to draw Zynga fans to a separate web site.

Now, it appeared, Zynga really had been serious when it said it wanted to diversify beyond Facebook so that it could have a direct relationship with its gamers without having any intermediaries in between. It wasn’t just a paper tiger, meant to threaten Facebook.

David Ko, head of mobile, came on stage to describe five new mobile games. Mobile could be a bigger market than Facebook games, so Zynga had to try to grab market share in that market in order to keep growing fast, diversify beyond Facebook, and continue executing well prior to going public. Ko had spent $53 million on Newtoy and was acquiring more and more mobile game developers.

Zynga also showed off new Facebook games like Zynga Bingo, Hidden Chronicles, and CastleVille. And it said that Mafia Wars 2 would now run on Google+. The whole press event was meant to show that Zynga’s employees had been busy and the company was now spreading out in all directions.

Pincus closed the event saying that Zynga is committed to one vision that hasn’t changed since the founding: “We want to be the biggest macro bet on social gaming.”

“We believe that this is the way everyone around the world will want to embrace play in their lives,” he said. “We know it is early. We know it is primitive.” He said social gaming will come to life in the next few years and will become more mobile, so that you will get something like a World of Warcraft experience in five or fifteen minutes.”

CastleVille saves the day

In late October and November, the stock market was still volatile. Toward the end of November, a new IPO window opened as companies such as Yelp filed for IPOs and Angie’s List succeeded in going public. But Zynga had its ace in the form of CastleVille, a game whose purpose was to bring massively multiplayer online role-playing games to the larger mass market.

Zynga bought a company called Bonfire Studios in October, 2010. It included a number of seasoned developers who had worked at Microsoft’s Ensemble Studios, the creator of Age of Empires. As Microsoft shut Ensemble down, Bonfire was born. Zynga pounced on it and renamed it Zynga Dallas.

Bill Jackson (pictured right), creative director of Zynga Dallas and a former Ensemble employee, had led the development of the game for more than a year. Now Zynga Dallas was launching CastleVille, the latest in the series of Ville games that had become the mainstay of Zynga’s simulation games. The title mashed up Zynga’s usual cartoon style, which had a wide appeal among Facebook users, with more interesting game play than it had in the past.

“CastleVille takes Zynga’s Ville legacy to a new level of social,” Jackson said.

The game was a goofy title inspired by movies like Shrek, though its play style wasn’t an exact copycat of anything else in the market. Zynga launched the game on Nov. 14. On that day, The Sims Social was no longer a huge threat. Zynga had roughly 40 percent of the market share for social games on Facebook, with more than 45 million daily active users. EA had just 12.5 million daily active users.

After six days, CastleVille had 5 million users. About 68 percent of CastleVille players were playing at least twice a day. Zynga said that in six days, 135,176,035 quests had been completed. Players had expanded into new parts of the map (covered by dark Gloom spaces) a total of 4,594,750 times. About 23,845,983 beasties had been banished. Some 8,262,768 baby cows had been raised. And 182,360 Bubbly Grogs had been crafted.

Seventeen days after CastleVille launched, it had 20.8 million monthly active users. A full year after CityVille had launched, CastleVille had taken the title of the fastest-growing game in history. On Dec. 12, 2011, CastleVille had 31.6 million monthly active users, according to AppData. If anything would make investors happy, it was another hit game. And this was just one of the first launches in what Zynga’s No. 2 man, John Schappert, would call “the most active launch period in the history of the company.”

Going public

Back in 2009, there was a time when Zynga got nothing but good press. At that time, Mark Pincus said he should have been thrilled that Fortune, Forbes, and BusinessWeek had all written about his company, but he wasn’t.

“I should feel happy, but I feel shitty,” he said. “I feel like the emperor with no clothes.”

He said that both social games and Zynga have a lot of potential, but they also had a long way to go before they could be considered successes.

When you headed for imminent failure, the best thing you can do, Pincus said, is to be in a position where you can intellectually and emotionally own your failure. At that point, he said, “You know you can control your own destiny.”

By 2011, however, there was no longer much danger of imminent failure.

As the IPO season neared the end of the year, Zynga was wrapping up its details. It changed its accounting to suit the regulators on Oct. 14. For the period ended Sept. 30, Zynga said net income was $12.5 million in third quarter ended Sept. 30, down 54 percent from a year ago. Revenue was $307 million, up 80 percent. Bloomberg reported Zynga would likely go public after Thanksgiving. Zynga’s destiny would be in the hands of investors.

Competitors tried to stir up negative stories about how Zynga treated its employees. All of a sudden, Mark Pincus was the emperor with no clothes again. The Wall Street Journal reported that Zynga’s Pincus had been leaning on poor performers to give back their stock options. On Nov. 17, chief business officer Owen Van Natta resigned from his job. And the New York Times reported that Zynga’s employees were dissatisfied and that PopCap Games had been so alarmed about Zynga’s culture that it turned down a $950 million cash offer from Zynga in favor of the $750 million plus $550 million bonus from EA. Rovio also reportedly turned down a $2.4 billion Zynga offer.

But Zynga didn’t seem to worry about the negative press. The company filed its plan to raise up to $1 billion at a $8.9 billion valuation on Dec. 2, with a per share price range of $8.50 to $10. It planned to initiate a nine-day roadshow to pitch investors. It would price the stock on Dec. 15 and start trading on Dec. 16. It was the last real window of the year for going public, and the company decided to take it.

The amount of money being raised and the valuation were a lot smaller than what everyone had expected, which was a $15 billion to $20 billion valuation. Worse, the valuation was less than it had been during the company’s previous round, which means the most recent investors were seeing the value of their investment in Zynga decline. If the price rises above $14 a share, those investors should be OK.

But even at the reduced amount, Zynga would be worth more than EA at $7 billion, although EA had four times the revenue. That was a long way from the good old days. Andrew Cleland, the partner at Comcast Ventures, recalled that Pincus had told him Zynga would be more valuable than EA in five years. In reality, it took Pincus just a couple of years.

Cleland’s calculations suggested that Zynga would spend more than $500 million in research and development in 2012, and that Pincus probably wasn’t managing for profitability in that year. The long-term vision demanded heavy investment, not quick profits.

“Zynga is a remarkable venture story, and the company’s impending IPO is a huge moment for the games industry — it marks the coming of age of the West’s leading proponent of casual, free-to-play gaming,” Cleland wrote. “With the timing for the company’s roadshow now seemingly confirmed, what should we expect from Zynga as it goes public? The answer reflects Pincus’ exceptional level of ambition and has implications both for how investors should think about the company and how other developers manage their go-to-market strategies.”

But Cleland’s long view might not have been shared by investors spooked about the European economy and Zynga’s own slowing growth. Where would Zynga’s new users come from in the wake of reinvigorated competition? To slide in value from $20 billion to $10 billion from July to December was almost as precipitous a drop as Zynga’s rise. The company was no longer walking on water. Now it had to earn every bit of respect and credibility. The reaction from the employees has been anger, in part, because the value of what they own is half of what they thought it was.

Once the company unveiled its investor roadshow, Pincus finally had a chance to make his pitch to everybody about why Zynga had a bright future. He said that he expected the number of gamers to double from 1 billion in 2011 to 2 billion in the next five years. About 18 billion apps were likely to be downloaded in 2011, and that would quadruple in five years. And $9 billion would be spent in 2011 on virtual goods, and that would triple in five years.

On mobile, Zynga had 11.1 million daily active users in October, up from 991,000 a year earlier. That’s a much smaller share of the overall mobile gaming market, but the growth rate is impressive. Zynga bought much of that with its acquisition of Newtoy, but it was still good progress.

Zynga’s ad revenue is $55 million, up 162 percent from a year ago. Advertisers include Best Buy, which had a campaign where players in CityVille built 8 million new Best Buy stores in the game. Ads are just 5 percent of total revenues now, but are growing. That represents a vast revenue opportunity. If Zynga makes just $1 a month in ad revenue from each of its 200 million users, that would amount to $2.4 billion in revenue a year.

The good thing about ads, Wehner said, is that they can be inserted long after a game launches. FarmVille launched in June 2009, but its Lady Gaga sponsorship was launched in May 2011. Hence, Zynga has some significant opportunities to backfill on revenue, making ad money and better sales per user with older games.

During the road show, Pincus reportedly said that Zynga might be able to double its number of paying users. Right now, about 2.5 percent, or 7.7 million users, pay money for virtual goods in games. It was no easy task, but if Zynga could double that, it could potential double the revenues of the company.

Michael Pachter, a research analyst at Wedbush Securities who specializes in games and digital media, said there are several scenarios in which Zynga could double its paid user base within the next one to two years. The two key drivers of growth will be Facebook and mobile devices.

Pachter said that if Facebook hits 1 billion users, the number of people who play Zynga games will almost certainly increase in tandem. And if this happens, Zynga could still be close to doubling the number of paid users it has without significantly shifting the total proportion of Facebook users who play its games.

Zynga’s John Schappert said the company will launch new games, enter new international markets, expand to new platforms from Google+ to Tencent to Zynga.com, and grow its markets in mobile.

“Why now?” Schappert asked. “We are entering the most active launch cycle in the history of the company.”

“We believe it’s the most powerful business model in entertainment,” Schappert said. In other words, if you think about Zynga as an investment, it seems like a bargain at a $10 billion valuation.

When Zynga goes public, the stock market will put that notion to the ultimate test. And if all goes well, Mark Pincus, the Pretender and the Man Who Would Be King, will finally get to say to all of his detractors, “I told you so.” (Source: Venture Beat)