"This library includes Haxe externs for Unity and .NET frameworks, generated via the cslibgen utility. It also includes the HUGSWrapper "using" class, which includes various things to work around Haxe/C# translation issues, as well as make working with Unity easier."
The organic install part of this calculation seems pretty suspect. In order to get the organic lift mentioned in the article the app would need to be pretty highly ranked _and_ likely sustain that rank for a while before getting 65%-100% the additional installs.
Whenever running a burst campaign it is important to follow it up with sustained installs afterwards to try and maintain the rank for as long as possible to attempt to get some of the organic lift mentioned. It does not simply happen instantly.
This is so incredibly wrong in so many ways. Many developers were seduced into social games because people loved them and it seemed like a new frontier and a new market with shorter development cycles and interesting challenges. It is easy to have great hindsight but a few years ago the game industry looked very different. Zynga has had a few games be reviewed quite well, but nobody ever seems to remember them.[1][2]
As a former Zynga employee that came in through acquisition, I find it repulsive that people assume we are all responsible for the poor decisions of a few at the top. Most of us worked our asses off to try to make something awesome, but ended up having to compromise in the worst possible ways to satisfy the top brass or poorly understood metrics.
It's easy to say 'Oh sure, I work for the Evil Empire, but my division makes interesting things which people actually quite like...'
...but then you've got to be prepared to take it on the chin when someone says, "Yes, but that whole company is Evil, which, kind of by association includes you."
When you work for someone, their reputation does, absolutely, 100% reflect on you personally regardless of what your role in the company is (to some degree, obviously).
Just food for thought.
If you don't like it, don't work for people you don't want your personal reputation associated with.
When you work for someone, their reputation does, absolutely, 100% reflect on you personally regardless of what your role in the company is (to some degree, obviously).
I don't understand this rationale at all. You are not your company. Calling someone evil because you dislike their company (I'm not defending Zynga, but they're the #firstworldproblems of "evil") is incredibly sophomoric.
You've basically got a very mild variation on the Wernher Von Braun thing going on here.
Engineer of prolific impact and talent, working for the worst possible people, indirectly exploiting people in the worse possible way to do shit work that is related to his pure and commendable goals and interests. The engineer feels as though he is powerless to resist the the exploitation that is demanded by his employer. Eventually the bad guy employers go down in flames to everyone's delight, but the engineer still has the technical chops to make himself valued.
The question, does the previous employer reflect poorly on the engineer?
To be honest, Von Braun is one of those ambiguous figures in history for me. I don't really know how I feel about him. However, the fact that he is ambiguous at all means that I have to admit to myself that his affiliations during the war do tarnish what I think of him. I don't think it is possible for that not to be the case.
Ex-Zynga software engineer? Obviously the ambiguity is not going to be "is this guy a war criminal or not?" But would there be any ambiguity of any sort? Yeah, I think for me there would be.
I don't think an engineer of any caliber is evaluated in a vacuum, past employers shape how we view them, for better or worse. This (particularly how I feel about Von Braun) is something I have thought about hard in the past when considering what I want to do as an engineer.
d : a chartered commercial organization or medieval trade guild
e : an association of persons for carrying on a commercial or industrial enterprise
You are your company. That's the very definition of the word. One might be given a dispensation to the evil-by-association if you were working at Burger King because that's the only job you could get.
But you're presumably an incredibly smart and capable (and thus sought after) tech professional who could no doubt have placed his labor wherever he chose.
If you are the company, but the company is not you (assuming other employees and shareholders), but the company is a person itself, does this mean that you and the company are conjoined siblings?
I totally understand. Most major "evils" happen through a combination of very small steps towards the cliff. It takes a very vigilant stance, permeated through the company structure to prevent this fall into the abyss. In this light, constantly questioning the ethics of your employer company, as a whole, is healthy.
There's something so particularly American about gaining so much of your identity from your job. American's are so defined by what work they do.
I am not my employer. My employer pays my wage and that's it. I'm not interested in joining a cult. I'm earning a paycheck.
This is not to say I would feel comfortable working for a company like Zynga. Absolutely not. But I also don't doubt there are many people at Zynga who really do not like the company's direction. Don't blame the soldiers for the fault of the generals.
It's not about your employer being your identity; It's about empathy and whether your choices improve or worsen others' lives.
> Don't blame the soldiers for the fault of the generals.
Since you apparently like military analogies, I'll quote one of the Nuremberg Principles, which---as far as I am aware---are not an American invention:
"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."
This is a pretty sensible principle, because it's the soldiers who enable the generals. Similarly, if you're a developer (unless you're really terrible) and you work at Zynga or any other company, you're enabling your employer.
You are misinterpreting the Nuremberg Principles: They didn't charge the rank and file of the German army for the crimes committed by the various officers and SS members.
All that was decided at Nuremberg was that if you have committed a crime, the fact that you have been ordered to by your superiors does not innocent you.
So we agree that anyone who did the spammy deeds at Zynga is "evil", whether their boss asked them to or not. But that does not make everyone else in the company (from the backend developer to the cantine lady) evil.
Zynga may have lost all it's glamour and has a bad reputation now but the same goes for Facebook. I don't think employees should be blamed for the decisions of their heads.
In no way, should this be regarded like military service where your job causes fatalities. For me, as long as you're doing something you enjoy with people you like and developing a skill set, that's reason enough to work at a company. Some people work at jobs they hate all their lives because they need to live and support their families. If you have a career where you can work with smart people and do what you like, you're already pretty lucky.
If the company does something you believe in, wow. You're really lucky. How many people get to do that in the world?
That's so true. In the Eastern philosophy, your work is one part of you, may be a big one, but just a part of you. Your inner being, inner peace is of greater importance. Your friends, family and love matters.
I hear what you are saying but it is NOT simply hindsight. Many of us from the beginning were very critical of sort of games developed by Zynga, it is definitely not a case of looking back. This is not to say that all the developers were there to rip off previous games and create digital crack but Zynga is what it is and we did say it from the beginning.
From the headline you would think this is about talent being drained away from VCs, but it is just an interview with Danielle Morrill about her Zombie VC post.
the headline is a play on obviously eating brains and a subset of VC's wasting entrepreneurs brain time by taking meetings when they have no plans on considering investing...
I recently ran into an issue with D&B misspelling our company name. This was a massive hassle and I made over 6 phone calls to them and they kept on saying there was one more thing that had to be updated and it would be another 7-14 days. Each time I only found out that the update was not complete because I would call Apple to figure out why the iTunes Connect account was locked.
The biggest benefit of going to a public high school in the DC area was being forced to interact with kids from almost every background you could imagine. This includes ethnicity, income bracket, intelligence, and social ability. True diversity is an education in our own human race, specifically the common bonds that unite all of us. Being able to see a wide range of perspectives and experience completely different cultural norms on a daily basis can go a long way to testing your own assumptions about the world.
This is oft-said, but I'd like to see some concrete evidence of this. I'm not being skeptical to be skeptical, I'd really be interested if there were any proof that this helps people. I have heard some evidence to the contrary, that white kids that grow up in heavily integrated areas are actually MORE racist than those who grow up in primarily white areas.
The biggest benefit of going to a public high school in the DC area was being forced to interact with kids from almost every background you could imagine.
But isn't it a bit odd you had to go to college to do that?
Wouldn't it be better if you had grown up in a neighborhood that would let you do that?
OK, you didn't and you're glad college provided you that opportunity, but isn't it a bit sad how much $ they charge for what is at its core human interaction?
It depends on what you are looking for. Many socially awkward "nerds" learn how to socialize outside of just academics when they are in college. If there are few outlets besides just academics, it's hard to become "well rounded" socially. I can tell you I'd rather hire a socially adept but slightly less intelligent person rather than the brilliant but incapable outside of his field person. Unless of course I am hiring a nuclear physicist, etc etc.
It can be, and there is nothing wrong with that. But if you focus only on academics you foster students that are only good at one thing. I might be cynical, but getting good grades in a class does not mean you are good at the subject material or can apply it anywhere beyond the classroom.
How many people make 6 figures for studying for and taking standardized tests every day?
(It's Caltech, btw, not Cal Tech.) Of course academics are not the only thing. Caltech looked hard for people that were smart, motivated, and passionate about their interests. You wouldn't get admitted without all three.
Keep in mind that Caltech is a very small school, smaller than a lot of high schools. They chose to focus on doing one thing very well, and they succeeded at it. For some types of people, very much including myself, it was a perfect fit for my personality and what I wanted to get out of college. If you're not one of those people, there are plenty of other excellent choices.
>> However, I think most people would agree that academics are not the only thing that matters for success,
>> either personally or professionally.
I would agree. I graduated from Caltech in engineering, and on the whole I would say that my class has been fairly successful in whatever they did. However, if you look at people that are the best known in their field, most of them combine being very strong technically (but not in my observation the best in their field) with tremendous drive and a talent for self-promotion.
I fully agree but I've always found the notion that universities can/should teach things other then academics a bit silly.
And strangely while many universities aim to do just that, I don't know of any who take it seriously enough to teach formal classes in self discovery or making friends and influencing people.
Which you absolutely could seriously do. But no one does. I think this shows that those "other" things are not something universities truly aim to teach, but want to make use of in creating an environment which justifies the very high cost of education.
http://las.alfred.edu/psychology/ - "Life skills
Students in Alfred University's psychology program learn about human behavior, develop self-discovery skills, and learn to think critically about themselves and others."
Self discovery is often an important part of a Psychology or Counseling major and "influencing people" aka Negotiation is taught at business and law schools across the country. I even took a corporate course in it 3 years ago.
You are just not the target audience. If Zynga games were not fun to everyone, no one would play them. Just because you do not find them amusing does not make them bad games.
I don't like the My Little Pony games aimed at 6 year old girls, but I won't say they are bad because I know I am not a 6 year old girl.
They're "bad games" by any usual metric bar with which games are critiqued, unless your metrics are "money made" and "addiction." But they're businessmen metrics, not the ones a game designer would use.
PopCap are definitely the company to look at here. They spent a decent number of years cloning smaller games, which was not to their credit. In the last 4 years or so, they've been creating amazing original IP. And those games are doing gangbusters with all sorts of audiences. You don't have to create bad games in order to engage new audiences, you just have to tap into what they are interested in.
What is the "usual metric bar with which games are critiqued"? I am pretty sure that is your opinion because there is no metric bar that all games are measured against.
Game reviews do not use a good game checklist to explain why a game is good or bad, they give their opinion. You can say Zynga games are bad, but supposing that your opinion should apply to everyone is arrogant.
There are plenty of metrics, like engagement, enjoyment etc. etc., but there is some very tangible metric bar by which games are measured, it's called peer approval.
By what metric are other art forms judged? How are the Oscars awarded to movies? Who chooses the winner of the Booker prize? Or the VMAs? Peer approval.
Zynga doesn't have peer approval from many game designers. This article highlights some dissenting opinion, but there's plenty more out there. Just Google it. Their infamous speech speech at GDC Awards show doesn't help their cause either. [1]
Note I am careful not to say "games reviewers" because reviewers are writing for their audience, and that core game audience usually does not intersect with Zynga.
One possibility (not sure if it's been done) is to try to understand what the players themselves think of the game. Some WoW players love it, some kind of hate it but continue to play it anyway for various reasons, ranging from addiction to sunk cost to social pressure, others vaccilate or are somewhere in between. How does that compare to FarmVille players or to Starcraft 2 players or to slot-machine players?
Self-assessment isn't a perfect metric either, but differences in self-assessment between players of different kinds of games might give something interesting. I mean, if you go only by money made, the slot machine is still the best game of all time. Which maybe is true on one axis of "best", but it seems weird to argue that it's the only possible way to discuss games. Is looking at the top-grossing films list the only possible way to discuss films?
My point is that if you want to evaluate quality you have to leave metrics behind and start looking at opinions. And opinions are like assholes in that they're ubiquitous throughout the population.
Of course you can make up metrics based on averages of everyone's opinions, or weighted averages where you weight by the "sophistication" (in some sense) of the person's opinion. But nobody will believe such metrics anyway, in that you'll never catch anybody saying "I hate this game/book/album, but this reliable metric says it's good, so I guess it must actually be good!"
If Farmville is bad, it falls into the "fascinatingly bad" category of things that are derided by professional opinion-makers but still vastly popular. Genuinely bad games, books and bands are a dime a dozen -- check out a publisher's reject pile, an open mike night or a twelve year old programmer's hard disk for examples -- but fascinatingly bad things like The Da Vinci Code or Nickelback or Farmville deserve a lot more analysis.
I think 'fun' can be a relative thing, which is why people play games like Farmville. When you are bored at work, then a game like Farmville would be a 'fun' diversion of your time. Or if you are bored at home and rather than worry about bills piling up, or that school paper due you play Farmville because it's more 'fun' than worrying about either of those things.
It's like Solitaire. I've played countless games over the years, but I don't recall every actually enjoying the time spent playing it. Normally I was just avoiding doing something else.
I don't like McDonalds, but I will say it's unhealthy garbage which beats companies that actually care about food only on the strength of its marketing budget...
This is a good point. I'm not in the target audience for McDonalds either, but even if I were and I really really liked McDonalds, it wouldn't make it any healthier or more substantial. I would still be better off eating something else.
I tried this, and I could only make it work when the phone was without a case. When I touched the metal directly I could make the signal go from 5 bars to 2 bars. With the case on I could not make it change at all.
EDIT: this was holding it with my left hand, I did not try it right handed.
