Did you work at other gaming companies before Zynga? At the time, I was working at Lucas Arts. A friend of mine had just left
Lucas Arts to go to Zynga. I heard about it on a Saturday when we went
for a hike, did some research about it on a Sunday, was interviewed on a
Monday, was hired 15 minutes into the interview, and accepted the offer
that night.Why did you decide to go to Zynga? What made me so interested was that Zynga was first into a market and was already a successful business. I thought there are a lot of people coming in on Facebook, everyone loves games, and Zynga knows how to monetize, so joining was a great opportunity. And the founder of Zynga, Mark Pincus, has been very successful at his other companies, so I figured he knew what he was doing.
Before Zynga came along, there were games on Facebook; what did Zynga do differently? We were good at understanding how the platform works and we were very aggressive. Mark had created Tribe.net, which is an interesting social network, so they understood the social networking and they made an early investment in getting gaming people in. It was this combination of wanting to make good games and trying to measure the analytics of the game, almost like applying investment banker analysis to make the game as great as possible [Editor's note: during the talk, Bill explained that they improve their games by changing some parameters (such as difficulty, exchange rate in a poker game, etc.), measure the user response, and adapt accordingly].
If I want to make a startup that develops games for social networks, what should I do? First, you have to play the games and figure out how they work and why they're successful. Then, you need to come up with what kind of game you think people would want to play. Finally, you find people who will make it.
A lot of start-ups tend to focus on the product and never actually release. How long does Zynga take? It varies on the game, but as quality rises in social gaming, it tends to take longer to get them to the right level of quality.
How long would you take if you are just starting? If you're starting, you shouldn't take longer than 3 or 4 months to release. Get something out fast and see how it does.
How would you choose which games to make? I would personally look for games that are successful, deconstruct them and try to understand what made them work. Try to find how you can put a good twist on it, and then go fast.
The best thing about social networks is: if one game fails, make another; you can't be afraid that the first game flops. The faster you do it and the cheaper you can do it, the more opportunities you'll have, and the more chances you'll have to create a hit.
What's the difference between consoles and Facebook games? When you're building for a console, you'll building for a closed, controlled environment. On the other hand, Facebook has APIs but it's an open environment because it's on the web, so you have a vast array of possible machines and browsers that people could use. Also, you're dependent on certain technologies like Flash because you can't have a game that requires a download.
But you need to wait before getting a console game approved, whereas the beauty of social media is: if you put up the game online, it's there instantly.
What kind of team do you need to build a game? You get a developer, a designer and some people to do art and you've got enough to try it. Even if you first game fails miserably, you can learn from it.
It also doesn't cost a lot to get going. And if you grow, you'll make money, which you can use to buy ads to grow more and get more money; there's a nice loop to it.
How long does it take before you get the hang of it? It took me about 5-6 years before I felt like I understood what I was doing in games, and I have still a lot to learn. So far, startups are similar, although lessons can run in parallel
