Zynga-East
Latest
Zynga East shuttered, studios in Texas and New York consolidated
Zynga shut down its Baltimore studio, Zynga East, and planned to combine studios in Texas and New York, putting roughly 30 people out of work today. Zynga will consolidate its two studios in Austin, Texas, and relocate the studio in McKinney, Texas, to Dallas. Zynga's New York City offices will merge, transferring staff to the area's mobile studio."In an effort to leverage resources as we focus on creating franchises and driving profitability, Zynga has made changes to four of our US offices," Zynga COO David Ko told Joystiq. He concluded: "While these decisions are always difficult, these steps will affect approximately 1 percent of our workforce and enable us to focus our resources on the most significant growth opportunities."Zynga lost chief game designer and head of Zynga East Brian Reynolds in January, and shut down CityVille 2 development. This continues a trend of financial problems, game closures and executive departures at Zynga.
Zynga: Xbox Live 'too small a demographic'
Don't worry about Farmville infiltrating your Xbox 360 (and the subsequent requests from your mom and your friends that would soon follow thereafter). According to Zynga chief game designer, Brian Reynolds, the Xbox 360 landscape is small potatoes -- Zynga's after broader audiences and the user base on one measly console is simply not big enough to warrant interest. "[Xbox Live's] too small a demographic," Reynolds told IndustryGamers. "Think about, of my friends, how many of them own an Xbox 360? Well, I'm a game developer and I even come from a triple-A space so we might even be in the double digits... Twenty or maybe even thirty percent of my friends might have an Xbox 360, but effectively 100% of them have Facebook and effectively 100% of them have a mobile phone. Of them, probably 90% have a smartphone." Reynolds would then go on to say that the mobile space is the next area Zynga expects to put its efforts into. He says it's all about the number of people who could possibly partake in the social experience -- on the Xbox 360, he estimates "the amount of social capital that there is isn't going to be very high" on the platform. The less people on a platform, the less revenue Zynga projects to make and, thus, the less likely it is the company will be on that platform. "That's why right now we're on Facebook for sure, and mobile is the obvious next place for us to go because it is an inherently social platform," Reynolds concluded.
Zynga's Frontierville already has 5 million daily active users
Zynga recently learned a very profitable lesson from the launch of its newest casual networking game -- people aren't obsessed with Farms, as it turns out. What they can't get enough of are Villes. The player base for Frontierville, a browser-based family-raising (and, yes, farming) sim set in the Wild West, is evidence of this assertion -- Zynga emailed us earlier today, announcing the game has racked up over 5 million "daily active users" since going live June 9. Now that we know the keyword capable of attracting millions of potential consumers, we're wondering how we can cash in on its potential. We know we just went through a pretty major relaunch, but we're wondering if its too late to rebrand our humble news site as 'Stiqville. We'll talk to the people upstairs.
Brian Reynolds answers 10 Questions from the Academy
And now, 10 Questions from the Academy: A weekly feature from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences wherein significant figures in the video game industry provide their input on past trends, current events, and future challenges and goals for the entertainment software community. Brian Reynolds is a member of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and will speak at the D.I.C.E. Summit in 2010. After working with Sid Meier at both MicroProse and Firaxis, Reynolds went on to create Big Huge Games, where he served as CEO until the sale of the company to 38 Studios earlier this year. He now heads up the newly established social gaming team at Zynga East in Baltimore. AIAS: What's your favorite part of game development? Brian Reynolds: The last 25% of the project, when you're polishing and tuning the thing to make it perfect for release. Of course it's never actually "perfect," but the game starts to feel like a real game rather than a prototype – all the parts start working well together and you finally realize "hey now we have something I want to play!" What game are you most jealous of? Half Life 2 – totally wish I had meaningful skills for making games like that. It's got such an amazing combination of good writing, good technology, good level design, and just overall great craftsmanship.
Big Huge Games boss Brian Reynolds leaves, joins Zynga East
When 38 Studios CEO Brett Close told Joystiq that his company's acquisition of Big Huge Games from THQ was due in no small part to the "incredible veteran talent" at the developer – even singling out Oblivion and Morrowind designer Ken Rolston – we had assumed that he was also referring to the studio's CEO and Creative Director, Brian Reynolds. Yeah, you see where we're going with this ...Social gaming developer Zynga (think: Mafia Wars) announced today that it has hired Reynolds to fill the newly created position of "chief designer" (a reaction to social gaming competitor Playdom's appointment of legendary game designer Steve Meretzky to the position of VP of game design last year?). Reynolds will "head up operations at Zynga East" in Baltimore, and "production efforts will be focused on creating new social network games ... with a strategic emphasis."When asked for comment on Reynolds' departure, Close told Joystiq, "38 Studios highly values the vision and contributions of BHG founder Brian Reynolds to the portfolio of BHG products and the video game industry in general. We wish him great success in his new endeavor." But with Reynolds out, who's left to run things at BHG (they've still got titles in development after all)? Close said, "With regards to his position at BHG/38S, we are still evaluating roles and responsibilities between the two studios; the other founders and top talent at BHG are stepping up in the meantime."Chief amongst those "stepping up" would be co-founder Tim Train, President and Chief Operations Officer of Big Huge Games, as well as the studio's General Manager. Train told us, "Having worked with Brian for seventeen years, I'm very excited to see what fresh ideas he'll bring to the social gaming space. I'm also happy to have a new studio in the Baltimore area that can attract new talent and investment to the region. We wish Zynga East the best!"So: is Maryland joining Massachusetts as a mecca for East Coast game development? With just 12 to 15 employees at Zynga East, we're not quite ready to say that, but consider our curiosity officially piqued.
