Building Games That Don't Die: The Zynga Model

we create new games. We think we want to create games that will last, let's say, 5 years for the forever franchise and can have some scale to be uh important business-wise. So, let's say 100 million more a year. [music] Yon Levant, you joined Zingga in May of 2013 as a director of user acquisition. It's almost the end of 2025 and you're still at Zinga. Albby, not a director of user acquisition. You've made a couple of steps up and now you're executive vice president of mobile studios at Zinga. What's the uh secret to enduring corporate life for 13 years in the same company?
Yeah. So, if you ask me back then, if I'm going to stay that long, I would never say that it would be. And if people that knows me would be surprised as well. So I I think I had quite the

journey. I changed the challenges and had a great people to work with. So what I think kept me here is the people and the fact that I had a very interesting journey
and talking about these journeys like you've you've had a chance to work on multiple franchises and I think after Frank joined they have been called forever franchises. So, I'm curious to hear from somebody who's been at Zingga for nearly 13 years, if almost like the longest tenure, what is a forever franchise? Like, what makes it a forever franchise?
So, I think if you look back at what people thought mobile games can be, they thought it's kind of very short-lived and uh then people would jump to a different experience and we had a very different opinion about them. And we thought that games especially uh well done games and that if you keep them refreshed and exciting can stay for a really long time. In fact we have some games that have been here 16 17 18 years. So you can think about the

longevity of those games and with that uh we think okay this is a much better experience for users. It's also a much better business model. So we when we create new games, we think we want to create games that will last let's say five years for the forever franchise and can have some scale to be uh important business-wise. So let's say 100 million more a year. Uh so if you think about uh our portfolio now we have several of those and when we create new ones we are thinking that in mind on how the design how the category h can be here uh for many years to come and I I can say that it's working pretty well and I think many of the our competitors are thinking something similar. So you mentioned that Forever Franchise the basics is it has to last for at least 5 years at a um impactful scale

and has to bring at least 100 million in annual revenue. So we're talking about games that make half a billion in gross revenue at least. Is that what makes a forever franchise?
Yeah, I think that and maybe other companies will have a different definition but for us we want them to be at scale that we think is important. This is why we are talking about that kind of size and even more so that they can last and the experience in in them can evolve to players that have been with them for some time. And we know that when you play a game for the first month, it's the experience is very different than if you played the game for two years. But we want that to continue to our players that love the game to still be very engaged and interested. And uh we have some uh put you know some games in our portfolio that this is as exciting as it was when we launched them.
How do you keep how do you keep your teams not copying of what exists in the

market? Because if you put in a specific sum like let's say it's 100 million or up and so now I'll go to top grossing and only look from here and up and basically take one of them and do the uh the Zingga 702010 and present you the case. Is that how you approach it or what's the uh what's the approach?
I think looking at the market is important. You can understand what resonate with player. You can understand what has some financial impact. But cloning doesn't work in entertainment. It it doesn't work. So what you can understand is what categories you want to play in what systems might be working for that category and how you can get inspired. But if you are really wanting to get a break, you know kind of a breakout, you need to find some things that people have not done, you need to maybe introduce something with one from one category to your category that haven't done in your category, but maybe

gaming has been done and tailor it really to your audience. And I think this is where we saw real hit is when we have done that.
So cloning doesn't work. Does that mean that the uh the approach that I think Pinkis was very adamant about the 702010 so meaning proven proven is 70% of the game uh better is 20% of the game just looking at the features and overall and 10 is totally new. So that was kind of like the mental model of Zinga. Do you still follow that or is that something that worked before and you're not doing that anymore? I think I like the this is kind of an approach of like the proven better new. I think it's a good framework to work with when you introduce features. H I think for new games it probably will not apply in the same ratio. Uh there is definitely a lot to be said about oven. This is where you know you okay there's something in in the market that players understand which

is you know okay this is the first step of introducing something new is do you think so your players will understand and then the weather will enjoy it and how you can do it better than the market and eventually something bring something totally new but I think there's a difference between having that as a feature compared to building a new game from scratch if you are trying to use that uh it maybe will only work when the category is deal and definitely will not work when it's a red ocean.
100% agree and actually it makes a lot of sense to use that model in live operations versus new game development back in the days when 702010 worked really well was when Zingga had a dominant position on Facebook. So they or you or not you you were we that was before us probably when they were able to basically come in and bully you know early early traction games by sheer size of of the audience and kind of take take what they had and just do a little bit

better. But in in Red Ocean, yes, it's it's much harder. Um, can you talk about what are the sort of early signals that you look for in a game that could become a forever franchise?
Yeah. So, so I think our approach on new games is you you can't re-engineer a hit. I don't think in uh entertainment it's something that you can have a formula here is how you make a game. What you can have is a signals that you are on the right path and probably the signals are even more important to know that you're on the wrong path and starting to understand whether one is a game that you create is a core game. the main reason why people come to the game and we are really great and I think the industry is ev evolving a lot and adding all those whistles and bells around the core game and create more and more meta

around it but I'm a big believer that the core game need to be engaging by itself and it need to walk by itself and if you put it in market and you try to do this and you see that this is a game that people wants to go back to without all of the extra, it's a great signal. And if it's not, sugar coating and adding more stuff and h more systems to it uh will have a much harder journey to become something that people will play for years. I think our great team peak have done.
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Game devs, here at Heroic Labs, we know that great gameplay is what players love. But integrating metagame features [music] like challenges, progression, and rewards is crucial for retention and monetization. But coding them is a tedious and timeconuming [music] process. That's why top studios have turned to Hero from Heroic Clouds. Hero provides a complete suite of battle tested metagame features that are quick to implement, letting you spend more [music] time on the core gameplay experience. Ready to ship fully featured engaging games? Check out [music] Hero today at heroiclabs.com. Great example of that with Matt Factory that we saw that the first the game is so well done without a lot of system and features and in the past we would want a list of you know dozen features that you get out we said no we are changing the approach and this is working really well and we saw it in market and then you can see if there is scale and our new way and maybe I'll finish with that question

that we want to okay let's see that the core is working let's see it's fine time. So engage with retention and then we want to see that can it scale and can h it stack is our new way of trying to understand that as fast as you can get in the development. The game has to stand by itself based on the core game. What are the KPIs that you're looking at when you're trying to assess whether the core game is working? Is it is it quantitative? Is it qualitative? Is it the combination of both? I'm I'm really interested in that. I think that a qualitative is good to help the designers tune their experience and I think it when you are really early on when you have you know an idea it's all quitive you kind of describe it to people and try to understand whether you will feel think it's fun and if not how they can make it even better and then you move to prototypes and say okay let me play around with that let's feel if it's good

and then good designers have a good feeling what uh that experience should be without additional data. You can uh we have a lot of gamers in at Zinga. So you can laugh at that ecosystem and ask them okay let's you know one in the circle let's get get more people in this but eventually you need KPIs eventually you need market KPIs and this is where I think the [snorts] right balance that Zinga has been because I think we have been the pioneers on leveraging data to make deci creative decisions and balance it with okay it's not just science it's there's art in making entertainment is what we are trying to aspire to but early early on it's much more qualitative then it's more to quality when you get some data from the market and eventually you know starting

at a soft launch then it's much more data than anything else
can you throw in some of the KPIs that you're looking for is it like day 30 number for example Eventually we definitely want day 30 and the stacking two day 30. So it's not we have learned that it's not the number just just the number itself. It's the weight of that number. The trend to this number. So let's say your retention of day 30 is 20%. It's good.
Yeah. It was much higher before. Let's say the day 14 was, you know, 40 and you can say, okay, it's it's still a really good number, but it's declined quite a lot compared to day 14 of 25 and day 30 of 20. So, it's much less steep. So, the people that are staying staying for longer. So, you're trying to get that. And then obviously we get to day 60 and uh I think soft launch is

somewhere around day 60 you start to get quite the confidence that you know the curves you know the trends.
Got it. So you're looking at the uh at the curve and the trend of the curve rather than certain numbers.
You need both obviously you need both because you want to but I think for indicative what would be day if I tell you just a number for day 30 it would be very hard to know what will be day 60. If I tell you a curve which you can [clears throat] be as much more
and how much do you look at the marketability of the game early on is that u because there's you know there's the LTV part which is the retention part and then there's the cat part which is
so this is very hard and I think it's very hard because you what you want to do is not just what will be your CPI is what will be your CPI at scale.
Yeah. H especially for the game that we are aiming to create or the you know the businesses you're aiming to do. So you have some market analysis to just to

know that you are fishing in the right pond that it's not too shallow. You want to do first of all to know that and then you can do some markets rely some category benchmark and stuff like that that you can leverage. uh you can do some uh C le CPI tests uh sometimes is harder sometime uh you can get some value but I think what people use for soft launch which is what we are kind of saying after those early test whether it's you know the D1 whether it's farmer you start to get into a soft launcher where you can understand the stack and scale and this is big part of the scale is really understanding that and how you can take your game and estimate and I think that we will you know all companies will need to spend to do this. I haven't seen a companies that have been able to really understand it all early on or without some stress tests.
If I would have to say how Zingga makes

their new forever franchises is you start with a core game and it has to work by itself. The the way you find the good core game is first people describe essentially pitch to each other. This is a idea I'm having. If people like that idea, you move to a prototyping phase. In prototyping phase, you basically play test internally with people who are experts at gaming whether they like this and especially experts in that genre since usually people aren't specific studio that make specific games like Small Giant makes puzzle RPGs and and Graham makes puzzle games and Peak makes puzzle games or Gra anyways um then you move to um to early testing. So going for KPIs in in those places you have both target numbers but you also look at the curve of the retention not only if they're hitting that number to understand the stickiness of the user base uh rather than if the specific cohorts are hitting specific numbers.

And for marketability, you do some early tests just to basically sniff the worst probably the worst ideas, sniff them out and maybe close them out early. And then real tests happen through scaling tests that are probably specific chosen markets where you go for specific size of the audience and through that you're understanding how quickly the CPI rises and kind of look at overall from that project to what would be global launch. A
a great description. I I think I the one recommendation I would give to other game makers is to focus on your core experience. It's it's not good enough. It need to be excellent and until it's excellent, focus on other features. And the same approach to if your first seven days are not good enough, don't go and and and work on later uh phases in the game. Fix your D7. If not, you will regret it. It will be much harder to fix later. And we are qu quite regular on this approach.

Talking about like focusing on on core features, Zingga uses this uh what we call I don't know if you call it internally, but we call it a city state model where rather than having the centralized HQ that might be somewhere else in California that tells everybody what type of a games are doing not far from your HQ. uh but you have uh studios that are usually come in through an acquisition and they are quite autonomous uh where they are focusing on a specific genre. So is that the model that that Zingga operates now?
It's more than one model that works for people. I think for us we are a big believer is that I think part of the secret sauce of making heated entertainment product is the talent that is in the in the different studios and the culture that they bring with it that

created this unique what is the reason that we you know wanted to partner with the studio is because we saw something that is unique and can add value to rest of Zinga and find something for them for the markets whether it's gra small giant or people. So all of them are quite different in some some aspect especially on how they think about uh innovation in their game and how they get to the feature set of the new game that they want to develop. So yes, we are definitely leaning into it and we believe that we have core value that we want to have with all of the different studios but we will share what we think and what we are seeing in other places. So you can about a a buffet of h capabilities uh that the central team can help but also a learning that we see from one

another and when the studio say oh I did this and it's very interesting uh when we get to a great collaborative people takes it instead of you need to push it and it's much more powerful than this maybe it's making my life a bit harder and more complex and things takes a bit longer But uh if I shift to take two, take two view is very close to that as well. The labels are in the same they are quite different. So Rockstar and Zing 2K have quite different approaches to things and I think it's part of our strengths.
When when you acquire these studios, they're usually led by founders at that point. And I think Zinga has made like 33 acquisition over its history. I I forgot I I I had the exact number when Chris Petrovvic was on the podcast. Uh so Chris headed Zinga's M&A. Um how do you keep the culture alive with these different studios? Because what often happens is after set amount of years,

usually marked in a contract, the founders leave the studios that they have sold to Zingga. And now it's kind of like your job to keep the same culture across the uh the studio ecosystem. In the game of growth, everyone is looking for that power up. Vibes is exactly that. It's built [music] by industry people, so they actually get the challenges you're dealing with. As a result, they become the fastest growing [music] gamified rewards platform out there. And the results are kind of nuts. With their AI powered targeting, you're not just buying [music] installs, you're bringing in the right players. And now they've got this new rorowass optimization engine. So your campaigns basically [music] level up automatically. Vibes is built different. It's designed for growth and I guess you could say it's powered by good vibes. Check out [music] their doof exclusive case studies by following the link in the description and go to vbs.co. [music]

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I think it's a part of your life cycle. So you know that uh we also obviously have other games that have been here for a while and they have changed leadership from time to time. It happens. A a good view uh on studios is that you need to understand not just the founders but what they want to do and some founders stays but most as you mentioned decide to do something else after they kind of finish that chapter in their career and want to do something else but this is not something you need to shy away from you need to address it and you one of that is to understand okay what is the second uh lay of leaders of the studio how you can identify, how you can empower them, how you can do that. So there will be a a um a continue of uh

that knowledge and experience going through the organization and we have been able to do it multiple times because we are speaking with the founders on that very early on. I think it's part of the discussion this should happen and all the founders that have you know created that you know studio that business want to see succeed after they leave
so they are definitely wanting to find the right way to do it and I think it just you need time you need to spend time with the team you need to spend time with the founders you need to uh help that organization evolve Um we we have found that doing it you just need more time. So don't wait for the if you are waiting for the last quarter to have that conversation it will be very rough. If you have
uh time to prepare for it
it's going to be smooth but it's evolved. So it's yes it's not going to be the same the the company that had the

founders and now that after the founders the companies will be slightly different but this is part of the evolution of all all of the organizations. Talking about evolution, Zingo has evolved quite a lot in being an acquirer. like over these 30 companies. I think the uh the first 20 acquisitions they were there were quite a many misses but then towards the end it was uh it was kind of like the uh the hit show like you got the Graham games, the Peak Games, Rolex, small giant all really really good acquisitions but also really great integrations because those studios are doing very well post joining Zingga. So what do you think changed in the way Zingga has done integration of studios because that has been probably the most difficult part after the acquisition. Yes. And I think part of it is that approach because we had a different mindset when I joined Zingga we were

part of the social casino and we have focus on that a lot and there was a lot of you know mandates of we need to add this and we need to and the road map became not a game map but an integration road map and it doesn't really work for for studio form for studios. that you want to on board. One is uh they are here to make games and not on board a lot of SDKs and uh the second I think the market is moving and you need to move with it. And we have found that a push instead of a pull is not the right if the if the team wants to do something they will do it in a great way. And we have changed the model drastically and say okay what is the minimum things that we have to because we are a public company we have to have so we have some legal we have some cyber security and accounting stuff that we need to do but those should be very few and not heavy for the studios and

now we have a lot of other things to offer which is a very different you know if you're saying we have things to offer we don't have to think to mandate we have things to offer to studio because we think it's valuable But it's an opt in for their experience. It's take a bit longer but I think it's much stronger. And this mindset switch of doing that have created again the the dynamic and as we had more and more experience with that we have kind of crafted that
uh experience to be as smooth as it could be. But still you must have to balance the uh the independence of the studio with the benefits of scale. Meaning like sometimes you're sitting there in San Mato and you know that if they do this this will work but at the same time if I force them that's against the culture and will break the sort of a promise that that we have that you know we've given the studios.
So it's a short long you know shortterm

and long-term balance. If they are thinking about something that add a lot of risk, I will step in. But this is very rare. The thing is that you think, oh, there's a better opportunity. Do collection in this way. Do a battle pass in this way. Here's a things that you should try on a like all of them are great and they have upside. But if you force a creative people to do something your way without their desire and they have been successful if not they were not there from the first place is a much stronger bond and ability to get there. So this is not a sprint this is a marathon our games are here for many years. So understanding how you do that with them, how you kind of work with different leaders on to get them to do what is best for their game and they have great instincts

again. This is why they're there is yes but I do I find yourself oh I would do something different but it's okay I I got to that point that you understand that it's h maybe uh I didn't share the right information or the right timing or maybe there's something else but they are allowed to do that and this is how we want it to be and there you know in all of the things there is trade-off so we are the the speed on things that you get your your way is what we are paying but I think it's a much stronger and it will bring better results because they are often right on why they see the game they know that the collection that you think is much better maybe they have a different reason why they want to prioritize something else before that so which is okay it's it's very rare that you need to you know we have to do it in this way it's very rare that we have to do that

so I've worked at HQs and I worked at satellite studios like 10-hour diff time difference apart. Um, and there's a very interesting cultural shift when you work at a satellite and you're talking to HQ because HQ usually demands the time when you're having the call, etc., etc. So, I'm I'm curious of how do you keep these creative studios that you have around the world far away from San Mato? How do you keep them from feeling like they are satellites reporting to the HQ but actually creative hubs?
We have changed a dynamic and one you should ask them not me but I'm biased but I I think part of it you need to spend time. So I'm you know as we speak on Sunday I'm jumping on a plane to go to visit you know our guys in social point Barcelona and then I will be in Finland and then in London. So you need to spend time with them because you want

not just to have them report you want to feel part of the team to be able to provide help and understand the challenges that they are facing much better and I am a big believer and you know human interaction zoom is okay but it's not great. Uh so we need to do that. Second, I think that because we create this culture of studios have the dynamic with the studios is they are quite independent and they are able to pull information but it's not that they have to do stuff in the same way of some other companies are doing it. We are seeing a hub it's a hub of creative. We have a lot of studios in multiple places in in the world and I think if you go to Graham or small giant or peak they will say they are peak they are part of Zinga and they're part of take two and I think this is kind of the way that we do

it instead of oh I'm a satellite of Zingo I I don't think it's a fun way to look at your job and I I I I think it's yes there are some reporting stuff that you need to do but we are trying to h to fight that so there will not be a you know the the the head come the b that is saying oh you know I'm not the dynamic at all zinga
I can attest I've been to a few of your studios and they I don't even remember seeing a zinga logo I'm sure it was somewhere there but it definitely felt like their own successful studio that they were And um but regarding that, so you're servicing essentially the studio. What does your workday look like?
Because we have quite a lot of presence now in Europe. I think half of our business our team. So my mornings are very busy because we we need to

have conversation to see how we can help them. What are they facing? And it's come you know it can be product it can be marketing it can be talent it can be multiple things as you know there are uh with a lot of people there's a lot of things to to deal with and there is some discussion on opportunities and how what is our focusing on and trying to first of all understand if something is changed if there's an opportunity or risk coming our way there's a lot of discussion about what other teams have been doing and seeing success And you know from direct to consumer to features to marketing this is all something that we are excited about and we are sharing and this is kind of part of the value that we have created is that a lot of it is organic that studio will speak with studio and this is what I'm trying to cultivate that to make sure that the

marketer in one team will speak with the other the PM that have created you know this battle pass will speak with another and all of that is happening when we do this and we need to facilitate that. So this is kind of a lot of that is happening and obviously in the same time we have KPI business and and processes so far we have a new game or we have all of that is uh always happening in the background there we have a few dozens of games that are live. So there are uh always something happening in in one of them. Uh good or bad, it's always that uh opportunity to learn and try to share information.
How many of Zinga games uh do you play every week?
So I have a new games that I test when they are, you know, ready. So this is like more of

when the game is ready with the big updates and stuff. I I I test it and I sometimes I am more familiar with the categories, sometimes have less but by now I I think I probably all categories and then there are games that have like updates in something meaningful or I saw a KPI or I think it's very interesting features that they are launching. So I try to dive in and then I have games that are you know just trying again and again again just because there is s so many and some of them require like an hour game an hour a day to understand the system so you can't do all of them but
usually I get directed to oh this is there's a new feature here that is doing well or this is a new feature in testing that you should play because it's different and so I'm getting those round but it's quite a hot. It sounds like a lot of fun in the beginning if you're like, "Oh, you get to play a lot of different games and different genres from Natural Motion to Graham to Peak to

Rolling. 200 games a day launched." But like at a scale it sounds pretty crazy.
But the one with obviously I think in my others is time. Time. You need to be very selective with your time and how you do it. So but I get the feature very quickly now. you know there are systems and features are not you know I I once you see it I can understand the aim and sometime I play it some they send me a video so I can see the the feature itself in video which is is maybe faster way for me to experience it but I sometime I want to dive into the UI h it is uh it's walk so when you you play all of the games and sometimes I do find myself because you know the games are quite successful you wanted to play for them for trying them for 10 minutes and then you find an hour with them. It means that one I spent too much time on them but it's also something worked something work well. So

do you so this is actually pretty interesting because it's expected that you play these games after all there are the games of your company and you're responsible of the portfolio at the same time even though it's expected rarely executives have time in their calendars to actually play. So, do you take time from your calendar where you just block it out for gaming or do you try to do it on your essentially whatever is left of your free time?
So, usually maybe lunchtime is a good time to play some some games if I don't have a meeting there and then usually it's in the evening. Competitors games is where I would like to spend more time. I'm usually get oh they here's a new game that you should test. So I I got a lot of information on what is up and coming, what is interesting, and then I dive in. I can't just play random stuff that this is very hard for me to to get to. But once I get, oh, here's a new system, here's the new game. They've done something interesting. Yeah, it's

it definitely worth uh checking and I I because you need to know them where the market is at. how whether it's your games or the competitors.
Yeah, it's it's it's challenging especially since there are less games launching and more innovation is coming in live ops or marketing and it's kind of not the same. You can't just pick up the game and play it for an hour. Oh, interesting new game that launches. No, it's like an endgame feature that came through and is actually increasing the revenue. So, so that is that is the challenge. If if you're not deep in the game, you can't even test it. Huh. Okay. No, I'm just curious how executives find time to play games um because of your crazy calendars. I wanted to ask you about Zingga's evolution over over the years. So, there's I think you've mentioned there's kind of been like three different Zinggas. There's the uh the early crazy startup Zinga of of meteor growth of of uh of Mark Pinkis. Then you have the uh

the pivot zinger the the the painful stage of of Facebook gaming dying and you have to go on the new platform and it's mobile mobile is growing but you're not finding success right away. Um stock market was was not treating Zinga kindly during those times and then you have the take 2 era. So essentially just going through that painful pivot, finding success, going through this massive exit and now being part of even a larger corporation. Um how do those phases felt from inside of the company? I think especially the the phase two and phase three is where where where you've been most of your career at Sing. Game devs, here at Heroic Labs, we know that great gameplay is what players love. But integrating metagame features like [music] challenges, progression, and rewards is crucial for retention and monetization. But coding them is a tedious and timeconuming process. That's why top studios have [music] turned to

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I joined what I call Zinga 1.0 uh just at the end of it when we it's after went public still very massive on on canvas on Facebook but mobile was in the air. We had a lot of business on canvas that was declining and we haven't got enough traction on mobile. So this was quite stressful and we maybe the learning from that phase was focus and we needed to go from okay we want to be on mobile we want to have less bats

but fully fund them and have those uh uh kind of wellought ideas and projects and then kind of we shifted with this kind of with the help of Frank and the team kind of contro do that and saying here is our forever franchises. This is what we're going to focus and we are really good in data but maybe has been too much with that and we needed to bring you know create some space for the art in the arts and science dynamic so we can see what the players wants uh long-term not just short-term optimization. We have made sure that every investment that we do is in our well area of strength and know that we have the capability to execute before we add another one. So we kind of had that uh team after team and

project after project analysis and started to get back to growth from our organic uh ecosystem and organic portfolio. And then we started to add uh new new studios and uh new games whether we create them or we acquire studios. Uh but we did the same kind of thought process of okay we want to pivot for everyone need to be a zinger but let's find teams that are right to be added to this new model which means they need to be a bit more experienced they need to be able to be independent to some extent and we found several and it's kind of worked well and we refined refined our way of working with them which you know we seen quite a lot of success and kind of pivoting to kind of the the take two or maybe the zing 3.0 that is being

I think we we wanted to get to a larger scale. I think it was important. I think it was at the time that we needed that to be able to support all of the things that we want to do and take 2 was a perfect partner for that as they are seeing a lot of the values in the in the way that we see with innovation with efficiency but also with how you work with the labels and how you create this space for creative to flourish and it's okay to have to made stay to make a mistake or if you learn from it and with it and I think this kind of for the environment that I we didn't know you know until you try it and now we are in I can tell you that this is probably the the the things that have been so great in this experience was exactly that that the culture of the val were so close between the two companies and this two big

companies that are part it's
it's not an easy thing in most of those sales and I when you see that you see that a lot of the talent is here at Zingga and I think you testify that it's went well.
Yeah. Um I I mean I I was at Zinga for for I think it was 2014 to 2016 the pivot years and I could say from my perspective it was pretty wild. I think I went through three CEOs, three division heads and maybe eight direct managers just to go. So this the the speed of pivot was uh was tangible at the at the game making level. Um but I wanted to ask you since you know you've been through these phases and and being in this position do you have any lessons that you can draw from the hypers scale from the pivot stage and from this sort of a mega corporation stage some some lessons that you can share? I think that the early on is when you think about you

when things go uh well you can quickly think that everything that you do is great and you start to spread yourself very thin when you don't have talent and this is a recipe for an issue in a few quarters or a few years I think many companies are over overhiring and then have the the reverse effect after that but it's not just that it's also that you are losing focus and I think part of this when things go well double down on focus making sure what you want to do you can be very aggressive in them but I will still h make sure that this is kind of what you want to do because now you have the ability to do it and you have more funds and things going well so you can have a lot of trust but I think this is where the time that you focus is important uh it was true then it was true during co and I think it's

in general something that I I I I value a lot I think that the maybe the second uh the thing 2 point with Frank is just understanding that if the fundamentals are not working there's no reason to build on it until a forever franchise has all of the things to make it successful from team to process to the marketing side of it to the designers. H you you can't really get a success and we have went very deep all of them. So you have seen a lot of changes and you know part of that was experience to get there is you said okay we we we want to get our uh best assets the best uh product that we have to be on the right trajectory and this was part of that transition and it took some time and you

can do them all at once but uh I I've been deeply involved in all of those kind of steps uh uh at at some time and it's not always pleasant but this is going to I think was very much needed to get to uh wanted to be you know the top performer on on live operation and I think it start with listen to our players we want to know why they are playing our game and for a audience like we had with our game many of them have been playing for many many years. You want to find the way that you can delight and this kind of one things that I I told them we had players that played 89 out of 90 days. So you look at the last 90 how many of the things that you do other than sleep and eat you do 89 out of 90. Very few. So they know the game inside out. I want to keep them delight you know

surprise and delight. And we really push this. We really push that. We want the game to be fresh. We want the game to be interesting. Let's start with the people that have been playing for this year for for the game for many many years and then kind of okay now what we always for new users for returning all of those kind of stuff but you need to be very kind of deliberate in what you want to do and we did it a game by game and a team by team and the the learning probably was with two that uh is to understand culture fit more than anything else. really spend time spend time on how things will go when you don't see eye to eye and yes when early on everyone is happy but you really want to know the dynamic we want to do this with you know when you hire people you want to know that when you do a stable acquisition and you

definitely want to be as part of this dynamic when you're on the other side of it but I India has how much it's how important it is.
Have you had the chance to read the book by Kim Nordstrom called Up Down Up?
I don't think so.
I was just thinking about that book and it's weirdly enough I don't think he interviewed anybody from Zingga but the whole book up down up kind of described Zinga in some some extent like more than than anything else. And he had a really really interesting quote. uh I'm quoting him, "The first clue that a company has peaked often comes with a hubris. There's a level of arrogance that comes with success, a feeling that you're invincible and that you can achieve anything you want." And that's kind of what you're telling is like in the beginning of the phase, it feels like you're winning. Now, we could just multiply. Instead of making 10 bets on goal, let's do 100. Let's let's expand. Let's try everything. There's no

platform we can't win. Hell, we'll build our own platform. I fully agree with that you have the notion when you are on the defense you're very much understanding oh I have to do something I I'm I'm I'm focused on how I do things what I don't do what I do when but when you're winning you start to have that reaction okay I can do this I can do this and you have now more options you have more trust with your investors you have all of that kind of going with you but it's not a good thing you need to be that is a time to be focused that is time that you to go and say okay with that I can go play offense but I want to choose it and be because you will get a lot of suggestions from everywhere and all of them might be some kind of a good idea but as an aggregate they are not and uh this is going to definitely have been our experience and when we kind of went back to our fundamentals it's it's starting to

really go back to be healthy again.
Yeah. Yeah. You have to take your beating before you start learning. Every company has
Yeah.
Um I want to ask you about the the current market. So you've referenced it to being as a red ocean. It is very mature. Uh players are very hard to surprise let alone delight. Um how do you think about risk takingaking in this type of an environment?
So I think it depends if you are talking about a new game or a live game. M
want to enter a enter a space will need to innovate will need to have a very clear understanding why this is different than another game that I play or I have played in the past why should I give it a chance and changing art and had another mechanic is not enough we are not in that space anymore because all of our players have

played game and they have playing if it's in the same category they have playing your competitors. you have a really you need to find a reason why you can explain it and in fact because of the attention span of our you know players now you need to do it quite quite fast in the experience you can't say oh in the day 30 you will understand why I'm different you will not get there they will turn way before that so but what I do think is that the things that goes for if you think about the experience that we had in games 10 years ago It was extremely for casual games. It was extremely flat. It was really hard to introduce complex systems and features and experiences to our players because they had a hard time understanding it. Try to find out a game that doesn't have uh guilds, team vessels.
Yeah, it's all of that kind of different

systems have people understand. So the I find it quite exciting that you can add in all of the categories and mesh them systems and stuff with each other because the ability to for our players to kind of comprehend that and get okay it's fun uh is much better now than it was before which open a lot of avenue for innovation. H [clears throat] launching new games is hard. So there's a lot of failure. Uh what role does a failure play in Zingga's innovation process today? So I think what we are trying to get to it is to get you know fail fast mentality is to get something that you can understand whether it's whether or not players and as we said that you know starting with the early core game and then you kind of go deep in the experience but the point on failure is it you want to understand why

more than anything else what didn't work can we uh pivot and do something else or we know this idea is not we can't really fix it and we go next. And what I think that now is much more healthy dynamic with all of the studios is that most if not all of them the last you know year year and a half. The game that we makes quite a lot of prototypes and early games that you guys are not even seeing because it stopped way earlier before it's going to market to software and stuff like that. But the game team, the game that is working on this new game say, you know what, it's not good enough. It's not funny enough. It's not whatever they I can't scale it or I can't it's it's it's too nichy. They get to that decision, but oh, and say we need to move compared to another dynamic that you say, you know what, you didn't hit the ball to cancel the

project. [snorts] And because we got that dynamic and we know they know that you know when they learn and they do good things it's not you know they're losing their job then it's a much more uh intellectually honest discussion with even among their own team before it even get to to me and to others is to get that dynamic have a good chance let's move let's pivot let's maybe start something from scratch
that's that's a Beautiful theory. It sounds kind of like super silly in a way, but how do you in practice achieve that? Because in my experience, both being as a game developer or a studio head, the teams fall in love with your own games and often times they don't understand the broader market. They don't maybe understand the competition as well. they don't mind understand the the user acquisition part as well or they they as they should um refuse to

give up and always come up with new things but even even like in a supercell's case where at least in their PR they talk about how the teams make a decision and today actually they announced that Squadbusters has been killed and the CEO was promoting like this is great because the team decided not to move forward with the live operation but at that point they already spent $200 million on marketing. It's like the team can make the call, but in the end it's the executive that takes the hit if they launch the game that doesn't scale.
I would describe this is our dynamic zinc. I think for new games early on, I think I definitely would prefer the team to get to the decision. When we want to push and scale stuff, we need to see that the KPIs are there. If not, we will never not launch this. This is too risky. So there's a difference between oh I have a concept the concept is fun I believe in it and then after a couple of months I see that it's not what I thought then yes you can kill it and I think that uh there's no way that anyone

from Zinga can make you falling back in love with the game if you if if the game team decided they are not there. I agree with you that there's more more time than than not is that the team wants to give another chance and try something new. But if you go to a healthy dynamic with them, maybe they, you know, I think that the likelihood of that new stuff will not be high, but they spend another months on it. They learn for me and then they understand, okay, it probably was a mistake not to do it before, but we'll do it now. And they get to that. When you go to soft launch and start to go worldwide, this is not a gut feel. This is based on data. This need to be this is a business decision that can have a big outcome. So this is something that we all do uh with a collaboration with studio with marketing with finance. This is kind of a different dynamic. I think when a game is live, it's a very

obviously a different discussion. I was referring to the early prototype D1 test somewhere around there is definitely more oh we thought it was going to be fun. Oh we don't think or the data doesn't tell it's it's fun. So basically when the investment from the studio side is limited you give the team freedom to explore to expand on their ideas to test to quantify and so forth and to make that decision hopefully where they decide to move to another game if they feel that this is not progressing or evolving as it should be. But when it comes to actually big decision which is launch global launch that takes a lot of stakeholders a lot of other teams huge investments from the company then that can't be anymore a decision of the team that that is independent autonomous and they believe in it so we're going to give them the free space to spend a couple hundred million dollar to see where this lands
I think this is obviously want the team to think that they are ready and believe that they are ready to go worldwide but

it's not just that we have a lot of things that we want to make sure that we are well positioned before h early games you can say okay if you could have uh stop a project a couple of months before but I think you get more significantly better environment if the team get there for early early stages
I remember having Javier Ferrera on uh CEO of Scopi on the podcast and he was also talking about that the um I'm paraphrasing but he was basically saying that the most toxic behavior in a studio would be the type of a studio that says goes into aside and says to the management, "Don't talk to us. We're concentrating. Don't bother us. Like, we're doing our own thing and we you can't talk to us." He's like, "That is not okay at the company." Like, you have to be open. You have to be willing to take feedback. And if you present those type of values, you're not going to be driving games in this company.
I think it's for depending on the stages. I think that for early on I will accept it after after that find what is fun. Okay. And usually I will kind of sniff around to kind of see how they

progress and how they are compared to what they thought would be and stuff like that. But this is a time that they can have, you know, there are five people in a room trying to figure
you're busy. You don't [laughter] you have a couple hundred other games that you need to be watching at that point. Um, mandatory question. Zingga and AI. What's the situation?
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top grossing games already have a web store, but the one scaling fastest, they're doing it with app charge. Learn more at appcharge.com. We believe that AI can create quite a is a quite a useful tool for game makers other things as well but for for our industry for game makers to accelerate stuff to open doors on things that we couldn't do because they were too expensive to explore really early on. So you can think about our style all of that kind of stuff. It can help h take a an analysis from 0 to 80% very quickly but then you need the rest uh but it saves quite a lot of time or you can do more of so the view all of the things that I have shared are examples of things to

make us more efficient maybe open some doors that we're not been able to do that before and we have uh quite a lot of attempts and and and tests going on all of the different disciplines to try to leverage this new tool. But I will categorize it still as a tool. Well, Strauss Zelding has also come through and made some very interesting comments on, you know, if AI would give the type of a production boost that that is promised, he would definitely be using it on the type of games like uh, you know, Grand Theft Auto with what $1 billion development budget, but just not there yet. So, that was some paraphrasing his his comments earlier this year.
Yeah, I think it's it shows Paul missing initial results. Can I tell you that it's all you know all the hype is already there? No, it's not. You know, we are not saying we're seeing, you know, the ability to be uh 80% better

than we have done before. This is not even close. But we are seeing pockets and things that we can do better and I'm sure that there will be more and if we see that the good thing at Zinga too it will spread out very quick people wants to see they will hear about success they will see about some something that someone is doing differently and and better they will jump on it and and try to find a way to to to leverage it as well. Um but it's it takes time. We wanted to get to uh like full usage in around all of the different studios. Uh I don't think we're there. I don't think the markets. Maybe marketing is a bit ahead. Maybe creative and marketing stuff but uh it's still early
and you're in the heart of it in Silicon Valley like that's where
all the like it's it's
we are testing a lot. So I I want to be open. We are testing a lot of different whether it's vendors you know things

that we do here uh inside the company. So we have a lot of different uh er ongoing tests and trials and stuff like that with the companies and with our tools and uh we will continue to have them and I'm pretty sure that the tools will be better and better and in this you know they are uh growing quite rapidly which is good and I think there are going to be specific niche that they get some jumps and saying oh this is very effective for that and this is very effective and we'll continue to use it.
So practical sobering approach to this new tool that is developing fast.
Yep.
All right. Last thing I got five [snorts] rapid fire questions if I may ask.
Let's go.
All right. Y uh let's go. Number one, hardest decision you've made in your Zinga career of 13 years. So I I think the harder thing that I had

uh to do as a as a manager, as a leader is uh to let go teams that are or people that are good at their job. And uh as you mentioned, we had multiple times, some better, some less. So I think that if we get to a point that we need to let good people go, we usually did something wrong. And if you plan better, you don't need to do it. and you take uh maybe an armist risk and you can do it. Obviously, this is for a good talent. Uh if they're not good talent, it's a different story. But for letting good talent go, it's it's definitely the hardest thing that we I had to do.
Fun fact, my first week at Zingga, I had to let go people that I didn't even know. That was not nice. Anyways, pivot years. I'm very happy that we are in a position and we have been from kovi after ki now we were in a good place

that we hadn't had to do that often compared of our peers
hardest thing I agree uh one thing that Zinga does better than anyone else
I think we balance the data that we get from KPIs and all of the things that we have been really good that they're excelling at and listening to our players. So to get the data and the the science and art is something that we have to because it's because you have so much data like this is like something that we are not speaking to about but you get an enormous amount of data in mobile games and just relying on data is not sufficient to create an entertainment a product that will last. the ability to find how you want to innovate, how you go with gut feeling of your designers and product people and finding that data

that help you with that is I think something that we are really doing well now.
Third one, most underrated trait in a great studio leader and you have a lot of great studio leaders working with you. Um,
let me think about that. So I I think maybe the ability to listen to be with high EQ for your team is something that you want someone with, you know, hunger and push and you want. Yes, for sure. But in order to be effective and not just, you know, strong, they need to feel the team. They need to understand when is the right time to push, how to push and be open to get that information, people to feel comfortable enough to to to go to them. And I think this is probably the one that is under

maybe underappreciate, but I have seen well let's say like the great leaders, the great student leaders that have that ability and they have different ways of getting it, but they all have the ability to listen. Number four, if you could send um an SMS or an email to yourself back in 2012, uh when you joined Zingga, what would that email or message say? It can't be about crypto. Embrace the change. Don't fight it. And I think in life we found ourselves very often going back to oh I did it in one way I want to make it work now in the same way when the the dynamic change altogether and I think embracing it say don't fight it think about okay

with very you know deliberate way of thinking and say things has changed now How do I take the stuff that are still applicable from what I've done but also get to the uh things that are not really relevant anymore and change them and don't fight it. And I think my instinct definitely was and I think maybe maybe as well is to fight those changes instead of saying this is a change. This is how we do things now. Let's lean into it. It's always easier to say this is how we always done why do we have to change it now
and it's it's take a while until you get but you need to be quite comfortable in yourself to do that because you are relying on things that you have done before and this is why you got you to where you got and saying no this playbook is not relevant anymore.
Right. Final one. Zingga in 2035.

What do you hope people will say about the company then?
So 10 years in gaming is quite a long period. But what I can tell you that I wish us to be we we would want to be I would want us to be the destination for talent and the destination for our players that our product is the destination of our players. So uh if you think about where you if you want to be in tech, you can be wherever. If you want to be in gaming, we should be your destination. And if you want to play a game, I hope that our portfolio will be as exciting, if not more than what we have now, and you will find something uh great for you to drive.
Well, Yarn on on that note, thank you so much for joining the podcast. I truly truly thank you for for bringing all the

knowledge from 13 years at Zingga. I mean you're you're driving quite quite the portfolio and quite the diverse group of different studios around the world making games that are played by hundreds of millions of players every day. So um thank you so much for sharing sharing your your story of Zinga Zingga 1.0 2.0 and 3.0 you know, and especially how you approach new game development, live ops, and culture.
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.
All right. And thank you very much to everybody who listened and to connect with your own. You can find him on LinkedIn, but he probably won't have too much time with with all the studios and all the games being launched. So, um, check out Zingga, a destination for talent and players. So, on that end, thank you very much.
Thank you.
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