Don Mattrick Details His Plans to Turn Zynga Around

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Well, best case scenario, it works, Mattrick grew a brain between the Xbox One and now, and Zynga begins to make good games that are not riddled with money-grabbing and are somewhat good to play. Worst case scenario, Zynga eventually dies thanks to its ridiculously derivative approach, and I never have to see a Zynga game again. Or have I got those round the other way...

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

"Back to the basics"?

Uh... how exactly DOES one get more basic than a Zynga game and business model?

Looking for old abondonware, and churning out an isometric clone designed to keep people clicking for coins for hours at a time.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Good that he's in a place where he can't do any real damage. Is it wrong of me to want this all to go horribly wrong for everyone involved? I suppose it is...

 

[Cliff_m85]

Step One: Make Zynga unavailable to those with sketchy internet connections.
Step Two: Force utilization of Kinect with any Zynga game.
Step Three: Require it to be always on.


GENIUS!

Then let everyone decide to go to PopCap instead.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

Right. And HE is the person for the job. A living embodiment of dreadful, awful PR himself.

Words fail me.

 

[Teoes]

Mattrick outlined a 90-day plan for the company, where he plans to get "under the hood to evaluate" Zynga's business, conduct "top-to-bottom business reviews and [work] with our leaders to calibrate against the market opportunity and to go after it with a real sense of urgency" and spend time "heads down" with developers to improve product quality.

Mmm, management non-speak.

"It's clear that the market opportunity around us is growing at an incredible clip," said Mattrick, adding "It's also clear that today we are missing out on the platform growth that Apple, Google and Facebook are seeing."

It's cute that he's aiming for the clouds and thinking he can get Zynga up there with the giants.

"While we've got a lot of work to do, I see a lot of opportunity in having the collection of people we've assembled."

Granted modern American parlance often seems to do things like this (as a Brit reading/listening to press releases and official statements, they often sound oddly disjointed to me) but that doesn't seem like a complete sentence. Seems like the word 'assembled' should be followed by either 'fired' or 'lined up and shot'.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Words fail me.

They fail Mattrick even more.

OT: Maybe he can turn Zynga into something resembling a developer. Not very likely, but weirder things have happened. He'll probably fire a bunch of people though.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

Am I the only one that immediately thought of the following when reading the headline?

Step 1 turn Zynga around
Step 2 enter from the rear
Step 3 ???
Step 4 profit

I mean seriously, the chances of him doing anything but siphoning all the assets he can before burning it to the ground are very long odds.

 

[ron1n]

I swear, every time I see this guys photo, it makes me think someone looked up 'Corporate Douchebag' and created some kind of android to specification.

 

[CriticalMiss]

Don Mattrick's Guaranteed Success Plan (C)(R)(TM) Patent Pending

1: Sign up to the PRISM programme
2: Shove in as much advertising as possible
3: ?
4: Become as unto gods
5: Hookers and blow

 

[shirkbot]

[work] with our leaders to calibrate against the market opportunity and to go after it with a real sense of urgency"...

...

[work] with our leaders to calibrate against the market opportunity and to go after it with a real sense of urgency"...

Okay, well I'm going to go see if my friends can tell me what that means because as a native English speaker, I can't understand it. How do you work against that which you want to pursue? What?

 

[Tumedus]

[work] with our leaders to calibrate against the market opportunity and to go after it with a real sense of urgency"...

...

[work] with our leaders to calibrate against the market opportunity and to go after it with a real sense of urgency"...

Okay, well I'm going to go see if my friends can tell me what that means because as a native English speaker, I can't understand it. How do you work against that which you want to pursue? What?

It means he is going to take a collaborative approach to long-term goal oriented initiatives in order to capitalize on new and improved next generation metrics. This will in turn provide a platform for world class partnerships focused on flexible, value added innovation.

 

[CriticalMiss]

[work] with our leaders to calibrate against the market opportunity and to go after it with a real sense of urgency"...

...

[work] with our leaders to calibrate against the market opportunity and to go after it with a real sense of urgency"...

Okay, well I'm going to go see if my friends can tell me what that means because as a native English speaker, I can't understand it. How do you work against that which you want to pursue? What?

It means he is going to take a collaborative approach to long-term goal oriented initiatives in order to capitalize on new and improved next generation metrics. This will in turn provide a platform for world class partnerships focused on flexible, value added innovation.

And synergy, never forget synergy. It's an important global strategy to perpetuate goal focused incentives that aim to drive down unpositive reinforcements opporunities in the market experience.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

In the most corporate way possible, he's basically saying he's going to downsize like a mother trucker and help cut the tremendous amount of bloat at Zynga. Not a bad plan, really. Zynga looks like a textbook example of what happens when you expand way too fast and cutting a bunch of that fat off will definitely help the company. I just worry that Mattrick will replace that bloat with his own heaping helping of the stuff in order to capitalize on the growth of mobile platforms.

I hope he understands that one well designed social game that makes paying for items a fun experience will be worth way more than a hundred near broken games that beats you over the head with store items.

Mattrick will probably do something wrong or something completely right. He's a corporate man so he knows how to handle numbers and organizational issues. The problems will come from any influence of the Microsoft model that he uses; as people have said, he overcomplicated the new Xbox and sank its PR into the ground. Unfortunately, I have no confidence on the games as ,in short term, the gains from beating people over the head with P2W and the like are too high and alluring for Zynga to be responsible with their products

 

[lacktheknack]

"Back to the basics"?

Uh... how exactly DOES one get more basic than a Zynga game and business model?

Looking for old abondonware, and churning out an isometric clone designed to keep people clicking for coins for hours at a time.

I said "more" basic, not "exactly the same".

 

[KOMega]

[work] with our leaders to calibrate against the market opportunity and to go after it with a real sense of urgency"...

...

[work] with our leaders to calibrate against the market opportunity and to go after it with a real sense of urgency"...

Okay, well I'm going to go see if my friends can tell me what that means because as a native English speaker, I can't understand it. How do you work against that which you want to pursue? What?

It means he is going to take a collaborative approach to long-term goal oriented initiatives in order to capitalize on new and improved next generation metrics. This will in turn provide a platform for world class partnerships focused on flexible, value added innovation.

And synergy, never forget synergy. It's an important global strategy to perpetuate goal focused incentives that aim to drive down unpositive reinforcements opporunities in the market experience.

I wanted to add to this, but it's so damn funny XD
also I think I feel too squicky when I add too many buzzwords in my speech/type.
Hilarious either way. XD

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I said "more" basic, not "exactly the same".

Always on DRM and turning your web cam on permanently.

 

[lacktheknack]

I said "more" basic, not "exactly the same".

Always on DRM and turning your web cam on permanently.

That's more features, not fewer.

I'm pretty sure a true "return to basics" would be... like... removing graphics...

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I think that's pretty much a lost cause there Don, esp. considering it's you.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

That's more features, not fewer.

I'm pretty sure a true "return to basics" would be... like... removing graphics...

I am like Don; Perhaps I will get it right, one day.

Farmville in MUD format?