Microsoft's Mattrick Tried To Buy Zynga Before Jumping Ship

[J Tyran]

Wait what? Talking to a doctor for a medical problem is a fallacy? Consulting a builder if someone wants a conservatory is fallacy? Getting a mechanic in when you need your car fixed is a fallacy?

I think your fallacy is a fallacy or at least your use of it is.

Doctors, builders, and mechanics can all be wrong. If your doctor tells you that he's going to bleed you to get the devil out, are you going to go along and not argue just because he's a doctor? Are you going to spend $2000 on car repairs because your mechanic tells you that your car needs its blinker fluid replaced?

And, for someone who is so enamored with listening to experts, you sure are bizarrely insistent on reject the one piece of actual authoritative knowledge that's been brought into this discussion, ie, that Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy and should not be relied on to make arguments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

Not only did you get it from Wikipedia you didn't even read the article properly, pretty funny actually because you are guilty of your own fallacy by not only misusing it but making an inappropriate appeal to authority. You have mastered the art of unintentional irony, /tips hat.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

Not only did you get it from Wikipedia you didn't even read the article properly, pretty funny actually because you are guilty of your own fallacy by not only misusing it but making an inappropriate appeal to authority. You have mastered the art of unintentional irony, /tips hat.

Did you even bother reading the article before claiming that I haven't read it for some undisclosed reason? And you're actually accusing me of unintentional irony while claiming that, of all logical fallacies, Appeal to Authority is logically sound?

I'm not sure what it is you've won, but there has to be a very dubious award for it.

 

[Ayay]

I think this is just a man doing a favor for a friend, And sure it smells funny , but we are talking about Zynga, every thing about that company smells funny.Will be fun to see who in their right mind would buy Zynga thou. I dont see how Mattrick or anyone else for that matter can turn around Zynga its way of the tracks as it is.

 

[vid87]

America: where the most work you have to do for almost $100 million is signing your name on the dotted line.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

This reeks of asset stripping and vulture capitalism. They're scuttling the ship, sinking the stock and making just a big enough bounce to save their own investments in the company.

Let me also make one thing clear; Mark Pincus is a con man. A trickster. A terrible human being and possibly a massive stock fraudster who belongs in prison [http://www.uproxx.com/webculture/2012/07/zynga-under-investigation-for-perfectly-timed-stock-sale/]. Zynga was built on lies, scam-ware, adware and selling it's users details. Even leaving out out the way the games themselves were set out as micro-transaction hubs and nothing more.

Zynga's bosses are still irresponsible, grossly mismanaging their company by using their entire cash reserves and more than a full quarters profits to buy companies that would be worthless soon after then attempting to hide it. Their stock floatation was one of the most bizarre, questionable and opaque i've ever seen with ordinary investors being practically robbed. They became billionaires from a company that was only ever worth billions on paper. Paper they created and manipulated.

I think it's quite possible that they just have no idea what they're doing.

Zynga made it big during the facebook/mobile game bubble, not through any particular genius at working the market, but just by getting into at the right time. Now that things have had time to settle they need to transition into a more mature structure and business model, but the rules of the market are still congealing and they don't have the kinds of hooks into it that they thought they had.

The whole "casual games" bubble really was a great example of the "experts" having no idea what they were doing. They saw a few people making massive amounts of money, completely ignored the transitory nature of the market, and ran forward expecting it to be the new status quo. A couple of years later and competition had gutted their profits, leaving them holding properties they paid exorbitant amounts of money for because they though that they were going to be able to make billions on cheap Farmville clones.

 

[J Tyran]

Wait what? Talking to a doctor for a medical problem is a fallacy? Consulting a builder if someone wants a conservatory is fallacy? Getting a mechanic in when you need your car fixed is a fallacy?

I think your fallacy is a fallacy or at least your use of it is.

Doctors, builders, and mechanics can all be wrong. If your doctor tells you that he's going to bleed you to get the devil out, are you going to go along and not argue just because he's a doctor? Are you going to spend $2000 on car repairs because your mechanic tells you that your car needs its blinker fluid replaced?

And, for someone who is so enamored with listening to experts, you sure are bizarrely insistent on reject the one piece of actual authoritative knowledge that's been brought into this discussion, ie, that Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy and should not be relied on to make arguments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

Not only did you get it from Wikipedia you didn't even read the article properly, pretty funny actually because you are guilty of your own fallacy by not only misusing it but making an inappropriate appeal to authority. You have mastered the art of unintentional irony, /tips hat.

"In the context of deductive arguments, the appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, though it can be properly used in the context of inductive reasoning. It is deductively fallacious because, while sound deductive arguments are necessarily true, authorities are not necessarily correct about judgments related to their field of expertise. Though reliable authorities are correct in judgments related to their area of expertise more often than laypersons, they can still come to the wrong judgments through error, bias or dishonesty. Thus, the appeal to authority is at best a probabilistic rather than an absolute argument for establishing facts."

For this reason alone, the input of an "expert" (Whom you never did name) is not the end all, be all of an argument...You get it yet?

Duh, I never said they where. I bolded the relevant part, my claim was that business experts probably have a more informed opinion than a random person on a forum. It would be a appeal to authority fallacy to go around telling people to listen to random people on a forum, you know like you are.

Not only did you get it from Wikipedia you didn't even read the article properly, pretty funny actually because you are guilty of your own fallacy by not only misusing it but making an inappropriate appeal to authority. You have mastered the art of unintentional irony, /tips hat.

Did you even bother reading the article before claiming that I haven't read it for some undisclosed reason? And you're actually accusing me of unintentional irony while claiming that, of all logical fallacies, Appeal to Authority is logically sound?

I'm not sure what it is you've won, but there has to be a very dubious award for it.

Unlike you I did actually read it and several other sources and you're misusing it, appealing to authority is not a fallacy itself. Its only a fallacy when it meets specific conditions, mainly:-

-When the appeal is made to those without legitimate expertise
-When there is no expert consensus

 

[J Tyran]

Wait what? Talking to a doctor for a medical problem is a fallacy? Consulting a builder if someone wants a conservatory is fallacy? Getting a mechanic in when you need your car fixed is a fallacy?

I think your fallacy is a fallacy or at least your use of it is.

Doctors, builders, and mechanics can all be wrong. If your doctor tells you that he's going to bleed you to get the devil out, are you going to go along and not argue just because he's a doctor? Are you going to spend $2000 on car repairs because your mechanic tells you that your car needs its blinker fluid replaced?

And, for someone who is so enamored with listening to experts, you sure are bizarrely insistent on reject the one piece of actual authoritative knowledge that's been brought into this discussion, ie, that Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy and should not be relied on to make arguments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

Not only did you get it from Wikipedia you didn't even read the article properly, pretty funny actually because you are guilty of your own fallacy by not only misusing it but making an inappropriate appeal to authority. You have mastered the art of unintentional irony, /tips hat.

"In the context of deductive arguments, the appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, though it can be properly used in the context of inductive reasoning. It is deductively fallacious because, while sound deductive arguments are necessarily true, authorities are not necessarily correct about judgments related to their field of expertise. Though reliable authorities are correct in judgments related to their area of expertise more often than laypersons, they can still come to the wrong judgments through error, bias or dishonesty. Thus, the appeal to authority is at best a probabilistic rather than an absolute argument for establishing facts."

For this reason alone, the input of an "expert" (Whom you never did name) is not the end all, be all of an argument...You get it yet?

Duh, I never said they where. I bolded the relevant part, my claim was that business experts probably have a more informed opinion than a random person on a forum. It would be a appeal to authority fallacy to go around telling people to listen to random people on a forum, you know like you are.

And your cop out response ultimately failed to address any of the points made by the person you were responding to, making it an outright dismissal. The claim of authority was inappropriately made in the context of the argument and ultimately amounted to little more than a cop-out.

You can say it was a cop out if you want but that doesn't make it true, I was simply dismissing the uninformed opinion in favor of an informed one. I was not attempting addressing his whine about Kinect at all because it was an outright dismissal, I was just pointing out I would rather listen to the experts when someone tells me a CEO does a good job instead of whining.

You then decided to jump in and champion the guy, oh and several others. I would guess you did it out just to be contentious because you have not addressed any points either, no conflicting evidence, sources, facts, not even any informed opinions you have just attacked and nit picked my posts instead. Thats ok though because I am just going to apply the same level of dismissal to any further posts.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

Unlike you I did actually read it and several other sources and you're misusing it, appealing to authority is not a fallacy itself. Its only a fallacy when it meets specific conditions, mainly:-

-When the appeal is made to those without legitimate expertise
-When there is no expert consensus

I realize that you're desperately grasping for straws, but could you at least grasp some that are relevant to what you're saying?

Not only have you not:

-demonstrated legitimate expertise behind the claims you're making
-demonstrated consensus behind the claims you're making

but you're making a claim about the fallacy itself that you can't support with anything other than some very selective bolding. Let's rebold that paragraph of yours:

In the context of deductive arguments, the appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, though it can be properly used in the context of inductive reasoning. It is deductively fallacious because, while sound deductive arguments are necessarily true, authorities are not necessarily correct about judgments related to their field of expertise. Though reliable authorities are correct in judgments related to their area of expertise more often than laypersons,they can still come to the wrong judgments through error, bias or dishonesty. Thus, the appeal to authority is at best a probabilistic rather than an absolute argument for establishing facts.

It's almost like I read the article (or, even better, was educated properly as to know all of this ahead of time), noticed how it describes exactly what you're doing as fallacious, and linked it in order to use your scheme of legitimizing your stance via claimed authority against you.

 

[keserak]

J Tyran:

Just stop. Please, just stop.

You appeal to nameless experts. Anyone with a differing viewpoing can also appeal to nameless experts. Let's presume that I have done so. Now who's right?

You can't tell, because both appeals are meaningless. That's one of the reasons why appeals to authority are wrong. They, by necessity, are always irrelevant since they neither prove nor disprove an issue at hand.

 

[J Tyran]

Unlike you I did actually read it and several other sources and you're misusing it, appealing to authority is not a fallacy itself. Its only a fallacy when it meets specific conditions, mainly:-

-When the appeal is made to those without legitimate expertise
-When there is no expert consensus

I realize that you're desperately grasping for straws, but could you at least grasp some that are relevant to what you're saying?

Not only have you not:

-demonstrated legitimate expertise behind the claims you're making
-demonstrated consensus behind the claims you're making

but you're making a claim about the fallacy itself that you can't support with anything other than some very selective bolding. Let's rebold that paragraph of yours:

In the context of deductive arguments, the appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, though it can be properly used in the context of inductive reasoning. It is deductively fallacious because, while sound deductive arguments are necessarily true, authorities are not necessarily correct about judgments related to their field of expertise. Though reliable authorities are correct in judgments related to their area of expertise more often than laypersons,they can still come to the wrong judgments through error, bias or dishonesty. Thus, the appeal to authority is at best a probabilistic rather than an absolute argument for establishing facts.

It's almost like I read the article (or, even better, was educated properly as to know all of this ahead of time), noticed how it describes exactly what you're doing as fallacious, and linked it in order to use your scheme of legitimizing your stance via claimed authority against you.

Nowhere does it say "didn't provide consensus yet". Well I better do it otherwise the discussion will go around in circles.

CNBC: Don Mattrick is the hero of Microsoft's Xbox team. It was under his leadership that the videogame console rose to the top of the market?and finally became profitable. [http://www.cnbc.com/id/100857938]

The Economist: Why, then, has Mr Mattrick, who helped increase the number of Xboxes in homes from 10m to 80m [http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/07/zyngas-woes]

Seeking Alphaon Mattrick, the man behind Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox success [http://seekingalpha.com/article/1532562-with-mark-pincus-out-and-don-mattrick-in-will-zynga-revive]

There you go, three out of hundreds of comments like it. Balls in your court now, go and find at least three experts saying he did a terrible job and it would counter that consensus. Then you can try and mangle the definition of that fallacy a bit more.

J Tyran:

Just stop. Please, just stop.

No.

I get it people are still mad about the Xbone, I am not impressed with it myself but this revisionist history where people deny that Mattrick turned XBox from a money pit into a profitable business is rubbish.

Noone has provided any evidence to the contrary, just some whining and personal attacks because people are mad about the Xbone.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

It's the executive club, all these executive types know each other and they move from one job to anther job like they are playing musical chairs. Except there is always a seat regardless of how well they did at their previous job. See Mattrick's 5 million dollar signing bonus.

Exactly this situation already happened with John Riccitiello when he became CEO of EA (or whatever his position was) As soon as he accepted the position he bought the videogame company he was a majpr shareholder for (Pandemic/Bioware) earning him a cool $5 million handshake for a job well down from his previous position.

Pandemic was closed a year and a month later, Bioware has been relegated to developing for a F2P MMO and sequelizing 2 franchises. Riccitiello was CEO for a few years, but was fired this year. He'll still keep his several million dollar worth of Shares in EA and earns a multi 100,000 $ income for the next 3 years from EA despite being fired for incompetence because that's what these turds write into each others contracts when they sign each other on.

The paychecks of those highest in our society demonstrate the absolute worst of humanity, and prove that we should count on none of the influential or powerful to protect our future or our wellbeing. They consider their most trivial flight of fancy as infinitely more important than the most vital needs of the poorest.