Games People Play: Zynga’s Mark Pincus Speaks!
by Kara Swisher
Posted on May 13, 2008 at 12:15 PM PT
Since I posted an interview with Social Gaming Network’s Shervin Pishevar today on the announcement of his $15 million funding, it seems only sporting to post this lively video interview I also did with his main competitor, Mark Pincus of Zynga, recently too.
Zynga, named after Pincus’s dog, is one of the two main social-gaming networks that are competing for audience by offering highly interactive games of all kinds. Its aim is to be more engaging and create a series of addictive games that users will return to again and again.
Pincus, who also founded the Tribe social-networking site, is a longtime entrepreneur. I met him way back when as a reporter at the Washington Post when he and Sunil Paul launched one of the few start-ups–Freeloader–in the D.C. area.
And I can report that Pincus is as jumpy and energetic today as he was 15 years ago.
He has certainly been busy lining up a spate of fancy investors, garnering $10 million in funding in January, including from: Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, along with personal investments from Silicon Valley players Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel.
Zynga, which is larger than rival SGN, claims 2.3 million total daily active users across Facebook, with its Texas Hold’em game being the largest it offers. Other games include Sea Wars, Blackjack, Attack! and Scramble.
As I said in my SGN post, while BoomTown often makes fun of viral apps, most of which are faddish and juvenile, the better-made gaming apps actually are likely to be a real business over time, as long they remain engaging and fun to play as the classic real-life games are.
Zynga plans on making money through ads, including creating its own ad network for other gamers, as well as via the sale of virtual goods and premium offerings.
Here’s a chat with Pincus at Zynga’s offices (Pincus owns the building, by the way, which also houses a bunch of other Web 2.0 start-ups) in San Francisco:
Comments
I was playing on a private table (mirage) with a buddy, and the table froze. I had over 10M chips (in account) while I was playing, and the table froze, so we left the table, and then all 10M of my chips were missing from my account. I have tried and tried again to contact/submit tickets to Zynga about this issue with no response. Now I know it’s just a game, but when you play hard to accumilate 10M chips, and they disappear in 10 seconds, it’s not very cool. Also, if you are going to have a gaming site or a website that is of this statue, have customer service tech’s that can assist people with glitches ect.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get my chips back, or who to contact?
Thanks!
Posted by Rick Morris at August 14th, 2008 at 9:47 am