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Comment by malkia | Hacker News Reader

Most of all - ZERO INNOVATION!

I think that we can stop this debate about whether innovation will necessarily lead to success (financially) or not. I might have one case to against you. One case in Asia: the biggest online gaming company in Vietnam (and also in South-East Asia) called VNG bought license of one game from the Chinese Kingsoft, rebranded it, customized the UI, distributed in Vietnam and now they have $60M in revenue. The key success factor is that the market is so ripe and so ready for online gaming, and the game VNG sells in VN just "works" for those customers, they keep paying for the company for the virtual goods and monthly subscription. nobody cares the originality of the game.

Which holds true with my personal definition of innovation: find opportunities and/or challenges then apply solution. Great example of this!

(Not necessarily find some crazy new solution to a problem -- that's called research)

Sorry guys, making money != innovation. Was Madoff an innovator?

The innovation doesn't need to occur in product development. The business model, distribution, or any other aspect are also open to new techniques, even when the product is decidedly un-innovative.

Yes, making money is not innovation. Innovative things are usually financially successful, however.

This is no longer the case. In terms of game design, Zynga is now leading the way on many fronts.

You could make a case that this is entirely due to the fact that they ran out of companies to copy, but that's beside the point. Nowadays, it's just inaccurate to claim that Zynga doesn't innovate.

If I remember correctly from a few weeks ago, Zynga revenues increased and most of their spending remained flat, but they've increased spend on R&D dramatically hence why they are showing lower profit figures. This is a smart move, in my opinion. You can lead a market by being good at capturing it early on, even if you simply just copy other people's ideas, but to remain there or go beyond that requires innovation especially as competition increases or the nature of the market changes.

No matter how you see it, for a billion dollar company, Zynga adds nothing to the technological stack. Frankly, can you give examples where they innovate? You mention game design, but I remember playfish making beautiful designs years ago.

http://blog.games.com/2010/09/08/zynga-ceo-to-employees-i-do...

he said "Nowadays" - your link is 1+ year old.

So he suddenly changes from "no innovation" to "actually, it's needed?". Their games are nothing more than spam. Really! One of the reason I quit facebook was friends playing them, and letting me know about their status.

I'm a gamer. I work at game development studio, and I spam my buddies that play the same game as me with my status, but no one else...

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