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Comment by dorkitude | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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