Social gaming behemoth Zynga has been in the news a bit recently. You might have noticed. One particular highlight was Edge tearing apart Zynga’s assertion that it’s forthcoming game Dream Heights is the continuation of a long line of tower-based games, rather than a clone of Tiny Tower. Most entertaining.
But what about the figurative Zynga Towers? That’s right, it’s the next stop in our journey around the world of games via Google Street View. Let’s head to San Francisco.
Are those the clouds of controversy we see gathering over the building? No, it was just a bit overcast that day.
Anyway, that’s the Townsend Centre, where Zynga moved in 2010. Google has helpfully obscured the Zynga logos at the top of the building, presumably mistaking them for number plates or something. Oh Google!
They’re not staying there though: Zynga are in the process of moving again, to occupy part of the former Sega of America building elsewhere in San Francisco. There will be a dog run on the roof. And, no doubt, controversy in the skies above.
I used to play their FB games. You spend more time dealing with asking neighbors for help and answering help requests than you do playing the game. Oh you can get by without neighbors but you’d better be prepared to send money.
Even if you have dozens of neighbors they have their games set up to where you are almost forced to spend money. I’m not against a company making a profit but some of those profits should go towards improving how their games run. I got tired of error messages and waiting for pages to load.
Of course what did I expect? After all the game is supposedly free. I expect them to take a small portion of the ton of money they make and spend it on the stuff that makes their games play better. I did spend money on them but I will not do that any longer. Eventually if enough people do what I have done it might get their attention. Somehow I doubt even that will do it. Instead of improving they would probably rather sell the company to some sucker who has been duped into believing their games are wonderful and that the players just love forking over money.
I just went around their building on street view. There were a lot of plumbing trucks there that day including one that suctions waste water out of the lines. They must of had a huge party the day before and spent a lot of company money on food.
I hope Sega doesn’t leave any development documents around after they move out otherwise we could be seeing Zynga the Hedgehog in a few months time.