Jason Bailey at Full Indie Jan 2012 discussing Zynga

3DLee

Wow:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbdURlfa3Wc"]Jason Bailey at Full Indie Jan 2012 - YouTube[/ame]

Lord McMutton

He's an ass, yeah. But a very amusing ass.

xvampire

harvest moon is from china.... well of course !!!!

Saman

Hehe, nice... Is this for real?

Edit: Oh, what do you know :S

eld

Marshal Banana wrote: »

He's an ass, yeah. But a very amusing ass.

pretty much :P

Slum

Before the torches and pitchforks come out, keep in mind this guy does not work for Zynga. This is satire.

xvampire

dammit I already post it everywhere ... , but let it be, maybe this is all we want

Lazerus Reborn

@Slum; Oh thank god for that ^

3DLee

Slum wrote: »

Before the torches and pitchforks come out, keep in mind this guy does not work for Zynga. This is satire.

I had a feeling, so I refrained from commenting. It reminds me of the Onion though - it's almost too real.

GarageBay9

Marshal Banana wrote: »

He's an ass, yeah. But a very amusing ass.

I think you're being a bit generous, there...

ericdigital

Before everyone bawks and says this guy is a horrible person just know he also is part of a start up accellerator that focuses on growing and supporting vancouver based start ups.

eld

It's at the point of when he uses "they" as he talks about zynga that you realize what the video is about (and how it has been deviously cut) but then people (and I) have already posted something.

teaandcigarettes

Wow, I just had a look at the YouTube comments. Seems like the internet cannot comprehend satire even when it flashes its own crotch.

Ninjas

Pretty sure this is not satire (unless his entire life is also a satire). The issues are complex, and he is saying some things that really should be taken seriously.

Ultimately it is kind of sad for a guy to act like a big shot because he was "smart" enough to use Skinner boxing. It is like a chef who thinks putting cocaine in his food makes it taste great since people keep coming back for it. The reality is that he has nothing worth saying about making a good product.

There are other more ethical and rewarding ways to make money.

Ben Apuna

This guy is advocating that indies should clone games in order to be successful and grow. It doesn't really matter if he's a small business (if you consider 30 people small, http://eastsidegamestudio.com) or Zynga, that attitude certainly isn't helping the industry innovate and grow.

Sure, he's employing 30 people, but what about the original creators of the games he's cloned? Wouldn't they have seen better growth without his clones eating at their profits and been able to employ said 30 people instead? Who really deserves success here? the cloners, or the original creators of a game?

teaandcigarettes

Ninjas wrote: »

Pretty sure this is not satire (unless his entire life is also a satire). The issues are complex, and he is saying some things that really should be taken seriously.

Ultimately it is kind of sad for a guy to act like a big shot because he was "smart" enough to use Skinner boxing. It is like a chef who thinks putting cocaine in his food makes it taste great since people keep coming back for it. The reality is that he has nothing worth saying about making a good product.

There are other more ethical and rewarding ways to make money.

I don't know the guy personally so I will never know what he acutally thinks about the issue, but to me his talk felt staged and it seemed like he was playing a character. Maybe I just have too much faith in people to believe that someone could be that blunt.

But regardless, I completely agree about the use of Skinner's Box as a game mechanic. Personally, I find it extremely unethical and I see it as one of the most worrying trends in the games indsutry. While the concept of performing small tasks to receive rewards had always been there I feel disgusted when it is used in a predatory fashion as a part of some monetization scheme. It's one of the reasons why I feel very uncomfortable about the growth of social gaming. A lot of social gaming studios seem to be run by people fuelled by greed and willing to go to a great extent to exploit their customers.

Ninjas

teaandcigarettes wrote: »

I don't know the guy personally so I will never know what he acutally thinks about the issue

http://www.straight.com/article-418152/vancouver/geek-speak-jason-bailey-ceo-east-side-games

How are you making money with Pot Farm?(the shameless, admitted copy of Farmville -ninjas)

Virtual-goods sales. Whether it’s mystery seeds or jackpot seeds, where you can grow a special plant that you can’t get anywhere else; buying special, advanced protection; buying things like bat guano, so your stuff grows instantly—it’s all virtual-goods sales.

gauss

what a shmuck

gauss

it takes 24 seconds to say zynga, then only 5 seconds to say "100 million dollars" that he signed over, and less than a minute to confirm he has nothing of interest to say.

gavku

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/pc6j9/iama_former_fulltime_zynga_engineer_quit_6_months/

Tulkamir

Ninjas wrote: »

Pretty sure this is not satire (unless his entire life is also a satire). The issues are complex, and he is saying some things that really should be taken seriously.

Ultimately it is kind of sad for a guy to act like a big shot because he was "smart" enough to use Skinner boxing. It is like a chef who thinks putting cocaine in his food makes it taste great since people keep coming back for it. The reality is that he has nothing worth saying about making a good product.

There are other more ethical and rewarding ways to make money.

Well said.

Not sure where the assumption that this is satire is coming from anyways...

Ben Apuna

@gavku:

That link was a great read, thanks!