Zynga's "business plan"

It's not that Zynga ignores our suggestions and feedback, it's just that our feedback doesn't often fit in with their business plan. They have as much as said so. That's why so much of what we want doesn't get implemented. Or why we see our ideas implemented in strange ways weeks or months later.

Sad but true. And pretty lame, if you ask me. 

Here's an excellent example: this year's April Fool's event, Beat The Devs. Remember what a flop that ended up being? It was horrible.

I'm sorry to say, that was originally the brainchild of a group of players from several months ago. We put together the idea for fun, having no idea that Zynga would later base an event on the idea. It wasn't a new type of event because we liked that type of event, a fact that escaped Zynga.

Our idea was based on the old boss fight events, like Beat The Feds, or It's On In San Juan, or Rumble In Russia, but the bosses were Zyngons. We even made up funny loot items for mastering each boss, and an achievement for mastering the whole event.

You can imagine, when the April Fool's event started rolling out, we were thrilled to realize that Zynga had listened to our idea. You can also imagine how, about five minutes into the event, we were horrified to realize that our idea had been completely bastardized and turned into a god-awful, useless, and annoying spam event. The bosses didn't really die, and all you got was some useless "limited edition trading card". On top of that, event fatigue was really a problem at the time, and Zynga characteristically released the Beat The Devs joke on top of several other events that were already going on.

Now, several months later, a lot of us are still saying we want the old boss fights back. Zynga has  indicated that they are listening to this feedback. However, in typical Zynga style, it sounds like, as usual, they haven't really listened to the feedback, but have been trying to figure out how to squish it into whatever stupid business plan they have.

I understand how businesses run, many of us do. In another lifetime, I myself was a successful professional. The problem here is that Zynga, like most other corporate companies out there, cannot see past their bottom line and profit margin to the players that are sustaining the game. It seems to me that they are not thinking about game longevity, but rather just driving their business plan, along with the game, into the ground. I wonder how many of those stuffed-suit executives at Zynga actually play any of Zynga's game, much less Mafia Wars.

Personally, I think the new boss fights are extremely boring, and were made impossibly complicated to fit with Zynga's definition of "interesting". Players are STILL asking for those old boss fights back, someone just asked the question during last week's Mafia Wars Live broadcast.

Zynga responded "We have gotten a lot of feedback for the return of stamina based boss fights. We are currently developing a....."

WTF Zynga, we didn't ask you to develop ANYTHING. We asked for the old boss fights back. We are telling you that we liked them, not that we wanted you to come up with something new based on the old boss fights. We want the old boss fights back, why is that so hard to comprehend. WHY is this very specific feedback being ignored by Zynga, WHY can't they make something this simple fit into their damn business plan?