Zynga's Customer Service

Used to be, once upon a time, that when Zynga somehow messed up and negatively impacted one's game, CS not only would fix it for you without a hassle, but also typically gave some compensation.

Wow, has the pendulum ever swung the other way.

Now, when you have a problem, you only get access to Customer Service if you happen to have done whatever needs doing to trip the switch so that you will have it.

The suggestion is that only paying players have access - but the reality is that many paying players do not.

Now, we're supposed to use spam central and tell our Farmville problems to other players who can't do a blessed thing about them. The only response most posts get there is sorry, can't help you .... and/or hey, log in here and I'll steal your username and password (posts which Zynga mostly ignores and allows to remain now that they have a notice at the top telling all us really stupid people how to use the support site safely... i.e. not to get suckered into such lame spam attempts).

In any case, some of us - me included - do actually continue to have access to Zynga's CS agents. Unfortunately, they don't actually  HAVE any any more. Now what they have are "Player Advocates" - and their role seems to be to piss off players by refusing to fix anything; refuse to refund the FC Zynga developers have, in their infinite stupidity, set the game to steal from players at every turn; and for added measure, call paying customers liars and cheats.

Even going through the BBB doesn't help - they just keep sending emails asking for more information until the BBB process expires and it tells you you just refused "their final offer" and no further action is required. Except, of course, that they don't actually MAKE any offers at all - they just keep asking for the same information you've given them over and over.

Whole thing is a joke.... Zynga is a company that is determined to fail and if you have any stock in them, you REALLY should sell.

There is no hope whatsoever for a company that is willing to lose a long standing loyal paying player by first stealing, then refusing to return 32 FC.  For about $6 - even if I had bought it at full price, which I have not done since they started to steal FC from players every time I blink - they have lost my $10/month subscription plus whatever I would typically spend every time they offer a 40% off sale.... an average of about $50/month.

Wise business decision, eh? 

Sell a product ... then steal it back... and when the customer complains, call her a liar and make her jump through stupid hoops for a couple of weeks then tell her again that she's a liar and a cheat and you're just fine without her business.  

Hell of a business model you've got there, Zynga.

How many feet DO you have to shoot yourself in? Time for a new logo...a millipede, I think.

Too Late for Farmville? Part 3

Other things we want less of:  stOOpid control-freakish rules, limits & requirements...oh, and clutter! Unless it's our clutter, then it's okay - yours is not.  
 
Rules
 
I have - had - a system for my trees. Other players have - had - systems for their horses... or other critters, or whatever.... 
 
sure... go ahead and lock trees, horses, pathways, pens, whatever.... to a particular farm ... it's your game... if you want to piss off more players and make us leave because now you've decided it would be a good idea to break our collections AND our systems - if that's your goal, well done... you're doing an excellent job.
 
If, on the other hand, you'd like us to stick around, play, and give you money ... perhaps you could quit with things that really just don't matter?
 
Limits 
 

Seriously...I buy expansions using actual FC and you fill them with ugly crap I can't move that needs 28 or 42 ugly stupid parts to get rid of each one and THEN you set a limit on how many I can collect for each post?

You want I should collect daily collections stamps and then you limit each post as to the number I can get from the (very) few friends I have who are still playing?

And while I'm on the topic, why IS it that in your other games the gift box actually works and lets me access whatever gifts people have sent me, but in Farmville, the max is 50 and anything over that seems to disappear into the ether? Does anybody even bother sending/receiving gifts in Farmville any more? I don't ... too tedious to flip through pages of crap I don't want to send to get  to the few things I might ... and then the vast majority disappears anyway.


And the safety deposit box and bushel limits? Hello? We've been whining about the bushel thing for eons ... ever since you started throwing new farms at us for no good reason.

You've broken the gift exchange thing ... so we are left trying to craft the things we need ... but we are CONSTANTLY having to dump bushels that we COULD use for crafting things we need if only we didn't need so much fuel to keep trying to grow the bushels we need to craft the things we need to... well, you get the idea, right?

We're not nearly as stupid as you think we are, by the way... we know you changed the settings on the bushels that we get from farming to try to push us toward buying what we need to craft things... what, exactly, ARE you people trying to do with Farmville, kill it entirely?

Now that the farms don't load/play properly with too much (any?) stuff on them, I've been trying to clear out my junk into my safety deposit box .... not enough room there either. Which means that I have to either sell off all my old stuff, or stop buying/growing new stuff. Guess which one most of us are choosing?

I invested time and money into my trees back when Farmville was fun .... not likely to dump all that in favour of new stuff now that it isn't.

Requirements

Stop already!

I know, I know... someone went to the trouble of making the fishing hole... the yarn barn... the dairy .... whatever...  but honestly, if we don't like it, we don't like it - and constantly forcing us to do stuff like "craft 12 yarn" in the yarn barn is NOT going to change anyone's mind.

What, you thought that somewhere around #10 or 11, they were going to say "gee, this is fun after all!"?

Not happening.

Ever noticed that you had millions more players BEFORE you started shoving quests down our throats? Billions, even, by some accounts.

Less trees, less horses, less crops, less buildables, less farms - but you had many, many times more players than you do now.

I know, I know ... y'all are convinced that people started leaving in droves because they preferred other games on other platforms... they got bored, right?

Except that that is NOT what happened.

What happened is that they got frustrated, fed up and over whelmed.

Zynga lost sight of the fact that some sorts of players prefer this type of game and some prefer that...

some people like quests and demands and challenges and competition ...

but those of us that played Farmville? That was not why we played.

We liked working together with our friends.... collecting whatever we happened to be into .... mastering what we wanted to master.... and lots and lots of us LOVED decorating our farms the way we wanted them to be .... whether we were good at it or not (I'm not, but I enjoyed it anyway).

There were lots of other games that included quests and challenges and competition... if we'd wanted to be engaged in those, we would have played them.

Farmville appealed to people that liked to do things their own way - but is now being run by a whole lot of people that demand we do them their way. It's sad.

We came to Farmville...and stayed...and paid money ... for a different gaming experience - and Zynga has, over the last couple of years, completely and utterly BLOWN IT.

And yes, we know that we don't have to do the quests - but doing them is the only way to get the blasted ugly icons off our screen - so we often do them even though we'd rather not. The icons all over our screen - and stuff like the fishing hole and summer camp adventure and lost animals and... it is all clutter and every last bit of it annoys people like me no end.

Even if the farms weren't so bogged down with bad programming, unnecessary pop-ups, and other issues, I still wouldn't bother doing any all out decorating the way I used to - between the "new" hideous facebook and the sheer number of idiotic ugly icons your devs scatter all over my screen and around my farms, why bother wasting my time?

I don't know if Farmville can even be fixed any more... it may well be too late...

but I do know that it won't get better if someone up there in Zynga-land doesn't smarten up and start paying attention soon.

Is it too late for Farmville? Part 2

Okay... so onward.

Another thing that I - and many, many others - have clearly stated is that we want less tedium.

We do not WANT to have to click to close useless pop-ups telling us how many totally useless trowels we have, or that we've harvested an organic bushel that we hate, or that we have found mulch but have nothing to do with it, or ... well, you get the idea, right?

We also don't want to be scooted off to places we don't want to go against our will.

And we are BEYOND tired of having to click hundreds of times to accomplish nothing.

This one leads to inadvertent bushel purchases if your timing is wrong
 - do you think we are too stupid to notice?

Totally useless - and while we're at it, why can't I sell
more than one of these at a time if I want to? Trust me, I want to. Regularly.
Stupid useless things.

> 2 years we've been asking for you to make this one GO AWAY.  

Seriously? You think I want to click 769 times to move each 'good' to my fuel tank?
WHY would I want to do that?
You do know that if I'm busy doing THAT, I'm NOT busy spending FC, right?

We have also asked - hundreds and hundreds of times - for the gift box to re-open  after we place mystery seedlings and mastery signs.

We've asked for USE ALL buttons to be consistently provided.

PAY ATTENTION and reduce the tedium. PLEASE!

Most of these fixes should take your developers SECONDS - not minutes - SECONDS.

Doesn't seem so much to ask for significant improvements in gameplay.

Is it too late for Farmville?

Another change in management at Zynga... another faint hope that perhaps now they will actually listen and DO SOMETHING to fix the exodus of players.

Honestly though...I'm not sure that Farmville CAN be fixed any more...  have they left it too late?

Some of us are still around though...  we know the game is dead and should be buried... but we remember what it once was and stick around... always hoping...

So...what WOULD it take for Farmville to stop the mass exodus?

What would they need to do to win you - and your money - back? 

For me, what they would need to do is LESS. Much less.

Less new trees, horses, birds on a stick, mastery signs, water features...what-the-hell-ever.... 

Remember the excitement over the owl on a stick that showed up in mystery boxes? It flew!!!

Had. To. Have. It.

It was unique - then. Now, I couldn't even tell you where my original owl is... but hey, I have about 30 ...maybe 40 ....other birds on a stick that fly ... big whoop.

Every time they manage to hit something we like, now, they go nuts.... oh look... they liked the space trees - lets make 6,457 more space trees and see if they'll pay 6 or 8 FC for each one. Uh ... no... no, we won't. How many times are you going to do this routine before it sinks in that overwhelming us with more of the same ain't going to work?

Chill out, settle down, and STOP overwhelming us with more of whatever-it-was-we-liked than we could ever possibly care about.

Less broken collections

Biggest mistake Zynga has made with Farmville - well, one of the biggest, anyway - was in the destruction of our collections.

I liked the trees. I can afford to buy FC to get the trees...and I used to. Now though, we are totally awash in trees. They release ridiculous numbers of new trees every week .... Monday, Thursday, in quests, as prizes for this, that, and the other thing, with each new farm release.... 

I can't possibly keep up. And many of them, if you missed them, too bad for you. Some of them even show up in ways that are on "slow rollout" - which means, actually - too bad for you - you're not in the favoured few who got that feature so no tree (or horse, or bird on a stick, or...what-the-hell-ever for you...

Collectors don't like to be thwarted. We really don't. Once you break our collections, we sulk, and we with-hold our money.

You want my money back? Smarten up!

It's too late to fix existing collections ... there are too many holes now.

You could, however, reboot the whole collector appeal thing with a bit of creativity.

Me, I still like the trees - and I still think that the people who design & draw the trees for Zynga are amazing. So ... let's think of a way to fix the tree problem, shall we?

My suggestion would be to develop a level 3 tree.

Go back to the very beginning - look at the old level 1s and 2s ...and now make a level 3 for those sets. Still has to grow in the groves/orchards (don't even THINK about a new structure!) - but to make it different from the ones we know, have the seedlings grow into either the old level 1 or 2, or a clone of itself. 

This will allow - eventually - people who missed out on early trees to complete their collection.

The important thing here is that you MUST restrict these new trees to no more than 1 or 2 per week.

Now think about other things that people liked - or might like - to collect.

Not sure how to fix/re-boot those? Ask us... I bet people in the forums would be thrilled to be asked for feedback if it was actually going to be used. No doubt there are other ways that the whole trees debacle could be approached, also ...

The key thing here, though, is that you MUST limit items to no more than 1/2 week so that whatever-it-is remain worth having, and collectible.

Well darn. I've gone on quite long enough for one blog post already and have barely even scratched the surface!  Lots more I want less of ... but that's a topic for another post - or two :)

In the meantime...what do you think? Is it too late to save Farmville? If not, what does Zynga need to do to win you - and your money - back?

Zynga avoids addressing problems yet again

Zynga slashes work force by a fifth, warns on bookings...

according to this article, Zynga has been struggling to retain players ...and because they can't, they are slashing their costs by letting 20% of their workforce go.

Such a crock, that.

Zynga has, for more than a year, been doing NOT ONE THING to retain players.

In fact, they have been basically kicking us in the arse and telling us not to let the door slam behind us on the way out.

In every game that I have every played of Zynga's, they persist in making the same errors over and over.

They have absolutely NO interest in listening to players or in understanding the reasons certain people play certain games and accommodating these various players.

And as of the last several months, they have trashed their one remaining strength area: customer service, adding it to the very long list of things that "we once did well but now can't be bothered."

People are NOT leaving Zynga's online games in favour of mobile games or multi-platform games the way Mr. Pincus would have the media and stockholders believe.

Mr. Pincus, apparently, also has no interest in actually paying attention to feedback from players.

We WANT to keep playing your games. A whole lot of us have invested a whole lot of time & money in our stupid farms or kitchens or frontiers or whatever... and we would like to keep right on playing.

But you've hired a whole bunch of developers that do not play the games and do not have respect for those who play the games they work on. And you've hired a whole bunch of managers, it seems, who also do not play the games and do not have respect for players. And hey, guess what? You've hired a bunch of customer service reps who do not play the games and do not have any respect for those who do...

surprise, surprise!!  It doesn't work.

This, I believe, is the single biggest reason for Zynga's failure to thrive.

Used to be that the people that worked there played the games (and therefore, had respect for players).

Zynga got too big for their britches. They got rid of the people that loved the games, and replaced them with people that didn't even WANT to work for Zynga - they picked up a lot of their ~talent~ through takeovers and buyouts.... and they didn't bother to make sure that those people were adequately supervised, and they didn't bother to listen to any of their players any more cuz hey, if you don't have respect for us, why bother to listen?

Critical errors that all trace back to poor management, NOT to mobile/multi-platform games. Pincus should quit lying to himself and actually read some customer feedback once in awhile. And he should REALLY quit lying to the stockholders stuck with Zynga stock.

Although I really don't feel all THAT sorry for y'all, actually .... got to research and see what people who actually use the product are saying before you jump on those IPOs, guys!!!  I could have told you it was a bad investment .... oh hey... I did, actually.

Class Action Lawsuit Filed against Zynga

Pomerantz Law Firm Has Filed a Class Action Against Zynga Inc. -- ZNGA

So many so very lousy decisions that have been made at Zynga over the past more than a year now... I, like many many others, am beyond frustrated with how persistently they have been focussed on nothing but shooting themselves in the foot (they apparently have a LOT of feet!) .... but seriously?


If you read the article about the class action lawsuit, you will see that they are basing their action on the notion that
 (i) the Company was experiencing a rapid decline in the number of users for its existing web based games;
(ii) the Company was experiencing substantial delays in launching new web based games;
(iii) the Company was failing to take advantage of the changes on Facebook's web platform;
(iv) the Company was unable to effectively monetize revenues from mobile devices through its web based games; and
(v) as a result of the above, the Company's financial statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.


Ludicrous! It takes seconds to use Google to find out how well (or not) Zynga has been ~retaining~ players. (It's not, btw - they've been leaving in droves and for very good reasons).


The forums for each and every Zynga game are wide open - you don't even have to play a single game or create an account to wander through and have a read. And of course, there are plenty of other blogs and wikis and fan sites and news articles and....   give me a break!


If potential investors couldn't be bothered to spend 10 minutes having a look, they deserve what they got.


If they didn't, well ...as my brother would say .... "wah".  So now you've figured out that you blew it and want to do something about it? How 'bout instead of wasting your time & energy on lawsuits that reveal that you didn't take any time at all to research anything before you jumped, you spend a few minutes demanding that Zynga smarten the hell up and listen to its players? Far more productive.


They do have, among their many offerings, some winners... or would-be-winners if they could just stop with the foot-shooting thing for awhile.


Fortunately, there is, finally, a tiny glimmer of hope that things might be about to improve at Zynga!


Apparently this John Schappert dude has been there about a year - and that is about how long things have been going really REALLY badly  - if he WAS the sabateur that has been so intently driving Farmville and other games in to the ground, perhaps things might get better now?


I'd be happier if they had not just demoted him, but got rid of him entirely  - and I think that they really do need some new blood in there, or at the very least, an advisory board of players for each of the games (that they actually LISTEN to)....


but maybe, just maybe......

Got Stock?

Anyone that invested in Zynga stock is surely kicking themselves right about now.


As predicted by many of Zynga's previously loyal customers, they continue to corner the market on shooting themselves in the foot - and both their user stats and their stock prices clearly show it.


Good news though - they are exactly where they deserve to be.


I feel a little bad for those who bought the stock - but hey, I'm an investor too and you know what? I figure that as an investor, it is my responsibility to do my own research.


As I've said before on this blog, I would never, EVER dream of investing in Zynga's stock - in spite of the fact that I actually quite enjoy Farmville and will even, on occasion, spend actual money on it.


The time to invest in a company is when they're on the upswing - for Zynga, that was quite some time ago.


For well over a year, they have been bleeding players. Not because players are fickle, or unreasonable, or bored with the game(s) .... but because Zynga has repeatedly and pointedly made it very, very, very clear that they do not have a CLUE about how to retain them. They do not know and do not care why certain people play certain games.  They do not know and do not care why people stop collecting items, spending money, playing altogether....


It's not rocket science.


And it's not a secret either.


Every single thing that Zynga needs to know about how to retain players they already have is clearly written over and over in their forums, on blogs like this one, on Facebook walls....


But there's the thing - they don't, if you'll pardon the expression, shive a git about the people that are already playing.


They are only interested in new players and new games.


Those of us who already buy FC? We can be replaced. They've told us so. Repeatedly. Both straight out, and through their actions.


Yeah well, you know what? Newsflash. That, as a business strategy, is not working.


Your user stats are tanking. Your stock prices are tanking. You can blame Facebook all you want - as seems to be the most current Zynga tactic - and, in fact, Facebook is clearly NOT your best friend and they too deserve to tank. And are. Go, Facebook (ungrateful basturds).


BUT the changes Facebook has made that harm game play are only a part of the story. In fact, in my opinion, they are only a very small part of the story.


See, if we cared enough about you and your games any more, Zynga, we would find ways to work around the Facebook changes. It's what we do.


But you have made it really really hard for us to bother caring quite that much any more. And new people? They will NEVER care that much because they can't get far enough any more to get that engaged.


How many more feet you got, Zynga?


Maybe when you start running out - or deciding that shooting yourself in the foot so often HURTS - maybe then you'll stop by the forum and have a boo?


Hey, and if you ever decide you're ready to quit killing Farmville and turn things around, there are still bunches of us that would happily help. Why not give us a shot? It'd hurt a lot less, I promise.