I promised myself I wasn't going to write this column, but Alan in Colorado made me.
Alan, you see, Googled me and found that I was addicted to a game on Facebook called Mafia Wars and discovered I was somehow connected to "the media." He then wanted to know if I was aware of the terrors going on in a sister game of Mafia Wars called "Yoville." People were being banned, hacked out of their hard-earned points and suffering "white screens of death." The users had been trying to contact the makers of the game, a company called "Zynga," for months and gotten no response.
Yes Alan, I know your pain. Not that I play such a silly game as Yoville (or Vampires or Fashion Wars, or any number of other silly Zynga games.) No, I am addicted to Mafia Wars, wherein I collect points for clicking on things for half of the night, ignoring my life, the sports cars that need restoring and all manner of chores.
I smile because about a month ago I woke up and my entire defense, which was earned over months of bloody machine-gun battles, was gone. Vaporized. I figured it would be back in a day or two. No such luck. Turns out defense is pretty important in any game with WARS in the title so I logged a support ticket with Zynga. And then I watched it get ignored.
Seeing as I have run support desks for a living I know how this is supposed to work. Zynga has a cutting-edge strategy for the Internet age... ignore all issues that come in.
The head of Zynga, one Mark Pincus, said on his blog recently that Zynga has 8.5 million daily users for its games and 30 support people. I actually laughed out loud and at that point knew my 400 defense points were never to be heard from again. (He also urges users to "e-mail us again" if they have not heard from customer service, apparently not knowing his own company doesn't take e-mail for support.)
The lesson behind all of this is to beware of your own success on the Internet. It is one thing to toss a game up on Facebook or MySpace but you have to plan on what happens if people actually LIKE it? Zynga is a classic example of a company with an interesting product or two but no real plan for success judging from its customer service and its willy-nilly "improvements" to the Mafia Wars platform (a quarter of which are yanked out after malfunctioning or user protests).
I hear some of my fellow players (those that are not planning to storm Zynga's offices with flaming pitchforks) say "what do you expect for free?" and that is true to some extent. But I believe the free software model is set by Google, which is offering a whole raft of services, from e-mail to searching to mapping to an entire office suite for "free." The company is gaining significant ad revenue, much like Zynga, and there has to be an expectation of performance in exchange for my Web eyeball.
Users eventually tire of poor performance (or in my case, find their old lives.)
(James Derk is owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm and a tech columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim(at)cyberdads.com)
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Free is my favorite 4-letter
Free is my favorite 4-letter F word, but sadly, free comes at a cost. The cost of a product usually incorporates the fees of customer service. When it comes to free software, don't expect much in terms of technical support. It's not reason to get angry, but come on...who's going to work for free? Hence comes the saying, "you get what you pay for".
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LoaderJoe
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No so Joe
people in Zynga games use real money to buy points... and Dirk is right, the company SUCK at tech support
Zynga customer service.
I read what you wrote about customer service and wonder if you ever got any response or satisfaction. Below is a quote from Marc Pincus and what I wrote to him.
I am really really upset with this company and am trying to get any and everyone involved, that I think might make a difference.
Thanks so much and have a good day/night.
"i believe that the idea of a free web service offering live customer support is pretty new. if any of you see other best of breed approaches that you think are better we would love to hear about them"
This is a quote from your blog about the customer service you wrote on 5/6/09. Just getting some customer service would be nice. Gang wars has been out for the last 5 days, everyone that can't play has questioned what happened. No responses from any of your CSR or you. I do know that your games are free for the playing, but let's face it, you are making money or you wouldn't be running a company with investors putting their money in. I don't know what kinda of experience you have had with bad customer service, but I can tell you that your company has the worst I have come across in a long while. You are even listed on BBB with a grade of F. It's to bad that you took something special, your dogs name, and basically turn it into something that people are talking crap about.
If you have any intention of responding to this, please don't do it with the shallow, generic response that you have come up with.
Thanks for you time.
Zynga Games
When I first read your column and the follow up on Mark Pincus' blog I was encouraged, even allowed myself to be hopeful. But things are worse today than they were in April. Another update to their Pirates of the Caribbean game has caused extreme unhappiness amongst the players. They are a complete fraud and misrepresent themselves to every player on everyone of their games. They have stolen from us and weeks later send out form responses that basically say "sorry it took so long to respond",then they never address the issue and at the bottom it says "Complaint:Resolved". This is customer service?
You need to do your readers a favor and say you got special treatment because you have a column and the rest of us are still being treated like crap under their shoes! Thanks for letting me vent. Sorry for the rest of the Zynga players that don't have columns!
Pirates : rule the caribbean !
Trust me...nothing is FREE. Somewhere down the line these people are making lots and lots of money off these games. I've suffered from their poor programming updates. A couple of weeks ago I received the "personal" island on pirates and as a result of their poor programming, my refresher times increased to 5 min per point and that's not the worst of it...not only did they reset on Pirates, but also on ALL the Zynga games that I play. Try doing a mission that requires 60 energy points and your refresher time is 5 min per energy point. Do the math. 300 mins is a long time to wait to click a button for unsatisfactory fun.
Tech support is a lifeline
Support in any kind of business is important. If a company has wonderful products I would hope that they would have the support to keep the customers happy. With no support the games are eventually going to fall by the wayside. Mafia wars sounds like a game for oppositional defiant disorder.
Zynga and Farmville
So, I had a similar situation with Farmville. I spent weeks creating and maintaining a little farm to come back one day to a completely empty plot. I contacted customer service and was basically told "policy is we won't restore." Personally since I constantly see "saving your game" I get the feeling they can restore, they just won't. I will never play another Zynga game again.
Zynga sucks
Sorry for the language. I am currenlty experiencing problems with 2 Zynga games, Farmville and YoVille. I discovered 2 neighbor requests for people going by "facebook user" on Farmville. On YoVille the only buddy on my profile page is someone I don't know. Also all my apartment furniture and decor have gone missing. I wish there was a way that all of us who have problems could join forces. I get that they are free...but they should be safe.
I will come back to this page to see if anyone has an idea how to fix this problem.
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