David Ko, Colleen McCreary and Cadir Lee To Leave Zynga

Mike Isaac of AllThingsD reported today that Zynga is to Restructure Top Ranks as Three C-Suite Execs to Depart. The news is more than just rumors as Zynga announced on the Company Blog an Organizational Update on the matter. In an e-mail that Don Mattrick sent to employees it is stated that “As part of the change, Cadir Lee, Colleen McCreary, and David Ko will be leaving the company to pursue other interests” which confirms that COO David Ko, CTO Colleen McCreary and Cadir Lee are leaving Zynga.

Don also stated within the e-mail “We are taking layers out of the executive rank to get senior leaders closer to important product initiatives. With that in mind, I have asked the leaders to sharpen their focus and properly densify talent to resource teams.” What exactly that means I don’t know. It would appear that the executives at Zynga may be doing the jobs of 2, or more, other executives.

The following is the new structure of the Top Ranks at Zynga;

Our studios leaders include Steve Chiang EVP Games, Villes and International, Barry Cottle, EVP Games, Social Casino, Travis Boatman, SVP Games, With Friends and Network, Tim LeTourneau, SVP Games, FarmVille, Steve Parkis, SVP Games, Midcore, Mark Skaggs, SVP Games, and Jon Tien, SVP Games, Casual.

Tech, live ops and publishing includes Nick Tornow, CTO, VP, Dorion Carroll, CIO, VP, and Adam Sussman, SVP Game Publishing (which includes distribution, direct advertising sales and ops).

Our functional area leaders are Reggie Davis, General Counsel, EVP Legal, Corporate and Business Affairs (which includes Corporate and Business Development and Communications), Mark Vranesh, CFO, EVP, and Meg Makalou, VP Human Resources.

Maybe this news explains all the issues playing Mafia Wars today. The game running slow. The health not refilling while fighting. The game not loading. etc etc etc. If there is no mouse running in the wheel then it won’t turn.

Maybe Don Mattrick has a plan. Maybe we are just too skeptical.

South Africa Tour (Part 5) – The R&D Lab

 

The R&D is the second property in South Africa. It is the property that allows players to make consumables that are necessary for jobs.

 

The chart below shows how many parts are needed to upgrade each level of the R&D Lab (but only to level 4);

 

	Zebrawood	Sack Of Mud	Gauteng Zinc	African Brick	Bushveld Steel		Make 2 Every 18 8 Hours
	0	0	0	0	0
					Level 1 Unlocks
	1	1	0	1	1	4
					Level 2 Unlocks
	3	3	1	3	3	13
					Level 3 Unlocks
	5	5	2	5	5	22
					Level 4 Unlocks
	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
	9	9	3	9	9	39

The R&D Lab can only be upgraded to level 4 currently. Eventually there will be 8 districts in South Africa and we will get to complete the remaining 6 levels.

The chart below shows estimates of the number of parts we expect to accumulate as new districts are released.

	Zebrawood	Sack Of Mud	Gauteng Zinc	African Brick	Bushveld Steel
	7	7	3	7	7	31
	9	9	4	9	9	40
	11	11	5	11	11	49
	13	13	6	13	13	58
	15	15	7	15	15	67
	17	17	8	17	17	76
	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
	72	72	33	72	72	321

We expect that there will eventually be 16 items in total for us to make in the R&D Lab because each district appears to have jobs that require the consumption of one of 2 consumables.

As we upgrade the R&D Lab we will unlock the consumables.

The consumable loots do drop in a select job within each district and are required for the completion of select jobs within the district in which they drop.

In addition, the consumables will also be required in the bonus jobs.

I can only speculate that this is an attempt by Zynga to slow the game down some. Or to make some money. Either way, we’ll wait to see how that works out for the game. Currently players just want to get this district completed and get back to London or whatever they were doing before South Africa was released.

R And D Lab