Zynga wants to be the Amazon of social games, says CEO Mark Pincus

The zealous chief of the social gaming giant made the ambitious claims at the Zynga Seattle opening ceremony last night. In the midst of the recruiting rush and grand opening festivities, CEO Mark Pincus said, "Just like Amazon built out 'shop' on the Internet and made that a verb, that it seems like we can't remember life before we shopped through Amazon, we want to build out 'play,'" Xconomy Seattle reports.

This move is just another step forward in the FarmVille maker's quest for ubiquity, which serves potential Seattle tech talent better. According to Xconomy, Pincus said that much of Seattle's tech talent refused the company's offer of relocation to the nearest studio, Zynga HQ in San Francisco. "I guess people like the weather and the coffee," Pincus said, getting a rise out of the crowd. Speaking of Amazonian ambitions, many of the folks who are to run this studio are former Amazon employees like former VP of Technology Neil Roseman, who wil lead the office as Zynga Seattle VP.

How does Zynga plan for its name to become synonymous with online gaming? By making liberal use of its extensive data mining practices, of course. Thanks to Zynga's nearly 250 million monthly active players monthly, the company processes and analyzes 5 terabytes of data daily. The company then takes this information and introduces new features and improvements based on that information. Because of this, Zynga can know what you like and, based on that, gauge what things you will like if implemented. It's this metrics-based game design that has contributed to the developers meteoric rise, so why stop now?

Do you think Zynga can become the Amazon of online games? How do you think before Zynga accomplishes this, and will any competition rise to meet it? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.