Zynga is betting the farm on mobile devices.

Once the undisputed king of Facebook-based social games like "FarmVille," the company has teetered on the brink of irrelevance as mobile-based amusements like "Candy Crush Saga" quickly eroded Zynga's dominance.

Now the San Francisco company hopes to regain some of its old luster with "FarmVille2: Country Escape," the first "FarmVille" sequel designed specifically for smartphones and tablets. Zynga also plans to release reboots of two mobile mainstays, "Words With Friends" and "Zynga Poker."

In an exclusive interview, CEO Don Mattrick acknowledged that the struggling social-games maker let mobile-game competitors race ahead but said Zynga is now moving quickly to catch up.

"You've got to keep innovating; you've got to give people things that cause them surprise and delight," he said. "But the first thing you've got to do is get your content there."

Mattrick, a 50-year-old former Electronic Arts executive, plans to make his debut as Zynga CEO before Wall Street on Monday when he speaks at a Morgan Stanley investor conference in San Francisco. He previously ran Microsoft's Xbox division before leaving the software maker in July to replace co-founder Mark Pincus at Zynga.

Zynga has long promised to make a bigger push into mobile games. Instead, the company delivered terrible earnings, slashed about one-third of its workforce, and watched competitors' games such as "Hay Day" and even "Flappy Bird" fly to the top of mobile-game charts.

Zynga still commands 112 million players per month, but that's a far cry from the more than 300 million monthly active users the company enjoyed in 2012, when it spent $180 million to buy "Draw Something," which was then a mobile hit. The move proved disastrous after "Draw Something" quickly fell from popularity.

Rescue operations

Analysts and investors widely credited Mattrick with turning the Xbox 360 from a technology-troubled money-loser into a leader in home video game consoles. At Zynga, he recruited a new management team and reorganized game design teams to become "more agile," said Chief Operations Officer Clive Downie, another former EA executive who joined Zynga in August.

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The team behind the new Zynga Poker also spent some time thinking about colors, creative director Nick Giovanello said.

“From a color psychology perspective, red is a really popular color because it inspires quick decision-making,” he said. “When you add gold to that, it increases the perceived value. We like to go deep on things like that.”

That stuff matters because Zynga wants users to be playing poker while they’re in line at Starbucks — a favorite scenario of NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil, whose company Zynga recently acquired — or some other place where they don’t have a lot of time. Looking down at your phone’s screen? Your brain says, red, gotta go fast. Hey, that button to raise the stakes is kinda gold …

A similar thought influenced the design of FarmVille 2: Country Escape. As the name suggests, it takes place at a seaside ranch some distance from the non-mobile games’ drier landlocked setting. The abundance of water means players can quickly grow certain crops like apple trees in all of 10 seconds, a design decision made to meet the Starbucks test.

“In just three or four minutes, you can make some progress,” VP Jonathan Knight said.

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Analysts and investors widely credited Mattrick with turning the Xbox 360 from a technology-troubled money-loser into a leader in home video game consoles.

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sfedai0 said:

Innovate= rehash old and used IP's

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vocab said:

“From a color psychology perspective, red is a really popular color because it inspires quick decision-making,” he said. “When you add gold to that, it increases the perceived value. We like to go deep on things like that.”

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Quadraphonic said:

You make fun of that, but that's also how Popcap designs all of their games.

Peggle is the literal pinnacle of "feel good gameplay."

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Zynga still commands 112 million players per month, but that's a far cry from the more than 300 million monthly active users the company enjoyed in 2012, when it spent $180 million to buy "Draw Something," which was then a mobile hit. The move proved disastrous after "Draw Something" quickly fell from popularity.

Click to expand...