Zynga has not only been snapping up social game development studios at a pace approaching one studio a month, but also executive talent from traditional game developers as well. Add another executive to the list, with John Schappert’s jump from the chief operating officer position at Electronic Arts to Zynga. Schappert stepped down from his position at EA on April 25, according to a regulatory filing.
To see why game industry leaders like Gordon Walton, Mark Skaggs, and Bing Gordon have been jumping from EA and its subsidiaries, one only has to take a look at the numbers. Zynga, which is preparing for an initial public offering, has an estimated valuation in the vicinity of $10 billion. EA, however, has an estimated market capitalization around $6.75 billion. EA is also attempting to shift its focus from the retail games side of the business to social games, as evidenced by the company’s acquisition of Playfish in 2009.
Part of the reason why Zynga has exploded in value is due to the sheer scale of the audience it has rapidly amassed. Zynga and its 55 games, including Cityville, Frontierville, and Farmville, have a dominating 75 percent market share of social games played on Facebook by total numbers of players, according to AppData. Although 260 million played a Zynga game last month, the second-biggest Facebook developer has less than 20 percent of that audience with just 49.5 million players.
Schappert is a veteran of the video games industry, having sold Madden Football franchise developer Tiburon Entertainment to EA, when he joined on in various executive roles. In 2007, he left for a stint at Microsoft’s Xbox unit for two years before returning to EA in 2009.
