Frank Gibeau's Silver Bullets for Game Development

Frank: [00:00:00] I jumped on the Zynga train and I was an operating board member. I used to go around telling people, look, we can't fall off the floor. We're literally the worst operating company in the industry, right? We're making about six or seven hundred million dollars and only 12 is coming out the bottom. 

Alex: That was Frank Jabeau talking about the turnaround of Zynga.

Maybe one of the greatest business stories in video game history. I don't know. Yeah, it's maybe being traumatic, but 

Aaron: I mean, it's kind of big. It's like in the millions, billions, right? Like it's in the big numbers. It's 

Alex: 12 billion. I thought, you know, I was at an event at the beginning of the year where Frank spoke and he said something really funny about how the Zynga deal, I would take two, but Zynga, you know, 12 billion.

It was the largest deal ever. In video game business history for one week, for one week until Microsoft bought [00:01:00] Activision. I thought that was amusing. He's got a great sense of humor. I met Frank long, long, long ago, but never got to hang out with him much. And he seems like such a cool, chill cat, you know?

Aaron: Yeah. I was actually surprised whenever he was talking. I'm like, this dude seems like, If you would have told me he's the CEO of Zynga, I'd be like, really? He seems really chill. You 

Alex: would kind of expect a more like, he talks so matter of fact about, yeah. Like what Zynga has gone through in the last few years has been pretty remarkable.

And yeah, he talks about it fairly matter of fact, you know, I think it's very astute, but also just really practical too. And just the story about how he fell into video games is bonkers too. So I don't want to give any spoilers away, but yeah, stick around for our conversation with Frank Jabeau. It's a good one.

Aaron: Well, I want to give one spoiler, actually. Really? Because it's in the beginning already. It's kind of already a spoiler. What? I had no idea what you guys were talking about with that building. The whole conversation. I know. Why is the building, 

Alex: like, how, what does that have to do with it? It's a nice building.

I mean, you know, San Francisco real estate is crazy. I [00:02:00] got to visit there once. I think, you know, Tim and I went out there in the early Industrial Toys days and talked to Arc Pincus and his team about what we were working on. Oh, right. When we were doing mobile. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and had all the Silicon Valley trappings of, you know, cool social spaces 

Aaron: and 

Alex: it's 

Aaron: a nice building.

You know, yeah. You know, speaking of, we were doing first person shooters at the time, or it wasn't really figured out yet. Remember that was kind of our biggest challenge. 

Alex: Yeah. 

Aaron: They just released or published the Star Wars game. Have you played this? The new one? What, Outlaws? No, no, no. No. Uh, mobile. Yeah, the mobile version.

Uh, that game. Have you played Outlaws though? Uh, no, I'm playing Subspace Marine 2 instead. But Star Wars Hunters is the name of the game and I'm playing it on Switch, but it's not on any other platform other than mobile phones and it is really good. I was like, what? I did not expect this to be this good.

It's so good. It's awesome. I recommend it. So if you [00:03:00] haven't tried it, I think it's really good. And I think they figured out a lot of the stuff that we were trying to figure out. Well, because, you know, phones are faster too now. Yeah. To give us some credit. But it's really good. Really good. And also going back to Space Marine 2, I barely played it.

Like I just played the 10 minutes because it just came out. I was really busy. This is your pick for game of the year. Yeah. This weekend I'm going to play it for realsies. Okay. I'm excited. It is. I think it's going to be game of the year, in my opinion. Excited to hear what you think about it after you've played it for a little bit.

It's at least going to be nominated. I know that there's that monkey game, the Wukong one. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I know what you're talking about. That game has a lot of like players right now. And then there's this one. There's Diablo four. I'm It's uh, Astro Pop. Astro Bop. I got that too.

Thanks for reminding me. I got to ask my wife to pick it up. She's over there by the GameStop. I still pre order games. Make fun of me. I don't care. I get 5 credit. Yeah. That's 5 I 

Alex: can spend 

Aaron: on in 

Alex: app [00:04:00] purchases. It's not really helping out your hoarder situation. You don't have to have all that. Collector.

Aaron: Look at 

Alex: that. Look what's behind you. 

Aaron: Those are playing cards. And Clue, that's for research. Yeah, the other side. Those are playing cards I need to review. Okay, all right, that's a lot. That's the box to the high ground keyboard. Hey, shout out to high ground. Our sponsor. Yeah. Look at that. And then playing cards.

It's just playing cards. Right on. I haven't bought any playing cards if it makes you feel better. I stopped buying playing cards. I said I'm not buying any playing cards the rest of the year. Yeah, I'm done. There's enough.

Alex: All right, well, thank you friends for joining us again this week. Hope you enjoy our conversation with Frank Jabeau. I did. Yeah, it's a good one, and we'll see you on the other side. See you later. Hello and welcome back listeners. We are all in for a treat today as we welcome to the podcast. Mr Frank Jebeau, CEO of Zynga.[00:05:00] 

Frank got his start at Electronic Arts back in 1991. Frank, that's the same year I started Bungie, and he wrote a 23 plus year arc through the publishing business and eventually President of EA Games, head of EA Mobile, all before taking the leap to Zynga, where he's been helming the company since, I think it's 2016 or 2015?

Frank: I joined the board in 2015 and, uh, became CEO in 2016. 

Alex: Okay, right on. And we all know Zynga from its many games, Roots and Facebook, with Farmville, through mobile games like Words with Friends, which I've played a lot of, and CSR Racing, which I've also played a ton of. And in 2022, Zynga was acquired by Take Two Interactive for 12.

7 billion, which is way more than a fuck ton of money. I did the math on this. This 12. 7 billion actually weighs 28, 000 tons. That's if it's in one dollar bills. And [00:06:00] quarters? No, that's in one dollar bills. It's, it's, it's crazy. Frank's also on the board of directors of Hasbro. That's one of our investors at the studio that Aaron and I are at.

And I'm kind of, I, in my head, I'm imagining you guys had a special board meeting call to approve the deal that we did with Hasbro and you voted enthusiastic. Yay. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to thank you in my imagination for that. Frank is also on the board of Yeti. I have a lot of Yeti gear in my house, assuming that I like this Yeti.

Yes. And I'm correctly assuming that Yeti. I'm using one. Everybody has one on there. That is awesome. I don't know how I did on accuracy for the intro Frank, but welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. How are you? 

Frank: I'm great. Thanks for having me today. Yeah. For the most part, you nailed the big points of the career.

There's a lot of jaw. I did every. Dirty job there was at EA. So in studios and publishing. So you left a few out there, but that's okay. 

Alex: Right on. What was your first job there? And was that actually your first actual job? It was. Yeah. I want to hear the [00:07:00] dirty jokes. 

Frank: Yeah, no, I, uh, I just graduated out of university, Southern California.

I came back home up to Northern California and I was looking at, uh, you know, jobs, what I was going to do next. And my father saw an ad for electronic arts for a flight simulator, marketing assistant, and tester job at EA. Uh, and I was getting my pilot's license at the time. And I was a degenerate gamer. I played everything when my whole house was full of old 80, 86 is, and three 86 is building computers just to play wing commander two, if you remember back then, and so my dad was like, Oh, this job's perfect for you.

And so. You know, I jumped in the car, took the resume down, dropped it off at the reception. There's Nerf balls everywhere. It's just, it was just gone public the year before. So it was like a total early days of EA. And, uh, yeah, I got the job. I was an entry level employee. I think it was making like 23, 000 a year, uh, working around the clock.

I loved every minute of it. It was fantastic. 

Alex: Awesome. So wait, this is 1991? Yeah, 

Frank: it was [00:08:00] 91, I think it was October, November. So they had just started getting onto the Sega Genesis. And so I had, I was working on Chuck Yeager's Air Combat and some other flight simulators. And then at the same time, I was also working on the Sega Genesis business.

So it was like Road Rash, if you remember that motorcycle racing game? Oh yeah. 

Aaron: Yeah, 

Frank: I played Road Rash on the Genesis for sure. Yeah, of course. Desert Strike, The Immortal. So I was in a group where I was assigned a different Wayne Gretzky too, right? Yeah, we had the NHLPA came out then. You had Madden 92 was really popular.

So I was assigned to just different teams as a gopher, just do stuff. And EA also cross trained you. So you'd go and do a tour duty and customer service. Telesales. If you remember, people would actually call on the phone to order a game and you'd have to pick up the phone. And yeah, and you know, that's cool.

I didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. We do screenshots. We'd have to take a 35 millimeter camera pointed at the television while another guy played and hope that we got a good, hope that we got a good screenshot. [00:09:00] Yeah. 

Aaron: That's like the Nintendo thing. Nintendo did that too. 

Alex: Right. With like the, you call in for like help.

We had Ben Brode on who was talking about taking screenshots of, was a Starcraft. No, it was the Overwatch. It was always one of those games where it was the Starcraft 

Aaron: first 

Alex: person 

Aaron: shooter. 

Alex: Yes, that's what it was. That's what it was. Well, whatever. For our listeners who maybe have never been part of game making publishing, the screenshots is an art.

Frank: Absolutely. Yeah, we would take the film, you know, because it was on film. It was pre digital, right? So, there were two funny things about that one. One was, we were all in our early 20s. We were living in San Francisco, coming down to the peninsula to work at EA. Some days we'd show up to work a little hungover.

And, uh, you know, the screenshot room was air conditioned, which was like the big plus. It was kind of a cool thing to go hang out and play games all day, taking screenshots. The only air conditioned room we had. And then the second thing is you take the film up to a graphic services and they, you know, they developed the film in a dark room.

And then you look at them and try and [00:10:00] piece together the best screenshots. Cause it was pretty primitive, but it was really fun. How big was EA? Oh God. I mean, I don't even think it was. It was just a couple hundred million dollars of revenue. It just, it finished up the Amiga launch. Trip Hawkins was still CEO.

He still interviewed everybody that came in the building. And so it was Trip Hawkins, Ben Gordon, Larry Probst, all the original guys. And, um, yeah, it was phenomenal. And it was very small, very nimble. We were still doing, uh, the packaging and the record albums. Remember when they were, you know, little, they looked like little record albums where you pull the discs out.

And then we just started going to boxes and things like that. So it was very early days. Amiga, you know, as you remember, it was a 16 bit system that they had done a lot of work on. And so it ported beautifully to the Sega Genesis, the first 16 bit system for console. And so a lot of that came over and it was crazy.

We were building a lot of great games. Those are amazing developers. And I kind of learned from the ground up, you know, working on the teams, testing, you know, helping with levels, doing [00:11:00] screenshots, do publishing. That was kind of the best way to learn was seeing all different aspects of the creation process.

And, you know, I've kind of started to build my career as a product manager. And working with the game teams on, you know, how to bring the games to life in terms of consumer campaign, what are the competitive titles out there and brainstorming, you know, different things you could do in the game. So it was really, really fun.

Alex: That's cool. Would you say that's your formative craft in this industry as product manager? 

Frank: Yeah, no, absolutely. That's where I made my name and started to really develop a great skill set. And it was really about jumping around to different game teams, embedding yourself in the game team. And I always had a philosophy that, you know, it was funny.

Cause at the time product management marketing was not seen in a good light by the game teams, right? Oh, those guys are going to come in and screw up the launch of my game. Right. And so I always was very collaborative, you know, I remember sitting down with a lead programmer on a game called U. S. Navy Fighters.

He had done checkers at combat, his name's Brent Iverson. And you know, the marketing team that I inherited the project [00:12:00] from didn't involve him at all in anything. My thinking was, well, this guy has been spending 18 months programming, building, this is his creation to not ask him what he thinks the box would look like, or the ads, or who's going to be interested in this game just felt stupid.

And so I would always start with the game teams and talk to them about what are you creating? Why is it cool? Why are people going to love it? Hey, what do you think of this ad? What do you think of this package? You know, Just get different ideas. And that's where I would start, you know, and then I'd kind of bring in other competitive analysis and competitive games and the marketplace stuff.

But that's where I started was in publishing and trying to, you know, I kind of felt a responsibility to the game teams to give their games the best shot possible, to find the biggest audiences, to give them the best shot at getting to the maximum quality. And And that was kind of how I viewed my role was help them make the games better, help them create world class campaigns to reach the biggest audiences possible.

And then manage the commercial side, you know, how many units can you get? What sales look like? How are we handling customer [00:13:00] service? So that was more my orientation. And so That was a successful formula for a lot of the game teams, whether it was if I'd go into the Sims or need for speed or flight simulators or EA sports, that was the orientation that I brought.

And so I remember that by 

Aaron: the way, where you would get a game and the cover didn't match the game. And the commercial was like, what is going on? Nothing 

Frank: is so weird. I got a call from Don Matrick, who was the head of studios at the time on the Sims. And. The marketing team and the development team were at war over what the game was going to be.

And this was like six weeks before it Sims 1 launched. And like the publishing guy said, it was going to sell 150, 000 units. That was the forecast on it. And I walked in and they're like, I got known to be a fixer. So when stuff was broken or, or teams weren't working together, they'd call me up and I would relocate and go there and try and.

Figure it out. And that, I think that's where I developed my love of turnarounds and kind of helped me later in my career. But I remember Rickatello, who's the [00:14:00] COO and Don Matchett was the president of studios, they called me up and they sent me in to look at this thing. And they said, check out the marketing campaign.

Tell me what you think. So I go in and I started by talking to Will Wright and Luke Bartley and Lucy Bradshaw, who were the kind of creative team on Sims. And they were like, Hey, this is a game about creating, controlling people from A to Z. It's about their wants and needs. Here's how the AI works and all the object oriented programming we put in.

So I really go deep on what it is. Right. And then I go over and I get the brief from the marketing team and the packaging literally was a white picket fence. And they wanted to call it Sim People, not The Sims. It was a religious war. They were just arguing and they couldn't get over it. So I, I got assigned to fix it.

And so I was like, look, The Sims is a great name. You know, we can do a lot with this creatively. And then I said, if this is about creating control people, why aren't there people? And all the fun things that people have as relationships and the things that happen in the game, why isn't that the centerpiece of the creative instead of a white picket fence?

And it was like, they were calling it the neighborhood simulator and they had more emphasis on the [00:15:00] interior design, you know, like where the chairs go, then, then how, you know, two people come and talk Simlish to each other. So, you know, it was just, you know, I didn't think they played the game very much. I don't think they had done their homework on what made it special.

And, you know, and I'm not a genius. It was just listening to people that, you know, like Will Wright, listening to what he thought the game was all about. And so I kind of quickly recrafted the whole thing over the next six weeks to get it into position for a launch. And then, you know, and then it went out and obviously the game quality was astounding.

It was super innovative. So, you know, what a little help I was able to provide, I think helped kind of ease out some of the friction, but the game would have been a hit anyway. But, but it was just. It was just a mess, you know, and so 

Alex: it sold a little more than 150, 000 copies, didn't it? 

Frank: Yeah, no, that was a running joke at EA publishing for years.

It's like, oh yeah, what was the Sims forecast? Oh, it was 150, 000 units, you know, so it was kind of a way of poking fun at people who were not understanding. 

Alex: It's funny, you weren't the only ones making that bet because I think, uh, I'm not sure what year that came out. It must have been Ben 90. [00:16:00] Oh, is it like 97?

Frank: Maybe I was going to say 95, six, something like that. Yeah. 

Alex: Yeah. 95, six. Cause I was in an office in San Jose and one of the designers and I made a bet on. Whether the Sims was going to be successful. And I think the over under was a hundred thousand units. I took the over. So I was, I was in the right on there.

Would you win in hindsight? He's easy bet. I won nothing. I won the right to say I won right here later on. Yeah. Yeah. So Hardy, if you're listening in your face. Yeah. So, all right, well, let's rewind a little bit in the way back machine. What was, you know, little Frank, like, you know, kind of growing up and was it the Bay area?

Did you have tech in the house where your parents sort of influential in this path that you took? Yeah. It sounds like your dad did at least some job searching for you. That's cool. Out of a newspaper one 

Frank: ad, but, uh, the true story. Well, I grew up in, uh, in San [00:17:00] Francisco and Silicon Valley. My dad was an engineer.

He has a master's in mechanical and a master's in electrical. So I was, I was always around a guy who'd never had a repairman in the house. Right. So, you know, a lot of my early years was holding up, holding a flashlight under a car or holding a flashlight. Right. Hey, can you grab that? Yeah. Yeah. And learning all that stuff and all this buddy, all of his friends were engineers.

So I had early guys at Intel and he actually developed, um, five and quarter Winchester disc drives. He was a guy that came up with a lot. He has like, I think 30 patents. He came up with a lot of the intricate high speed, uh, motors and readers there. So I was always around engineering and, and have a deep respect for it.

And then my mother was a dance teacher. She was a dancer. And so I had this really creative dancing mother and an engineer father. And so it was a really interesting mix in the house that you don't really know at the time. But as you reflect back on it, you kind of go, Oh, I can see where I picked up some, uh, You know, these skills or traits from how they lived in the family they've created.

So it was a little different that way. We had every [00:18:00] device in the house. And so when my father became an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and he was starting companies, and I remember he had a guy named Mike Swift, who was a programmer, used to come over to the house and he'd work out of this office that I'd go hang out in.

And he had a Cremenco mini computer and he said, Hey, check this out. Cause he knew I was playing board games at the time and things. And he's like, check this out. And it was text adventure on a Cremenco mini. Where you would write north, north, sir, you know, look, you know, and so that was my first introduction was this guy showing me early games on the Crememco in the house.

You know, the 

Alex: Crememco, I 

Frank: like, 

Alex: I 

Frank: think 

Alex: it was. I've never heard of Crememco. Is that like a 10, 000 computer or something? Like back in the day, a mini computer that was, it was much bigger than a personal computer, right? It was like in between a personal computer and a mainframe or something. 

Frank: Yeah, exactly.

So you had mains, you had minis. And then you had desks and then desktops came eventually, but this thing had, you know, it was like a radiators on the side to keep the heat off of it. And it was like running at 4k memory, right? It was like, Oh my God, 4k. We got to 8k, you know? And so it was really, uh, [00:19:00] early stuff, but that was my, kind of my first exposure to games was this guy saying, Hey, you should check out this text adventure game.

And then from there, We bought a Apple two assembly kit down at Ments down in the Silicon Valley, which was a store you could go buy parts at, and we actually built it. And so it was all the early, you know, castle Wolfenstein, you know, Zork, all the original, uh, wizardry. Yeah. You know, we buy all those games in Hack and, 

Alex: oh, wait, wait, wait.

Hold on a second. You mentioned SOK and whenever anybody mentioned SOK on this show, I gotta ask if you made it to the end. I did not. And finished . I did not. Neither. I'm still looking for somebody who can help me get to the end. All right. Keep going. Sorry. Keep going. I love Sierra. 

Frank: Sierra was my favorite game company back then with the Texas ventures.

And then they got into flight Sims and Kings quest. Yeah, they were phenomenal. So, and back then games weren't really very popular. They weren't very widely known. I kind of found this thing and I loved it, but I didn't think it was a career. I just. It was [00:20:00] kind of my hobby and go from there. But, uh, yeah, that was kind of the house I grew up in.

Yeah, I played a lot of soccer. I was kind of an average student. If I liked the subject, I usually nailed it. If I didn't like the subject, like grammar or English, you know. Forget about it. Right. I can barely spell my name at this point, but, but that, you know, that was kind of my life and I got interested in flying.

So I went to ground school when I was young and I got really into planes. And then I went to college and studied business and international relations. And then I took courses in the cinema school at USC, which was really fun. So yeah, that was kind of, that was, that was the arc. That's like a good school for cinema.

Alex: Yeah. So you're a C and, but you're not necessarily thinking about video games. What were you thinking about? Like, is like, 

Frank: Oh, maybe I'm going to do, I was thinking about the, uh, I had two ideas. One was state department. I really liked international relations and I thought it'd be cool to work in the state department, going around to embassies and being part of that whole thing.

And then the other side of it was, that's my parents were both. That's a pretty epic job, dude. [00:21:00] Like do it. It isn't, it isn't right. 

Alex: That's being a spy, right? When you say state department, you mean being a spy? Is 

Frank: that what you mean? No, no, I didn't think about, I wasn't James Bond dreaming. It was. I just like traveling.

I like being in different countries and I thought it'd be cool to be a part of that process. It wasn't particularly well thought out, but it was an option. And then, you know, I'm the black sheep in my family. I'm the only non entrepreneur. So my mom was an entrepreneur, started her own dance company and my dad started his own companies.

And so I thought business might be interesting. I'd been exposed to a lot of it. So I understood the fundamentals of commercial stuff. So I was looking at big company jobs. Going in on that path. And then surprisingly, I got in an accident. I was walking up a flight of stairs that collapsed and it crushed my right leg.

Now this is total, total serendipity, right? So I'm going to a GMAT course. Cause I'm thinking about maybe I'll get a master's cause I really didn't have a good plan. And I'm walking up the stairs, talking to this girl. And all of a sudden we hear this crack and the stairs had broken and we fell in this big chunk of [00:22:00] concrete comes down and pins me in the, I didn't really tell anybody this story.

It crushes my leg, right? And I'm stuck there and, you know, I'm getting kind of panicking because you can't get out and it's pretty ugly, but I get through all that and I get back, I have to rehabilitate. And that's why I went back to Northern California. And that's why I was sitting on a couch with my dad.

I think there was a football game on or something. And that's when he said, Hey, there's this job for EA. And so from my perspective, my whole career has been serendipity. Wow. It's just pure luck being in the right 

Aaron: place 

Frank: at the 

Aaron: right time. Hey, fourth curtain exclusive, folks, right here. You heard how he ended up where he did.

Stares crushing you. 

Alex: That's insane. I know. That's crazy. Isn't it crazy how, you know, that butterfly effect, I guess, you know, it's like. Different things happen and change the path. That's amazing. 

Frank: Yeah. So if that never had happened to me, I would probably stay in LA. Cause I had a ton of friends down there.

I really, I liked the city. I would've gotten a job doing something, you know, at some point, but it wasn't North Korea embassy right now, but, uh, yeah, that's how it all started. So I always, my career in [00:23:00] the games business. I've always felt like I've been playing on house money. I was always around really great people, learning great stuff, getting assignments on, you know, just, I never, no regrets.

It was just always, you know, there was bad stuff and tough stuff along the way. But man, you know, you go into work and you're working on Madden football or FIFA or, you know, need for speed or battlefield. That's not a bad 

Alex: day. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's right. We talk about that a lot. You know, sometimes it is a difficult, um, making games is hard.

You know, it is hard. It's technically challenging. It's got this crazy subjective component to it. And now with like what you guys do just with how monetization works in it, the business models are so sophisticated as extra level of difficulty, I think. 

Aaron: Yeah. 

Alex: Even when things are hard or bad, we're making entertainment.

So it is. It's a blessing. You know, it's like, we're very lucky. 

Frank: Right. I totally agree. 

Alex: Um, I agree with that. All right. So back then, you know, you're, you launched the Sims, you beat that a hundred [00:24:00] thousand unit forecast. Everybody's high fiving. Here's a question, and I have no idea if this is a question that you would want to answer or not, but I'm curious because Aaron and I both spent time at EA.

We worked there for about four years and we totally missed the Tripp Hawkins era. I mean, I know of it and I've never met Tripp, but I'm really curious what it was like. And the early days Trip was running the company and what that transition was like, I don't know much about it. And I'm curious, very curious.

Frank: It happened pretty quick, right? So I was interviewing over that fall and then he would meet with you and Ben Gordon interviewed you and things like that. And then you're on the team. And then Larry Probst at the time was getting set up to become the CEO of the company. And so I can't remember the exact amount of time, but he was around and then he went on to start up 3DO.

And, you know, so the whole 3DO SAO, San Mateo software group, SSMG, and that code name became 3DO. And then EA obviously was a big investor and, and a big part of that. So I saw him mainly at, in the [00:25:00] 3DO capacity. I did see him for a brief period of time as CEO, doing company meetings, you know, the whole nine yards and tremendous charisma, vision.

Super engaging. I mean, when you talk to him, you feel like he's got great energy and focus and talking to you. And he really was passionate about games and about the players and the experience of games. And then he had this group of people around him that were extremely talented, like bang and, and Larry and Nancy Smith and others.

And so the team, when you're a young person coming in and they would do these product reviews where you'd be sitting in the back, You know, kind of getting exposed to how they're talking about a game creatively from a technology standpoint. And then ultimately, Hey, this might be a great idea and it might make sense technically, but there's no chance for it to find a market to pay back on.

It was just extraordinary, right? To be in your early twenties and learning that from some of the people who created the industry. I've always valued that. And some of those meetings got really. Spicy. I mean, it really colorful. And so, yeah, you'd also be kind of like, Whoa. [00:26:00] So, uh, like what, like, how did it get spicy?

I, I, I'm not gonna, you know, it's kind of, yeah, 

Aaron: I've been in those. It's like, 

Frank: yeah, so I've seen poly comms go across the room, you know, a lot of I've seen profanity, you know, that you wouldn't have expected from somebody. Very demure and, you know, kind of introvert and all of a sudden, F bombs. Yeah. And then a lot of betting kind of like to your point, Alex, it's like, there's no chance.

Look, we call them silver bullets. So Hilleman and the studio at the time had silver bullets where a creator had come up with an idea that publishing or the company didn't believe in. They had a number of silver bullets that they could deploy on it and say, no, I really believe in it. I'm using a silver bullet on this one.

And what was cool about the company is everybody rallied around that. There were no politics. Nobody tried to undermine anybody later. But if there was a game that on first blush people are scratching their heads on. You had this opportunity [00:27:00] to do Silver Bullets and what's true of games, true of anything is the more right you are, the more often, the more chances you get.

And so if you expended a Silver Bullet and it's a hit, you know, that's when you start to see people kind of build out really big opportunities. So that I remember that the Silver Bullet debates were always good ones too. 

Alex: All right. Well, so what did you end up doing at EA after, you know, this period of time when you're kind of like Mr.

Fix it, um, you know, getting products ready to ship. What was your next sort of 

Frank: step there? Uh, my path pretty much was product management all the way to, you know, VP of product management or whatever the title was, I can't remember, but it was kind of like the T kind of thing of management, you go all the way to the top and then you branch, right?

So you pick a particular function, whether you're an engineer, a designer, an artist, or a product manager, in my case, and you kind of go all the way to the top of that field and you're seen as kind of a subject matter expert and you have a proven track record. So then when you branch over and start to pick up other responsibilities, A studio management role or [00:28:00] a finance role or something like that.

That's kind of how you teed across. So I did that in publishing. So I went up and became a general manager of publishing. I worked for Nancy Smith. Who's a legend and awesome. I mean, she got me into position to become general manager there. And then from there, that's when I picked up EA partners to understand how to run studios, which is, I think is when I, you guys came in and pitched myth, right?

Or mythic. 

Alex: I do remember meeting you at EA partners. I can't remember what the game was. Yeah. We were talking about this in London a few months ago, but it would have been in the nineties sometime, I think, or the two thousands 

Frank: developers like you guys would come in and pitch a game. Or I remember, um, dice came in with code name Eagle.

That became battlefield 1942. And then, you know, the rest is history. So we'd see a lot of these early developers come in and I was now managing, I was part of that group and we signed distribution deals. Like we remember rock band. So I got exposure to the studios that way. So I had exposure as a product manager on game teams and then, you know, running partners, and then eventually I picked up management of a group called EA games, which was basically the [00:29:00] entertainment side of the business, the non sport side.

Uh, and that was a lot of fun. That was Visceral, Bioware, Dice. So those are the kind of games I really love and so that was a fun job. And then from there I picked up the studios and then I moved to, uh, mobile. Got my PhD in mobile for my last two years at EA. So, I always got to a point where I wanted to try something new.

And so EA was really great about giving me that career mobility and, you know, giving me a chance on other things. But, um, Well, it was a great run. And one of the key learnings I had was the hero to zero to hero journey, right? So EA starts out all those stories we're talking about earlier in 91, it goes on this huge run, right?

All the way up until around 2008, where it's up into the right stock splits eight times. You know, EA is the apex predator of package goods game sequels going into the channel, right? Nobody could touch us, right? And then everything goes digital and the world crashed. And EA goes from, I think, stock in the 80s or something to 11.

We were voted, I think, worst company in the world. Two years in a [00:30:00] row we lost Exxon, or we beat Exxon, I guess is the way to, really way to say it. Remember when Exxon blew up an oil rig in, in the Gulf, Mexico? I do 

Alex: kind of remember this, the Exxon Valdez too. It like, you know, poisoned Alaska or something.

Yeah. It was 

Frank: Mobil, or I think it was Exxon, but they, they killed like billions of life forms in the Gulf of Mexico. Yeah. But we were the worst company in the world because of our business practices and Commander Shepherd got killed. So it was one of those things where. Now in defense of the voters who picked us, uh, we were terrible.

We were putting business before games and quality at that time. And we paid the price and what was, you know, actually just freeing you for it was we were at our bottom at our worst and we all went in a room and just said, this is going to sound amusing to people who didn't like EA at the time and still don't.

But we literally went in there and said, obviously we're doing something really wrong. And we wrote down on a board, everything that people hate about us. And shipping games early. We had this online business model against used [00:31:00] games, you name it. We wrote it down and it was like, uh, you know, we have to hit rock bottom to get sober that, you know, that was kind of it.

We hit rock bottom and we kind of reengaged with, you know, the reason we're here is high quality games. And that was, as I found in my career, my biggest mistakes were always made when I got far from product. Felt more in love with the business model and why we were doing something from a business standpoint and forgot that, hey, you know, the core loop sucks.

This is not fun. Or, you know, the Metacritic's like a 75 and it needs another quarter to get to, you know, an 85 90. That was always consistent for me in my career is that if I made a mistake, it is invariably because I had kind of lost touch with the game and was more focused on something else. As a corporation, went through that and just started putting back the foundation blocks to kind of rebuild and go from the zero back to the hero.

And for me, in my entire course of my career, while I loved a lot of the early days and the fun stories, For me, that moment where the chips are down, the [00:32:00] execs were bailing. They're all going to Zynga at the time, if I remember, and they were leaving, starting their own companies. There's just very few of us left.

And we all basically had a chip on our shoulder that look, we love this company. We have amazing IP and really talented teams. And we're not really getting the most out of our potential. And that's when the leadership team rallied. And starting to bring it back. And so I found that to be the most enjoyable and rewarding part of my career was that going from the zero back to the hero, when everybody counts you out.

And so, so as I was building my career, you had that as a backdrop as well. And it was really hard, but it was rewarding ultimately in the end. 

Alex: Was that also around the time, do you remember the EA spouse? Yep. I don't know. Was it a lawsuit? I don't even know if it was actually a lawsuit, but it was definitely a news item.

It was a thing. 

Frank: I think it was out of our EALA office, and they were crunching the teams pretty hard down there, and one of the same time frame? It was, yeah, it was around the same time frame. Was that 

Alex: part of what ended up on the 

Frank: whiteboard? Yes. 

Alex: Yeah. 

Frank: Yeah. Look, Rome [00:33:00] didn't fall in a day. So there was a few things, you know, starting to emerge at the peak where, you know, you were running the company really hot and stuff was starting to break culturally from a talent management standpoint, from a, just a structural standpoint, in addition to some of the other things that were happening.

So that was one of the things that was very much, you know, a focus as well. 

Alex: Maybe relate a question, which is just curiosity for me. I've seen, and I've been involved in conversations and I've had games that have suffered from, I think some of what ended up on that whiteboard maybe, which is at a, public company where there's this quarterly pressure every quarter, there's a moment with the investors, with the market, with the street, where you're kind of judged.

And when your product gets to a point where it's sort of has some public visibility, the timing of a release is material to the company's performance. And it can be [00:34:00] at odds with the quality of the game, you know, because the game needs more time, but more time means we're in trouble with the market. I've thought about from a developer's perspective, like.

That's the worst thing that can happen to me is if I know what I have to do, but I can't have the time to do it. Like from your perspective is having been sort of in a decision making capacity of navigating through those kinds of decisions, like, have you come up with a thesis, you know, around that, or here's how we avoid that.

Frank: Yeah, absolutely. I, uh, You know, it's, it's kind of like the song and Hamilton. And I was in the room when it happened. Right. So, so I definitely was around, uh, uh, more than a few brands that got killed, just died because of a quarterly financial decision. And I can tell you what I learned and what I was a part of there on the positive and on the negative side.

So ultimately. The right answer I'll jump to the end is you do not deliver the game in the quarter because of a short [00:35:00] term financial pressure. You take it on the chin from your investors and from the market and you have to believe that what is true is that if that game team gets another quarter or two that they're going to turn it around, that they're going to hit their date and the quality is going to be there because it's not always clear that if you give one more quarter or another quarter, you might be chasing.

It might be done, right? The game team might just be tired. You might have a technical issue in there that you're just not able to get to the performance you need. So you have to be confident that yes, I have confidence in the leadership of that game. I believe that yes, if we do give them another three to four months, there's a clear path to the win.

If you believe that to be true, then the right decision every time is. You know, Hey, Mr. Analyst investor, uh, we're not going to make this quarter's numbers because game X isn't ready. It's going to be ready in the future. And it's important for the long term value of the company to make that decision. So that's actually one of the things that Strauss and take two really does a good job with.

They, they will, I was just going to say, I think they're the best. He is [00:36:00] probably the best in the industry at just saying, you know what? It's all about the games first and foremost. It's about the quality of the entertainment. And if it's not there. So be it, if you're going to be an investor in this company, the point is you're a long term shareholder, not a short term or a, somebody who's just going to own it for a quarter or two.

So it really ultimately comes down to the courage of leadership. It comes down to faith and belief that the game team can actually turn it around, which isn't always true. And so that's where you get into these really tough decisions around, you know, do we go with the game in this window or do we go later now, I'm One nuance is if you've kind of primed the channel, this is back in the package goods days, it's totally irrelevant now, but you buy end caps and ads at Walmart and target, and you know, millions and millions of dollars are going to be lost if we don't put the game in the shelf at that point.

And that was always a consideration as well, which is, you know, we just blew the Walmart programming. And you know what, what happens is they don't give it to you again. And so if you know, [00:37:00] yeah, they don't, I don't 

Alex: give 

Frank: you your 

Alex: money back. No, 

Frank: but 

Alex: what do they do? Do they, they sell it to somebody else and they'll cash two checks.

I don't miss that part of the business. No, I don't miss it. No, 

Frank: you were locked in like 18 weeks out. You had pre printed catalogs, pre printed. Ads, you know, whatever it was, it was really, uh, things are so nimble and fast now that, you know, a lot of the issues we had on these big set piece launches aren't relevant anymore.

So you have a lot more flexibility from that standpoint, but, uh, yeah, no, that was, uh, that's ultimately how you go through it. And whoever's CEO at the time, the studio leader walks in, the publishing leader walks in. And says, you know, here's the deal boss, you know, I need another two quarters on the game in order to get into position to be quality Publishing person comes and says here's what your forecast hit is Here's what happens to the channel and then the individual weighs it and they make the call and um, you know, like I said before I my most recent experience as part of take two is You know, they're very very focused on long term [00:38:00] shareholder Value their investor base is oriented that way.

And that's also important, right? Who owns your company and putting pressure on you and the board dynamics are also elements that the chief executive officer has to figure out. Can I survive this? You know, if this game, if this game moves, Or misses on quality is a bomb. I, you know, it's existential. I might be out of a job.

So those are all the elements that are in this stew that you kind of try and figure out how do I get through it? 

Alex: I totally agree with you. I think take two has done an exceptional job at managing the quality of the properties that they built over time. And I would say Zynga has as well. I mean, the brands that you guys have built over decades, um, decade.

Decade, decades, a long time. 

Frank: Yeah. Words of friends and poker coming up there in the mid teens right now, heading for 20 years. 

Alex: Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. So maybe that's a good segue. Perhaps you do end up over at Zinka. How'd that happen? After 30 years? Well, let's see. It was 20, how many years? 

Aaron: 23 years, 23 years. [00:39:00] Do you get anything for that?

Like a watch or anything or like a ring? No. Do you ever see that movie Shane while he walks off 

Frank: into the distance? That was me at the end. That was it? That was it? It wasn't negative. It's just, it was, I just believe in that. Right? You move on. Right? And so I love EA. I have no negative things to say about it.

It was just, I'd gotten my, I called it getting my PhD in mobile. I was head of the studios. We had just finished the last Transition on PS4 and Xbox. And so I, at that point, Andrew had become CEO and I wanted to move over and learn something new. So I moved over to mobile and I thought it was going to be the biggest platform in the world.

You know, I felt like there was going to be real opportunity to build a business. No EA had not much business there at all. So it was an area where I could be entrepreneurial, pull together, turn it around a little bit. And then, oh, by the way, learn a new skill. And so that's what I did for about 20, 22, 24 months.

At some point I got to the point where I was like, okay, I think I got it. And I didn't have a plan. I had reached a point where, uh, I went and talked to Andrew and [00:40:00] just say, Hey, you know, I think I'm kind of out, you know, I'm just kind of, yeah, you reached that point in your life, right? You're not learning more.

You're not as motivated as you come in every day. And so I just, uh, that was it. I didn't want any parties. I didn't want any, I literally just, I brought my wallet, my keys and walked out. And then I didn't have a plan at that point. I started doing pocket list stuff. Uh, and goofing off and spending a lot of time with three kids.

Alex: You didn't like go to Zynga and leave EA. You were like, you know what, I'm retiring or I'm stopping for now. That's exactly what happened. Okay. What was on your bucket list? 

Frank: I flew a P 51 Mustang. Oh, that's awesome. I got a ride in a spitfire. I love old planes. And so I got rides on a B 17, a B 24 P 51 Spitfire.

Oh, wow. And so I got into that. Have you watched Masters of the Air? Yeah. Yeah, I read the book too. It's, it's, uh, amazing stories. My father-in-Law actually was on a B 17 in World War ii, so he had some amazing stories, but so I like that. Oh my goodness. I like the engineering, the MEChA Rolls Royce, Merlin engines.

[00:41:00] Sound like nothing else. And so for me it was, I was doing that, I was coaching my kids' soccer teams. I was getting in great physical shape, , you know, I was running skyline, you know, just doing different stuff, hanging out and goofing off. And about, I guess probably four months in Bing, Gordon called me up and he said, you know, Bing had left the eight.

Several years earlier, he was on the board of directors at Zynga says, what are you doing? I'm like, I don't know. I think about maybe get a history degree or something. He's like, that's stupid. You know, why didn't you come down?

Why did you come? Uh, are you interested in doing any board work for game companies? I said, sure. Yeah, absolutely. I missed at that point. I was kind of starting to miss. The whole going into a room with a bunch of people and going, wouldn't it be cool if you know that I was missing that, right? And so Bing said, Hey, why don't you come and meet this guy, Mark Pincus at Zynga.

He's looking to add people to the board. He just came back to Zynga as a founder who had left and come back. Uh, and he's looking to get some game people on his board. And so I went down to have a, you know, half hour [00:42:00] coffee with Mark. He had been a Competitor of EA's and he was relentless and very successful in, you know, in what he built at Facebook, he built a platform for gaming that nobody at EA thought was real.

Like it was a joke, right? Oh, those are stupid games. And those aren't real games. And here, lo and behold, you know, it creates this whole thing. And so it was impressive from that standpoint. And I supposed to talk to him for about a half an hour and like three hours later, after we had boiled the ocean, you know, on what was possible and gaming and It was a classic entrepreneur meets the operator kind of dynamic.

I'd been an operator and a businessman and a publisher and run studios. And, you know, he'd always been an entrepreneur. So, uh, it was interesting. We've, our skill sets matched up pretty effectively. My diagnostic on Zynga was that I thought it had tremendous potential that, you know, I had a lot of pattern recognition from the EA turnaround when I came into Zynga.

And so I agreed to join the board in August of 2015. I think I left EA in May. So about, you know, three, four months later, I jumped on the Zynga [00:43:00] train and I was an operating board member. I was coming in once a week with Bing where we'd meet with a game team and kick around, you know, what was working, what was not working, trying to, you know, coach up younger talent that were just getting their first shots at games, starting to understand what Zynga was really good at.

And one day became two and then two became three and then next thing you know, I'm in natural motion for a week working on CSR two. And so, you know, it's just, it was, uh, I fell in love and they came to me and, uh, later that year, maybe November, December and asked me if I would be interested being CEO. And I said, absolutely.

And so I just started right there in early 16. So it was, uh, it's again, total serendipity fell into it. I had God as my witness when I joined the board. I wasn't going, Oh, this is a pathway to become CEO. Not at all. It was absolutely just what was in front of me at the time. And I took it on face value and went for it.

Um, Less pain though. Right? No stairs fell on you. Not like that. Yeah, exactly. That one was a lot easier, but you know, being a board member is like being a grandparent. You get to go home, you know, you don't have [00:44:00] to get the hand, the baby bag. Yeah, exactly. And so I changed the 

Alex: diapers. It's yours now. 

Frank: Exactly.

You don't even have to change the diapers, you just have to point out the diaper is soiled. And so. That's right. So, you know. And hand it over. So, I, uh, dove in and like I said, I had a really clear sense in my head what was possible with Zengai. You know, mobile was booming. We had incredible. Brands with words of friends and Zynga poke or CSR that I think we're ready to pop Zynga, you know, when I was at EA, I thought we were okay at, you know, what was modern product management, data driven product management versus the product management I learned on, you know, these guys were post doctorate level data scientists and engineers on data and how to build platforms and product management.

I learned so much from those guys. I was like, that's a huge competitive advantage. The market was global and we had a great balance sheet. We owned a building. We had a lot of cash. I used to go around telling people, look, we can't fall off the floor. We're literally the worst operating company in the industry, right?

We're making [00:45:00] about six or 700 million and only 12 is coming out the bottom. So we're clearly doing something wrong. And I felt that we also had the opportunity to go out. If we could change the culture. Get it to become a place where people wanted to go to work, wanted to go and do the best work of their career.

I felt like we had the firepower on the balance sheet and in the publishing capability tied to, you know, our relationships with the platforms, our data science and product management capabilities. I felt like we could really cook something up. And the big first step was going to get a management team, pulling it together and then going forward.

And so that's what we did. And, uh, you know, the rest is history, but. It's funny you mentioned Words With Friends. That's how I actually recruited my first lead was Bernard Kim. He's now the CEO of Match, but he was hands down the best publishing guy I'd ever worked with. And I started a game in Words With Friends with him, and I recruited him in the chat while we were playing Words 

Alex: With Friends.

Oh, that's awesome. Who is the better Words With Friends player? You are Bernard. Uh, we both cheated. [00:46:00] All right. That says something right there to a tight bay competitive people. Maybe, I don't know. Maybe. Uh, yeah, all the way. What was the culture like when you got there? Cause like watching from afar, like at industrial toys.

So I had a studio industrial toys where we were doing kind of like quarter mobile games, like early on the first person shooter, I'd come up and pitched. Mark Pincus, uh, a game and spent some time in the original building. I think you sold the building. I think that's part of the journey you guys went on.

And I'm just curious, like, what was the culture like when you got there? Cause I think Don Madrick had been in and out before you. Yeah. Mark had left and come back. Like I've worked with some folks at Disney who went to Zynga and they had left. So I'm just curious, like, what was it like? I got to imagine when they first started and was having all the success on Facebook, it was your kind of your typical rocket ship startup where everybody's high five and it smiles.

Cause. There's just, you know, the dollar bill counter is like, you know, the worrying counter. What was it like when you got [00:47:00] there? 

Frank: Well, I, you know, first rule of a turnaround is be a Prince. So when you come in, you don't blame anybody for where you are and you really don't want to spend any cycles on, you know, spend too much on like, how do we get here?

You want to look at the fundamentals, understand where you can go. And if there's something of interest for how you ended up there that you can correct, then you do that. On the cultural front, what I kind of looked at was Just as you said, a startup that had unprecedented explosive growth. I think it was the biggest IPO in Silicon Valley.

And when it came out and it was money was flying. So it was just about let's hire 400 people, not let's hire. You know, a hundred good ones, right? So you had a lot of people there. You had a lot of that. And then Don Magic came in and was taking essentially what was a Facebook data driven company to become more of a studio.

So balance the art and the science for it was all science, no art, and it would try and bring it back. So that was a huge culture war inside the company. And that didn't work out. And Mark comes back and then I come in. And [00:48:00] so there were all these different kind of situations where. There were stories about this or stories about that.

And what I quickly found was we had a leadership problem and what we had were VPs and SVPs that weren't aligned. Some would win if the company lost on their earnouts, you know, there was a lot of politics. It was simply, you know, a lack of alignment on where the company could go and on the strategy, on the culture and on the compensation.

So what I did was just basically do a lot of interviewing, listening and learning very quickly. And I think we ended up. Removing about, I don't know, 15 of 17 VPs and SVPs, just cleaned out the whole layer. And 

Alex: that could not have been easy, right? Like those people had been around for a while. You probably knew some of them from previous relationships.

Frank: Yeah. And some got, some got the joke and moved on, right? They quickly figured out it was going to be a different kind of thing. What I found was to be true was there was incredible talent. Down inside the organization. So, you know, it's true of EA at some points too. [00:49:00] I don't believe in bad soldiers. I believe they're bad officers.

Right. And so from my perspective, that was kind of the key was to set a new tone for how we're going to lead this company. And what was great was Mark was very engaged and was a great sounding board because he founded the place. So if I had a question. Or if he wanted, hey, this is why this works this way.

I could go talk to him or Bing and quickly, it was like having a great partner in it, but then I would go and make the calls and decisions on what we were going to do there. But it was very collaborative and very open from that standpoint. And he was very like, yeah, this is all screwed up. I screwed that up.

Right. And, or this is why this is great. And this is why you shouldn't mess with that. And so I had a little bit of a guide post along the way that helped me out. But for me, it was all about bringing BK, you know, Bernard came, bring in chair. Bring in some of these, elevate some people that are down inside the organization that aren't.

You know, their voices aren't being heard, but they're spectacular. So we've changed a lot of general managers. We brought up a lot of first time GMs. We brought in some new leadership and that's when we started to cook. And our simple first strategy [00:50:00] was unlock the value through better execution. It sounds like something right out of Dunder Mifflin, but you know, it was pretty clear that, you know, if we're making this much money, Right.

And it's, this is a high margin business and we're making 2 percent on the bottom. We're not operating effectively. Right. And so that's on us. And so that was the first step was to get our mojo back, start to build some momentum with some wins. That's when poker introduced some new tournament modes, words of friends, had some new stuff.

CSR started to hit the mark, Donna Titans bombed, but the other three really succeeded. 

Alex: Right. 

Frank: Um, and then at that point, you know, we sold the building, we raised about 650 million. That guys, we were like, why are we on a building? Right. We don't need a building. We need cash to buy companies to put into our publishing platform because our publishing platform had more scale than we had talent in the studios.

We only had like three game teams and building all new games was not a skill that the Zynga studios had. Yeah. At EA, I learned that, you know, there's a reason why you do franchises and sequels a lot is because they're easier to [00:51:00] do than a blank sheet creation of an original idea. And you've got to have the right kind of studio to do that.

And we were not that studio. Sometimes you have to be self aware of what you got, right? And because Zynga hadn't been a place where people wanted to go to make great games, we just didn't. We didn't have a lot of talent, but we had to concentrate that on a few games and make live services cool. Again, not just new game development, which was wasting a lot of resources because you know, one of the easiest things for a company to do is, Oh, we're going to make new games, but then they don't lead them, staff them, resource them and manage them correctly.

Right. And you end up with a lot of new games that never hit critical mass and you waste a lot of money and time. So we really concentrated on a few things. And then we kind of knew it going in, but we got to a point where we could do something about where we sold the building and then we had a lot of cash and, uh, Mark and the board I'm being, we're great partners in letting us go out and start to pick up companies.

And bring them in. And yeah, 

Alex: so about seven or eight acquisitions that happened in that timeframe. Is that right? I said, where's the list? I think peak [00:52:00] was among them. When did that happen 

Aaron: to, when was the 

Frank: buildings? Uh, so 16, we get rolling with execution. 17 was when we started to do small acquisitions and 18 is when it really took hold.

Our first acquisition was the card game business from peak. Peak at the time had these card games that were very profitable and they wanted to sell that and Siddharth, who was the founder of Peak and running at the time, he wanted to take that money and build Toy Blast and Toon Blast. He saw a big opportunity for that.

And so we initially bought that piece and then we bought Graham. And the basic thesis guys was, look, we've got great publishing. We've got great data science. We've got all these models and feature sets that we know we can add to games over time to grow them, but we don't have the talent. And so we looked for subscale mobile games that were ready to pop.

And so we would go and talk to developers about, usually it happened right around where they have to go raise a round to build the publishing team. Right. And mobile publishing is the deepest, deepest end of the pool. You talked earlier about, you know, what you have to do with understanding [00:53:00] all the complicated math that goes into making sure that you're acquiring audiences profitably, you're engaging them and you know, what's going on.

We had that in spades. We just didn't have great games yet. And so that's where we were able to pitch these guys like, Hey, we're up and coming, we'll do a certain kind of deal with you guys will have creative and cultural autonomy, and And we'll be able to scale your publishing in a way that you won't be able to, and we'll cut out all this pain of you having to sell a percentage of your company in order to go hire marketing teams and publishing teams, and you still might not get to scale.

And so that was the pitch and we, it was an asymmetrical advantage because we could give them fairly lucrative deals where. They would participate in the success of Zynga because we believe that that's where we go. And we would talk to them and really talk about their games. And it created a very, a virtuous circle where we kind of one after the other, our best salesman was the last company we bought, 

Alex: right?

We literally 

Frank: would give them the pitch and we'd say, Hey, but if you don't believe us, call the guys at Graham, call the guys at small giant. Call the guys, you know, at natural motion. And that's how it worked. [00:54:00] And honestly, a lot of it was learning from EA. EA did a lot of acquisitions over the years and some went really, really well, like Maxis and some were total disasters.

And so I had this accrued learning of 20 years of what not to do and what to do in acquisitions. And so we just, every time we're at Zynga and we felt like we were at a crossroads, we were like, okay, well, what's the right thing to do? It wasn't even like, what's the street one or what's the business model.

It was just like, well, you know, if we know that, what I found interesting about EA sometimes was you'd buy a company, but EA would be so arrogant about buying the company that, Oh, well, we're going to show them the EA way now that we bought them. And I felt that that was backwards because you're buying them because they're really good at something.

So why do you want to screw that up? Right. And so we always understood at Zynga that culture and creative autonomy were religious issues for developers and appropriately so, right. And what we wanted to do was look, we work for you. Our job is to scale your games and make them huge [00:55:00] hits. We don't care if your payroll has a Graham logo or a peak logo.

We don't really want to mess with these things. There's certain things we have to do, but we're going to keep that to the various minimums. And so we created this rule book where we would bring teams on, onboard them. And then scale the games in that manner. And it was kind of the antithesis of some of the big EA.

Acquisitions that I learned from that. I was responsible for several of them where we failed and it was because the integration went bad. It wasn't because the original thesis was bad. It was bringing them together. You just ended up with this culture clash. And, you know, it was weird. Sometimes like HR would, EA would be like, well, they have to do it this way.

And like, why, why don't you. Do it the way they want to do it. It's clearly they have some level of success, right? Yeah. What does this matter? Why is this important? But it would blow up. I've been in 

Alex: those 

Frank: conversations. Yeah, you've been through them, Alex. So, so anyway, those are some of the kind of rules of the road and things we applied.

And so. You know, the first stage was unlocked the value through better execution. Second stage was, you know, [00:56:00] we call them forever franchises. If you build a franchise in mobile, it can last forever, many, many years. People will play it, lead, come back, you bring in new players, you get existing players to play more.

And so the idea was build or buy new forever franchises that we could then scale with our publishing platform. And that was the second stage of growth that really worked. 

Alex: Yeah. Super smartest. I mean, it sounds like you really kind of focus on sort of like. Perfecting the engine and then worked with developers to feed the engine.

You let the developers make the games their way. And you just focused on what you did really well, which was complimentary to, but, you know, the smaller mobile developers, you know, they, maybe they were going to go try and do it independently, but like, why? 

Frank: Yeah. So we had the money and we had the capability.

And then honestly, the secret was the culture had started to shift and was really aligned, focused, and that's something to prove, right? And so that combination of those elements, capital and culture with that capability were the things that really powered that second stage of explosive growth, [00:57:00] where we're really, really took off.

And, you know, we didn't get it right all the time. We made mistakes, but for the most part, you know, if we did make a mistake, the beauty of Zynga is, well, it's kind of the curse and the beauty is it's the data. The data is coming in and you thought it was going to go one way. And the data is clearly showing it out.

You don't die on that Hill. You quickly go, okay, what is this telling us? And what are we going to do about it? And so that was part of the culture too, which was, it's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to be wrong and stubborn and wrong twice. And so that was more of the orientation. 

Aaron: That's right. Okay. Quick question, because y'all keep talking about this building and I don't know how important the building is.

And I don't understand, like, Alex is like, Oh yeah, the building. And then you're like, yeah, the building. So how important was the building? Like, why did you own a building? And then when you sold the building, did it really, did you use the money to like, do what you just said? Like, I don't understand the importance of the building.

I know that's probably sounds like a stupid question. It was a really nice building 

Alex: in San Francisco. [00:58:00] Okay. And it was worth 650 million bucks. Okay. Well, that there you go. I didn't know 

Frank: that. Not to answer for you. Well, that's about right. But here's, here's the added context is Mark, because he's an incredible investor.

He bought it for 150 million and so he got a deal on the building. And so we had this asset just because when they go public, you have a lot of capital, right? From that event. And so part of it was buying this building for 150 million. And so it had appreciated dramatically. Nothing I did. It just, when we got to 650, I remember when I joined the stock was like a hundred, a buck, 87, you know, buck 90.

If you took out the building and the cash, you know, the enterprise value was like 200 million, right? So we had this building that was like one of the most valuable things we owned as a company. And so I was a little worried. I was like, Mark, do you, is this building like really important to you? He's like, no, you know, if we can get sick, you know, what's really important to me is I want 650 million for this building.

I'm like, okay, we'll see if we can go get that. And so. It's literally, [00:59:00] there's a chart of, you know, like commercial real estate values in San Francisco, we literally sold at the peak, like the next month it started going down. Who bought it? Just curious who bought it. I won't say so. So the, it was a , it was a large, uh, large conglomerate, uh, so wealth fund kind 

Aaron: of thing, bought it.

Do you have any teams that are fully remote or like the Zynga teams in a building now, or are y'all doing any remote stuff? 

Frank: We still do a lot of remote, so I think probably a third. Of the teams are remote and we, uh, you know, because you look, we performed very well during COVID because when we went fully remote, we're mobile, right?

We're not moving giant file sizes around like a console team. And, you know, the security issues were a lot less for us. So we were able to get. remote real quick and be effective during COVID. So when that afterburner of demand happened, we were right there. But what we found is that onboarding of new talent is really hard.

It's not good. When you're bringing on young people or new people into the company out of university or from [01:00:00] another company, if you're not walking the halls and having that serendipity of running into somebody and having that spark, like, Oh my God, I just, What do you think of this idea? We feel like we're missing that.

And so what we've been trying to do is have the flexibility, especially for, you know, ICs, artists, engineers to have that time to dwell and really do their individual work, but also still be able to come in and. Have that serendipity, the collaborative and then onboarding of the culture. Uh, I think we've suffered because of that, but the hybrid model that we're pursuing, we're still committed to, and, you know, we're kind of in a three, two.

Model. Some of our studios have a different one. We give them the flexibility to do that, by the way, if they feel like they want to be more in the office or a little bit less in the office, we respect that. Cool. 

Alex: I know we've kept you a little light. I had one last question if we have time for it, which is just.

I'm curious, like, so you guys were acquired by take two, like what that process was like, like I had read somewhere, I think Phil Spencer said that they were talking to you guys maybe about acquiring Zynga before they did the Activision deal. I don't know [01:01:00] if that's true, um, but were you guys looking to get acquired?

Do you just, Constantly getting a bunch of inbound. Like, how did that whole thing start? 

Frank: This is one I can't really talk too much about, honestly, but the basic idea was we were not looking to sell. We had a vision for our company. I mean, it probably sounds crazy, but we wanted to be a hundred billion dollar company.

We wanted to be huge. And by huge, it wasn't because we wanted to chase a valuable company, but we wanted to have a billion customers. We wanted a billion players playing our games worldwide. And we felt like that was an opportunity for us to catch up with some of these guys and pass them, whether it was the take twos, the EAs or others.

So that was our base plan. We had an organic, you know, internal plan that the board and I were aligned on and the management team, and we were. Pursuing that, but when you're a public company, if somebody approaches you and says, I'm going to give you X, you have to listen, it's your fiduciary responsibility.

So, you know, we had that process and that kind of dynamic unfold in that period of time. [01:02:00] And I would bring to the board, you know, different ideas and offers and why, you know, a fit would be good or a fit could be bad. And then we would compare it against our existing internal plan. And eventually through our process, the board agreed on that the combination of take two and Zynga, it was a good combination to get to that a hundred billion dollar goal, you know, to become the biggest interactive company in the world known for the highest quality products, you know, great talent, great culture, and being really good with the capital that we're given.

Right. So from that standpoint, take two made a lot of sense because incredible IP, You know, a really collaborative and complimentary culture. Strauss's orientation and how, you know, he's building the company really fit with what we wanted to do. Uh, and then ultimately they didn't have a mobile business at scale.

We had a mobile business at scale. We were starting to look at cross platform. And we were starting to look at distribution and some other things that honestly, the combination of two companies really created a more valuable company and a bigger opportunity for us. So ultimately, you know, you know, that's how we [01:03:00] came together, but along the way, yeah, it was, there's a lot of twists and turns, no question, but I, I can't really, I can't really talk about it.

Alex: Understood. Understood. I can imagine. And you know, when I saw the news first come up, I was a little surprised, but in hindsight, it does make perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. And like you said, I think it's like one plus one equals three. 

Frank: We were the biggest deal for a week. And then Activision and Microsoft came together.

I was, I was like, darn you, 

Aaron: Microsoft. Yeah. Hey, that Star Wars Hunters game is phenomenal, by the way. Oh, great. Thanks, Aaron. The team worked really hard on that. Game is so good. Awesome. Thank you for that. All right, Frank. Thanks for hanging 

Alex: out with us. 

Aaron: Yeah. Nice meeting you, Frank. 

Alex: This is amazing in so many ways and a thrill to just get to spend some time with you.

So thanks. Awesome. Thanks guys. Yep. We'll see you around. Cheers. I think we may have covered a little exclusive tidbit there. Frank said he never really told that story about getting injured on the staircase. Yeah, that was crazy. That [01:04:00] sort of like butterfly effect, you know, of like getting him into the game industry.

Aaron: Yeah. And it's like a crazy story. It's not like, yeah, that I missed my flight. And then I, you know, it's like this completely random thing happened. It's like, what? I'm not laughing that he got hurt. It's just like, what? It's so crazy. And now he's the CEO of Zynga. Crazy. And Star Wars Hunters is out. Triple crazy.

Alex: You know, there, there's some folks that you meet though, and you could imagine them taking a different path and it would be just as successful. You know? 

Aaron: Yeah, he would be in North Korea right now. What? Preventing World War Three. He wanted to be a 

Alex: diplomat, didn't he? Isn't that what he wanted? Just like Dennis Rodman, I guess, then, right?

Is that what you're saying? I've been on this kick of watching sports documentaries like, um, I'd never seen Last Dance. [01:05:00] Did you ever watch that? Why does that sound familiar? So for all our Chicago friends, if you haven't watched Last Dance. Oh, the show. Yeah. It's a, you know, one of those ESPN documentaries about the Bulls final Jordan season.

Oh, I have seen this. Yes. Very good. Pretty good. I just watch. The hundred meter finals in the Olympics, you know, the gold medal race for the men's hundred meters dash. And right afterwards, I switched over to Netflix and to catch up on some Witcher, but it serves up to me this documentary called Sprint, which is about the top elite sprinters competing at the world championships in a hundred meter and 200 meter.

Really? Is it good? Also fascinating. Yeah. 

Aaron: Yeah. A lot of that stuff is really cool. Like, it's really interesting, like, how there's one thing these people are doing, and it's like their entire life, you know? Like sprinting. And 

Alex: it all boils down to, like, literally less than 10 seconds of performance. 

Aaron: Yeah. 

Alex: And then they train, like, all day, right?

There's so many components. [01:06:00] Everything has to go exactly right. In some ways. It's nothing like video game development, but in some ways it is because there's so much preparation and you know, the execution has to be really good in multiple ways, I guess, maybe that's just life. You think that's 

Aaron: right? 

Alex: Do people cheat?

Aaron: We don't really cheat in games. We don't like switch our blood out. Doping. That's so, I watched the Lance 

Alex: Armstrong one too. Oh my gosh. That's a 

Aaron: good one too. Dude, they were switching their blood out. Can you imagine like, hey dude, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to this game jam. I'm gonna like store my blood in a freezer.

And then I'm going to, just before the game jam, I'm going to switch my blood out so I'm better at the game jam. That's what they do. You don't, you don't do that? No, I don't do 

Alex: that. 

Aaron: Isn't that crazy? 

Alex: I guess that's why you're sitting in that seat and I'm sitting in this seat, you know what I 

Aaron: mean? They didn't teach you that in art school.

Maybe I could be CEO one day . No, they don't teach you to switch your blood out. . . [01:07:00] 

Alex: Uh, and so we got a little distracted. I don't know how we got all the way over to blood that we, I think it's good stuff. . Well, it is interesting to me how my tastes have changed as media has evolved. You know, like we are in this fantasy world.

Like when I was a kid, I literally would fan, I would carry around a Sony Walkman cassette player. You know, I had to make my own mix tape 12 songs. Yeah. Yeah, and I used to fantasize about wouldn't it be cool if all my music was just in my headphones? And that's exactly what we have now. It's even better than that because it's not my headphones.

It's connected to the cloud. It's not my music. It's every song ever, you know? So it's, so living in this world of just instant gratification of 

Aaron: any piece of content. You know what's even crazier? But we're beyond that already. Now it's gonna be the words of the songs can change depending on the current culture.

And it'll be like, and you people won't even notice, you know what I mean? I that's scary, but I guess my point was, I find 

Alex: things like [01:08:00] sports, you know, I grew up playing sports. I'm not a jock or whatever. I just, you know, enthusiastic about the Mets, you know, when I was in high school, but now it's like watching sports is.

I think super compelling compared to other media choices because it's entirely unpredictable, you know, it is live, whereas, hmm. Nothing else is live anymore. You know what I mean? It's like, we used to have to like go hop on the TV at eight o'clock on a Thursday to watch the show. I 

Aaron: see what you're saying.

Like the Simpsons were on at 7 PM and only 7 PM. Now 

Alex: you don't do that. You kind of have Insta open while you're watching something and you're talking to somebody. And so wait, are you trying to go back? You're trying to go back. But for me, sports scratches that itch for me, where it's something that's going to happen.

That I have to go to. Oh, I see. Yeah. And so there's an element of stakes in it for me, you know, that I have to be there present and [01:09:00] you get rewarded for paying attention because what's interesting about it is witnessing the choices and what happens, you know, in the back and forth. 

Aaron: Yeah. You don't read about it and then watch it later.

Alex: Yeah. 

Aaron: Like the Mets win the world series and then. You watch the game. It's you watch the game 

Alex: and you're a part of it. 

Aaron: Yeah. You're part of them. You're part of the, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't know. 

Alex: Watching sports wasn't part of my life for most of my twenties, thirties, forties. But, uh, much more so now. 

Aaron: Yeah.

They're trying to do that with games too. I think now they're trying to make like live mobile, like events, like in game events, you know, and things like this, like you have to be there for it and there's a limited time and people show up and if you're in a guild or clan or whatever, people kind of, and I think actually speaking of Zynga, they have a lot of things like that, right.

And a lot of their games, there's like these moments that I know it's in Fortnite too, like the rank stuff is like timed and people stream. Oh yeah. 

Alex: Yeah. I think that kind of thing is super compelling. 

Aaron: Yeah. 

Alex: All right. Well. Thanks for, [01:10:00] thanks for listening to our blood doping detour and joining us again. I got to actually switch my blood out today before.

Yep. All right. You better get on that. We got some milestones to hit. That's right. I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Frank and we shall see you next time. See you next time, everybody. 

Aaron: Thank you for listening to the Fourth Curtain Podcast. The Fourth Curtain is a production of Fourth Curtain Media with community management by Doug Zartman.

Lovingly edited and mastered by Brian Hensley at Noise Floor Sound Solutions in Chicago. To get a peek at upcoming episodes or to send in questions to the show, visit our site at thefourthcurtain. com. And be sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening.