Schappert joins Zynga after jumping ship from EA
by Steven Mostyn - Apr 27 2011, 09:32
Woof! Image: Zynga.
If there was any remaining doubt regarding the thundering momentum of casual videogames, there surely cannot be any left following the news that ‘conventional’ gaming titan Electronic Arts (EA) has lost one its most prominent suits to the lure of social gaming.
Moreover, EA chief operating office (COO) John Schappert—second only to EA boss John Riccitiello—is fleeing the heavyweight third-party software publisher in favour of a managerial role at Zynga, maker of Facebook juggernauts FarmVille and Mafia Wars.
“This is a reflection of where the smart money thinks the industry is going,” commented Atul Bagga, digital media analyst for ThinkEquity in a MercuryNews report. “Zynga has been able to hire away some of the smartest guys in the space.”
Case in point, San Francisco-based Zynga has pilfered experts from the likes of Cisco Systems and Yahoo—and Schappert is the second EA signing after the 2010 capture of Steven Chiang.
Zynga’s ongoing expansion in the casual gaming market has also seen it provide Dreamworks co-founder and Hollywood bigwig Jeffrey Katzenberg with a seat on its board of directors.
In terms of assessing Zynga’s monetary value, industry analysts venture that the company will amass somewhere in the vicinity of $1 billion USD in revenue during 2011.
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