India provides a large market and a talented pool of game writers

Zynga Game Network Inc, America’s leading online social games maker, feels posh and quirky extras don’t hurt in luring and keeping talent. An out-performing Zynga employee is given the keys to a shiny Lamborghini to take off for the weekend. Other than restricted stock, some 700 Zynga employees also get free gourmet meals, body massages and hair salon pampering at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.

Now, it remains to be seen whether Zynga will bring those Silicon Valley-style fringe benefits to compete for talent in Bangalore’s high-tech job market. The new Zynga India office is scouting for computer-code-writing gamers, visual designers and artists. The Bangalore studio is the social gaming company’s first foray outside the US. “India offers some of the world’s most advanced technical talent,” said Vishal Makhijani, senior vice-president, business operations, at Zynga in San Francisco. He talked to DNA in New York about how the India office would help Zynga’s existing game development studios with basic operational needs, in addition to creating new games. Zynga also wants a bigger slice of the Indian market.

With more than 81 million Internet users, India is projected to become the third largest online market behind China and the US by 2013. Zynga has over 235 million monthly active users playing its games like Farmville, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars and Cafe World, on Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo! and the iPhone.

Why has Zynga opted to open its first international office in India, and by setting up an operation in the country, do you plan to target Indian users?
Zynga’s games are played by millions of users every minute of every day. To handle the scale of users, we need to have a very scalable and computer-intensive infrastructure. India provides us with a pool of advanced technical talent that will allow us to further innovate and continue providing our players with a great user experience.

India offers huge potential as the third largest online market in the next three years. Already, our games like FarmVille, Mafia Wars and FishVille are popular with users in India. We are offering our Indian users specific items, like a Gulmohar tree in FarmVille.

How will the new operation add to Zynga’s game studios in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Baltimore?
The new operations will operate as a studio for Zynga, similar to the ones we have in the US. All of our studios will be working together on international initiatives.

How many people will Zynga hire in India and what are the people you are looking to recruit?
Zynga India is looking to hire about 100 people over the year who are experienced in building large scale infrastructure and designing games. These would be computer scientists and engineers who have dealt with large challenges of computing scale and have a deep understanding in the areas of graphics, networking, distributed systems and cloud computing.

On the game side, we are looking to hire product managers, visual designers and artists who understand social gaming.

How big is the market and where will social gaming go in 2010?
The social gaming industry is still in its infancy and I think it will continue to grow. I can guarantee you’ll see more social features and fun from Zynga this year. The people playing our games are not necessarily the younger demographic — we know quite a few 85-year-old grandmothers who love playing our games as well.

We’ll focus on continuing to make our games interesting for existing players, while keeping the experience light and fun for newcomers.