Zynga founder Mark Pincus explains why engagement metrics don't always tell the full story

Mark Pincus is the founder of Zynga, which was acquired for $12.7B.

In the clip below, he recounts sharing with Mark Zuckerberg the lessons he learned from how Farmville’s superb engagement metrics didn’t tell the entire story:

“When people were playing Farmville, we had a net promoter score of +35. The day after they quit, our NPS was -50. For perspective, the IRS is -15 and Comcast is -20… It was a sign that maybe this was starting to be an addiction and something that they didn’t feel good about… even though our engagement and NPS was great.”

Ceteris paribus, more engagement is better. But if people view your product as addictive and not in their long-term best interest, that’s not good.

Full video: Village Global “Mark Pincus on Product Management, Raising Capital, and Building Zynga” (Jul 2020)