- Games are "fire and forget". That means technical debt
is very different. It is bad at the start of a 3 year
cycle, but at the end it is totally ok.
There is also a big difference between AAA, online, mobile, social, casual, etc. f2p games for example are expected to live & be actively supported/updated for many years if successful.
Clash of Clans was released 2.5 years ago and will likely continue to get active support for many more years. FarmVille was released almost 5 years ago. WoW more than 10, for a different kind of game that also isn't fire and forget.
They get a lot of flack for other reasons but engineering wise companies like zynga get a lot of stuff right.
You are absolutely right.
I was intentionally polarizing. But thinking about it more, one thing still stands out: Even long running mmos are planned "for the next 10 years". There is an end in sight. Facebook, Google, Uber, Bitcoins, Most Startups - it's open ended! I don't think it's easy to say one approach is better - but it is useful to understand that they are fundamentally different.
Personally as an engineer I like the coding approach of game dev a lot more.
Clash of Clans was released 2.5 years ago and will likely continue to get active support for many more years. FarmVille was released almost 5 years ago. WoW more than 10, for a different kind of game that also isn't fire and forget.
They get a lot of flack for other reasons but engineering wise companies like zynga get a lot of stuff right.