Live Services at Zynga
At Zynga, we had weekly content drops, massive outsourced pipelines. and franchises with millions of daily players.
I art directed and managed teams across Zynga’s flagship titles — balancing brand consistency, live service demands, and experimental innovation inside one of the fastest-moving game environments in the industry.
The scope
I art directed and managed teams across:
FarmVille
CityVille
Words With Friends
Slots
Incubator projects
Experimental craft titles like Battlestone, a stylized fighter
These were category-defining franchises with millions of players and relentless content demand.
Leadership evolution
Over six years, I grew from individual contributor to multi-team manager.
My responsibilities included:
Art directing flagship franchises
Project managing incubator teams.
Managing large budgets and vendor contracts
Leading long-term content strategy
Advocating for Art in cross-functional leadership forums
Managing large teams, including hiring, career growth, creative culture, and team health in a high-velocity environment
Live service at speed
Our cadence was weekly.
That meant:
Large outsourced asset pipelines
Large content volumes under tight timelines
Continuous seasonal planning
Ongoing iteration based on player behavior
I managed substantial art budgets and global vendor relationships, ensuring quality and consistency across distributed production partners.
Pipeline knowledge
I still also engaged in the entire workflow, from concept art, to modeling, ingestion, and sandbox review, because I wanted to have a good understanding of what I was asking of others. And, it was fun.
