"Is the brain drain going to kill Zynga?

Maybe. This is the real risk. Zynga has $1.6 billion in cash, so they aren't going out of business anytime soon. In hindsight the IPO was a fortuitously timed event to ensure the company had the cash to make it through a tough transitional period. That is, if you believe they can keep their talent.

As you have no doubt noticed, some of the talent has already left the building. But, so too has plenty of dead wood with soft spines that wouldn't have been helpful in a tough time like this anyway. Not every exit you read about is a bad one.

There are still a lot of amazing people at Zynga, but I'm sure most are itchy. They were hired into a fast growing, high risk, startup. They've watched a company do what a lot of companies do over time, get bloated, fill with bureaucracy, and try to solve uncertainty with austerity. That's no recipe for success.

But Mark is, if nothing else, an entrepreneur. The company can go back to its roots, get people motivated about the risks instead of wishing them away. Mark can take some bold, even extreme, moves to show the folks he has left that he cares about them. And if he does that it would be hard to count Zynga out."

Better analysis from former GM/exec.

I call shenanigans.

Besides Poker and Words with Friends, every Zynga game has been a Roman candle -- exponential growth followed by exponential decay.

Show us Zynga can innovate and build a game with staying power -- Angry Birds or Plants vs Zombies -- and I will believe Zynga has a future.

If they cannot innovate, they're dead. The market is anticipating this scenario.