A walk on the California coast with Eric Schiermeyer, the cofounder and former analytics expert at Zynga (interview)

We ran a story earlier this week on Eric Schiermeyer, the co-founder of Zynga and the analytics expert behind its success, and his new game studio called Luminary. But I had a nice walk with Schiermeyer on the coastal cliffs at Half Moon Bay where our conversation drifted across many other subjects.

Schiermeyer talked about how to build a creative game that also pays homage to the discipline of analytics. He also had some passionate ideas about the right way to build a game company in the wake of his experience at Zynga, which grew to more than 3,500 people at its peak. Now he wants to find a new way to motivate employees and spread the rewards around in a very un-Silicon Valley way. At the same time, he’s making an effort to be creative with a strategic endless runner game dubbed Greedy Goblins.