Book of the Week: Life at the Speed of Play

17 Sep 2026 - Warren Mar

This week I read a book that just came out, Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus, the founder of Zynga. I remember not being a fan of Mark Pincus, due to some controversies around Zynga that I had forgotten. But it is good to see things through his eyes. Some time after, I saw Mark in a more positive light due to his support of the San Francisco Public Library.

His Proven Better New Framework seems like an attempt to whitewash his copying of competitors from the Zynga days. I don’t quite buy it; everybody has a framework, but he does fill in a lot of details painting the picture of other companies that failed during that period. Mark has been around for a long time, so I was hoping this would be more like a memoir, but it is framed as a guide for building products. The book also has interesting tidbits, like why Duolingo is the way it is. It’s Bing’s fault since they applied what they learned from Zynga. Also, Sheryl Sandberg once told him to “lean in.” I can totally picture that scene.