[pchristensen]

This article is excellent - anyone interested in social gaming should take 20 minutes to read it. It'll get you totally up to speed on where the industry stands on the eve of 2010.

However, anyone who thinks that Zynga doesn't know all of this is kidding themselves. They saw a temporary situation (novelty of gaming on a hugely growing platform) and attacked it with everything they had. The road will be a lot harder for them in the future, but because of what they did in 2009, they go in with hundreds of millions of users, a strong brand, cheap cost of capital (because they're hot), a ton of cash, and they're probably the only Facebook developer with anything close to leverage on Facebook. They're one of the most aggressive companies out there and they have given no reason to underestimate them.