I think you (any many other commentors) have touched on part of a problem. It's not the lack of creativity per se, and not entirely related to the whole oh X is just Y with one new gimmick/game mechanic and different graphics.
Rather, Zynga's game development is heavily metrics driven. They can tune their games to max out metrics, and make them stupidly addicting, and 'fun' and get their customers. But in general, you really cannot create 'new' or 'innovative', or at least in the way people like those words to mean by following the metrics. You can just create more and more polished and targeted variants of existing games.
Rather, Zynga's game development is heavily metrics driven. They can tune their games to max out metrics, and make them stupidly addicting, and 'fun' and get their customers. But in general, you really cannot create 'new' or 'innovative', or at least in the way people like those words to mean by following the metrics. You can just create more and more polished and targeted variants of existing games.