More connected toy sightings

Early in the year I was saying we'd see more connected toys (see #5). I've noted a few on my radar and thought I'd call them out:

• Skylanders (Activision-Blizzard)
• Nukotoys
• Disney Appmates

In addition, Sifteos have started shipping and several people are doing iPhone connected robot/vehicle toys like what AR Drone did last year. Tankbot is one example, or here's a comparable kickstarter project which I'm supporting.

All of these are continuing what started a number of years back with Webkinz, UBFunkeys and others, as I discussed here and here.

Will be interesting to watch this space.

Splitting the iPhone vs DS argument in two

There have been a number of posts about Nintendo vs Apple, the 3DS vs the iPhone, and "99c games vs $40 games". The summary of these posts revolves around two different issues. They get muddled together, and as a result, cloud the argument. This post is an attempt to distinctly break apart the two arguments, such that we might look at each cogently.

Argument A: "Will Apple's 99 cent games destroy the market for Nintendo's $40 games?"

This is indeed a good question, and one to which the answer seems obvious.

On the 'Yes' side, one have only to look at Apple's recent numbers, the excitement around iPhone, and the challenges some have had in trying to maintain traction around higher price points in the app store on that platform.

but...

On the 'No' side, there's an argument that a large development budget can give a deeper, larger, experience. There's also the fact that Nintendo has continued to have success with some titles on the DS. There's also another version of the No answer along the lines of "if you want Mario, he costs $40", in other words, Nintendo's IP is something to consider.

The answer is probably somewhere in between. Undoubtedly the bar will be raised for what people expect to get for more than $0.99, so it will be a challenging sell.

The second argument is distinctly different than the first though. So let us suspend belief for a second, and imagine a world in which all iPhone games cost $40 (or one in which all DS games cost $1 - your call, as long as argument A goes to equal footing)

Argument B goes as follows: "Will 'portable game console' join the list of devices who have been subsumed by the Smartphone?"

Once again, there are arguments for and against, but in my opinion, the arguments are more one-sided.

On the No side: Nintendo continues to innovate (dual screens, stylus, 3D-stereo screen, etc) to stay ahead of the capabilities of the phones (or at least different, if you want to take issue with 'ahead'). Also, there's value to the quality, curated experience a closed, vertical platform like a console provides. And once again, there's Nintendo's IP. Finally, while Nintendo doesn't appear to do this currently, as a closed platform they could choose to sell their hardware below cost as a path to customer acquisition. (Of course phone vendors do this, and there's nothing saying that the same could hold true for an iPod-touch-like device provided it was sufficiently tethered to an app store or iTunes like service.

On the other hand or 'Yes' side of the question, the evidence pointing to an eventual subsuming of the function-specific portable game console by the general-purpose Smartphone doesn't look good for the portables.

When looking at other function-specific devices competing with the general-purpose device, the pile of bodies is pretty high, and growing.

The first category to go was dedicated PDA's. Never more than niche to begin with, these devices begged for communication to begin with. It could be argued that this was less about phones integrating the functionality, and more about the devices lacking the requisite functionality to begin with.

One category of device people started talking about suffering from this phenomena was the GPS. (See here, here, or here's a graph of a couple top GPS vendors where you can see the precipitous drop - even beyond that of the market due to recession, in green - which lines up with Apple's 3GS launch).

GPS is still alive as an electronics category, but it seems clear that the device manufacturers are suffering here and running for high ground in the way of either added niche-valued functionality and automobile OEM sales. whether these run out of runway as well is TBD.

Another category of device with some compelling evidence is that of digital cameras. The following post discusses some data posted from the Flickr blog, about usage statistics for posted photos to the site, as marked by what camera type took them.

The first graph shows the increase in iPhone 3 and 4 uptake vs photog staples at the high end like the Canon... The SLRs hold their own, but the increase in iPhone usage is clear.

The chart further down the page shows the decrease in leading point-n-shoot camera usage in the same period. There's a pretty clear correlation here. This is a classic case of the "Christensen Effect" at work.

I don't know how this will play out. It certainly will be interesting to watch from the sidelines. Developers should be interested, certainly if they are thinking about targeting either platform.

In trying to game it out though, its worth distinguishing what I believe are these two key questions at play. When looking at both together, Nintendo certainly has their work cut out for them. I can speculate about what that might lead to... but that's the subject of another post.

Game Dev Story: A Niche market is you!

Game Dev Story is a fun little iphone sim about running a games studio. I found a lot of developer friends talking about how enamored they are with it.

I found it ironic that I saw Facebook contacts raving about it the same day I saw an announcement that there are now 300,000 apps on the iTunes store.

At that point, iPhone devs constitute an interesting niche market, and selling them this game is kind of our industry's version of shovels-to-miners.

As an aside: Hey Apple! Pro-tip: When you have that number of apps, this is no longer a positive number for your marketing pitch. You are essentially telling devs the store is overcrowded, and your consumers that they may have trouble finding what they want. At this point "lots" will do as a tag line.

Thoughts on iPad, Kindle, and future eReaders

On a mail list I frequent, there were two separate discussions about latest offering out of Cupertino, the iPad.

One of these was about how we unwittingly mortgage our future when we favor closed systems over open ones, and the long-term implications this has for consumers as a whole. That's the subject of another post I'll do another time..

The other discussion thread was about the future of eReaders and eBooks. Since someone on that thread was asking and I'd meant to post on the subject for a while anyway, it seemed time to make some notes. I did so, but then let it sit again for a while. Then this past weekend, I found myself on a sailboat in the Sea of Cortez with Craig Mod, author of this fantastic post on Kindle's implications for an e-book future, and that inspired me to dust off the notes and get them into this post.

I should note at the outset of this hefty list of ideas that not all of them are mine. I stand on the shoulders of (blogging) giants. Craig's and a number of other good posts that stimulated ideas are listed at the end of this post.

Also, I should note that I don't own a Kindle or an iPad. I very much wanted a Kindle (I'm a display technology afficionado and it uses e-Ink!) but opted to hold out because after using a friends a few times, I was disappointed by how much more it *could* have been. In the case of the iPad, the same is true to a lesser degree - it's got the Apple magic - but I feel it still misses as an e-Reader.

So, here I present some ideas in the hope that I can contribute to the conversation and someone will build a better mousetrap (maybe better cheese for the mousetraps is a better metaphor?)

What purpose do books serve?

They serve as many different things to different people. They are containers for ideas: communicating them in a fashion that is both broadcast from author to community and one-to-one conversation between author and reader. They are social objects: Giving a book as a gift or loaning one to a friend says something about both parties and the relationship between them - and augments that relationship in a way - the book is both adjective and verb in that sense. They are part of one's identity: Think of the proudly displayed library many people have.

In this sense, the Kindle seems to have only thought about the book as 'idea container'. As Craig pointed out in his post, there's a whole topic of form vs formless content that isn't addressed well. But beyond this, Amazon and Apple and their ilk are treating the book like it's a thing to be consumed, but no attention is payed to the social aspect. What if I want to share the idea I learned with others, or disagree with it, or debate it? The Nook considered the idea of loaning/gifting books to friends and then did the best they can dealing with publisher licensing silliness, but even then they only thought of it in very limited context.

A clearer example can be found in comics. Scott McCloud said that much of the magic in comics happens in 'the gutter' - the space between the panels. People are excitedly talking about comics on iPad, but mostly about how they might improve (animate, annotate) what is displayed in the panels or the way the panels are displayed. Who's trying to re-think and improve the space between the panels?

How do we consume books?

The e-Ink solutions aimed squarely at the chief complaint about reading on screens - that it's harsh on the eyes. LCDs and CRTs (remember those?) emit light, and which has to contend/compete with whatever environmental lighting is being reflected off the display. the e-Ink solutions depend on using (reflecting) environmental light. Like the dead-tree versions, you can't read them in the dark. Conversely, they work great in direct sunlight where LCDs don't.

Still, this seems like the tip of the iceberg when it comes to making the electronic page as readable (or more readable) than paper. Is there an equivalent of ClearType? Can the rendering of fonts be done differently based on reader viewing angle? Could a camera determine your reading angle and do perspective correction on text so that it appears perpendicular regardless of reading angle (Anisotropic ClearType)? Can the reader use an accelerometer and/or camera to do image stabilization like video cameras do, for readers on a bus or train? Can the bezel have built-in lighting that shifts based on viewing angle (an intelligent booklight)? Maybe tracking with eye movement?

Also, I don't know the specifics of the e-Ink technology causing it, but the "XOR-ing" of the display on page refresh is just horrific. That has GOT to go. At the surface it looks like something solveable with software (and by throwing more memory & compute at the problem) - tracking the state of the framebuffer, comparing the existing one to the desired result, and only spinning the pixels you need to (is spinning the right term for eInk pixels?)

We also consume books differently based on location (at least sometimes). Can geo-location play a role here? If the device sees I'm in bed, default to the novel I was reading last night before falling asleep. And then use the camera to sense if I've fallen asleep and power the device down.

Books and Geolocation

I'd like to see books annotated (by author, editor or crowdsourcing) with geographic data relating to events of passages). Let me walk the streets of London or Paris and follow the paths of characters of favorit books. Conversely, when I'm in a location I find interesting, maybe let me inquire about what books have taken place there in whole or in part. My iphone or ipad should beep when I walk past a location and give me a bit of trivia related to books I've read, much as a friend would; "Hey, this is where that shootout took place in that murder mystery you finished last month".

Social Networks and eReaders

I'm not sure I can think of a form of media that cries out for social network integration more than print. People get very attached to books, and even at the most basic level make a fairly significant time commitment to them. And yet consuming books is usually a solitary act. The book club lets people share the experience, but by constraining when they consume the books and when they discuss them. Forums aren't good at connecting people through existing relationships and you need to find the forum rather than it finding you.

A few ideas of what I'd like to see here:

• Let me layer my some or all of my reading on top of *ALL* my existing social networks. I might want to share my sci-fi reading with everybody, my kids' books with my local PTA and also family, and my business reading with my linkedin group.
• Virtual book clubs are an obvious idea. One could imagine extending this to having discussion topics around particular passages - supported by annotations people make while reading (more on this later).
• Group together findings based on these networks and reading histories ("of the group of you that agreed with this passage, we find you evenly divided on whether you agree on this related work...")
• Let the author engage in conversations directly with the reader if they so choose. "What did you mean by this section here?", "This passage moved me!", etc.
• Let me select a ~100 character quote from a book and automatically tweet it to friends with the source and a shortened URL to the book itself.

Of course authors and readers engaging in conversation leads very quickly down two paths of discussion. First is just how "fixed" a book should be. The second is that of business models. More on these in a moment.

Finally, there's a whole other line of thinking we could explore if all social networks weren't fundamentally broken. I did a lengthy post on this a while back, but the short version is that a relationship is a noun not an adjective.

The living book

The idea of an ebook leads inevitably to a collision between the living nature of information on the Web, and our traditional idea that books are fixed expressions of ideas. There won't be one answer as to the question of what the right hybrid is between these two views. I would like to see though, a few things evolve out of it.

• Give the author the ability to dynamically update books - and provide the reader with the ability to know about that change. A hybrid of footnotes and edit history like you see on wikipedia. One could imagine examples where the original version might be a matter of preference (say a novel or poem) and examples where this history is itself informative (say views on String Theory in a physics text).
• Citations and references to papers could now be forward-looking, not only backward.
• There are whole classes of types of annotations that could be imagined. Imagine a progress-slider on an equation to show it's derivation as a step by step animation. Or a time-line slider for a murder mystery that would let me leap around the text. Or a social graph or family tree of all the characters in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, etc. Of course each of these things could be author-driven or crowd-sourced/authored by fans.
• Books could evolve to leverage web-based application platforms. Letting someone view a location in a book (say Normandy beach on D-day) and let the reader get a first person look at the landscape involved in the story.
• There's room for a whole meta-game around books, reading and an individual or social network's collectively library. Xbox Live acheivements for the librarian set. Better yet would be to have an open platform for building meta-games. Think of teachers making scavenger hunts through the texts of their students are assigned.

Business Models

This is where my biggest beef is with both the Kindle and the iPad. They are razor-n-blade models. Closed systems that insist that the use of the device comes with the use of THEIR store on THEIR terms.

This has a host of issues not the least of which is a lack of competitive pricing for consumers "buying" books. More important to me is that it comes at the cost of hindering (or at least, not encouraging) innovation in the areas of stores, books, business models and licensing terms.

Beyond that, there's a long-term cost to society of allowing these closed models to become the prevalent ones. They become codified in our laws as the norm (DMCA, ACTA, etc). But that's the subject of the other topic post I alluded to earlier.

I beleive there's a real opportunity here for someone to get into the device game while opening the platform to all comers commerce-wise. Google, perhaps? PC OEMs? Microsoft?

Whether closed or open though, I'd like to see flexibility offered to publishers and authors to experiment with different licensing schemes and business models. Cory Doctorow has ranted about this a number of times (1,2)

Discovery

Here again, both devices have made attempts at improving discovery. Amazon through their recommendation engine and Apple largely by following in Amazon's footsteps. This is something but it so little compared to what could be done here. Don't show me what other people bought - show me what they bought and LIKED. Don't show me what just ALL other people bought, but those that share similar sentiments regarding books we've both read.

DRM

In short, it's ass. I get why it's happened, but at least let authors/publishers opt out of it so that someone can show that maybe the sky won't fall. This isn't just about portability between readers and devices, though that's part of it. The fact that I can't cut and paste text is extremely frustrating.

I want the ability to share annotations with friends and a network at large, I want to highlight sections of text (not just the text, but it's context as well) and flick them off to google to flag for further learning/reading, or flick them off to a workspace where I'm working on a presentation.

In summary

It's clear that these devices offer benefits over the traditional book, despite having a long way to go to equalling the dead tree's readability. That's to be expected given that we've been working on 'version 1.0' for hundreds of years.

While they improve readability though, I hope they'll also start to work on improving the things a paper book CAN'T do.

Further reading

Here are a few posts I highly recommend reading (if pressed for time, choose them over this post):

• Books in the age of the iPad, Craig Mod, March 2010: A ton of thoughts on layout, typography, and purposes books serve. Among other things I thank him for crystalizing in my mind the idea of "Formless" vs "Definite" content, a concept I'd been thinking about but couldn't nail down the way he did. His follow-up piece is also must-read.
• Random Thoughts about the Kindle, Seth Godin, June 2008: First of his two posts riffing on what Kindle is and what it could be. Money quote: "Kindle does a fine job of being a book reader, and a horrible job of actually improving the act of reading a book"
• Reinventing the Kindle (part II), Seth Godin, February 2009: His second post on the subject, conceived mainly while wearing his marketing hat, with a sprinkle of 'how could social networks make this better'.
• In addition, it was Dave Edery who opened my eyes to thinking of the Kindle as a game platform, which of course it can and will be.
• Also, this presentation summarizing Portical's research project into the usage of books and ebooks had a few ah-ha's that make it worth reading.
• Additional fuel the the fire from Cory Doctorow's many posts on the Kindle and the iPad. Many of them related to the other topic I alluded to above, but some of which pertain to things I'd very much want in an eReader. (1,2)

Steve Jobs shows his REAL thoughts on iPhone development

I'm long overdue to write up a post on the iPhone, appstore and closed-vs-open platforms. This isn' t it.

In the meantime though, Dave wrote up some thoughts on the announcements from Apple recently, and *brilliantly* caught something Jobs said that most folks seem to have missed:

Jobs, in speaking of the addition to an advertising revenue model to the platform, said

“This is us helping our developers make money so they can survive and keep the prices of their apps reasonable,”

To which Dave asks:

Btw, was anyone else struck by Jobs’ use of the word “survive?” I think that’s the closest he’ll ever come to admitting that life for developers is rough in the world o’Apple.

Bravo! What a catch. Quelle choix de verbe! "Survive" indeed!

Special Guest: Socrates!

I'm digging the iPhone game, Think Like a Shrink.

It's a text-dialog, adventure style game in which you play a therapist, interacting with characters and trying to get to the root of their issues. Only the characters are guys like Achilles, who will draw his sword if you ask the wrong questions.

As the characters respond to questions, you have to identify which defense mechanisms they are using and auger in on those areas with further questions.

It's fun, different, and educational. And for $2, you can't go wrong with any game where there are guest appearances by Socrates!

iPhone TouchPets post-mortem talk at PAGDIG

Last night's PAGDIG meet-up had Andrew Stern (Catz, Babyz, Facade) of Stumptown Game Machine give a talk about the development of TouchPets Dogs for iPhone. Good talk and I took some notes. Here they are.

TouchPets Dogs is an iphone-based, modernized take on the 'pet simulator' genre that Stern gave birth to with Dogz and Catz back in 1995. Not surprising that when NGMoco wanted to do a game along these lines, they came to find The Man :-). The game uses a business model that is kind of a hybrid of pay-to-play and pay-for-upgrades, and indeed they are evolving the business model on the fly based on performance. It also uses gesture input, accelerometers and all the usual iPhone platform candy.

Ok, so, notes [with added commentary in braces]

• Probably among the largest and most ambitious iPhone projects done to date. 12 months, 5-6 people full time, 8-10 people part time, plus 4-6 people part time at the publisher [using a rate for a mid-range studio of 8-10k/man month, this ballparks the development budget at somewhere between 850k to 1.3M(!) not counting NGMoco's costs, marketing, etc. That certainly is higher than even the high-end stuff we're seeing on iPhone today, that has a feel of "few hundred k". Even if the studio was cheaper than my estimate, it almost certainly wasn't under, what, 700k?]
• This was about 2X the scope and time of what was originally proposed, as publisher kept growing scope and ambition of the project. Server complexity, social elements, in-game transactions...
• Great things to say about NGMoco as a publisher. Supportive of them doing what they wanted in the game, kept them funded as scope grew, great relationship with Apple, etc
• The game is a pet simulator, but has heavy focus on stats (to involve more 'gamer types'), careers, stories/missions, a social network, facebook connection, inter-pet relationships between players, in-game transactions.
• 850k people have downloaded and connected. Peak server load has been about 25k people. Game is only periodically connecting, so that means "some number more than 25k" playing simultaneously [100k?]
• Dogs go to sleep if not fed. Need to buy bowls of food to keep them away. Amounts to pay-to-play. Some user backlash to this, looking at maybe shifting toward free to play (and keep playing) but premium items/missions/etc are for pay.
• Push notification if your dog gets lonely [does this translate to "come feed me money!" :-)]
• All attributes to cost, rate of decay, etc, etc are all on server, so they can evolve over time despite clients in the wild.
• Uses NGMoco's Plus+ network, which was good to get a community aware of the game and quicker to connect.
• Online infrastructure complicated and tricky. Communications between their server, Apples for appstore/transactions, NGMoco's Plus+network. As scope grew, server grew wicked complicated (e.g. needed to do sharding, manage issues with players with 500 friends inviting them all for playdates, etc)
• Graphics: All in OGL 1.1, no realtime lighting, 3000-5000 polys/frame max, 2 textures only. "I think iPhone is more powerful than the Wii"
• Used no engine, but lots of sample code from PowerVR SDK
• Can't mix all Apple's really good UI with OGL, so if you want UI in your game, have to build it yourelf [seems like a middleware opportunity here. Do a exact copy of all Apple's UI functionality in GL]
• Did some easy physics (ball collision, etc). Cartoon physics: Throw frisbee off left side of screen, it wraps around and flies in from right. Move viewpoint over to where the wall is though, and THEN it collides with wall rather than wrapping.

What went wrong:

• Product spec always changing
• Complexity of system grew beyond means of core team
• iTunes rules and constraints - moving target plus they were pushing the envelope here*

* [lots of questions and talk about this afterward. One of the challenges being echoed from XBLA, then iphone, and now Facebook. High dependence on single gatekeeper, with no commit from gatekeeper on how policies/APIs will change, whether notice will be given, etc. People are betting their companies on stuff that can be pulled out from under them with hous notice]

What went right:

• Good team
• Just enough time, budget, freedom given by NGMOco to actually build a great game
• iPhone as a platform is wonderful. great simulator, powerful, somewhat challenging to fit everything on a small screen

It was a good talk and we went over to Stumptown's studio afterward for a release party, complete with snack foods served on dogfood bowls. Woof!

It's not the size of your installed base, it's how you use it

This was an interesting graph up on Joystiq, contrasting the growth of installed base between platforms.

While interesting, it's not exactly intellectually honest. For one, the iphone saw a lot of hardware refresh with the same customers upgrading to the 3G/3GS,so some of those are repeat users. Yes, it's still units sold, but for purposes of installed-base discussion, this is relevant.

For another thing, if you are going to talk "consumer tech", then you need to look at other cell phones, DVD players, etc. If you are looking at game platforms, then include the gameboy, the Windows PC. etc. Not sure any of these numbers would beat that curve, but it's worth including (though this example shows that the GBA beat the Wii's growth curve in its first 10 quarters. hmm...). Finally, the attach rate and SW ARPU would also be apple to oranges.

Still, even with all these caveats, it's an interesting chart to consider.

Protesting Pachter's iPod Publisher Plea

Michael Pachter is normally a pretty rational guy as far as analysts go. However, I found his quotes in this piece on GamesIndustry.Biz to be strangely off the mark.

In the piece, Pachter claims that publishers are at risk of spoiling their own party, so to speak, by publishing games on iPhone and iPod Touch at prices lower than those they command on other platforms. He states,

"Putting well established franchises such as Madden on the iPod Touch for USD 10 cheapens their value, he explained. "Whether it's the same experience or not, and it's not, why would I ever spend USD 60 for Madden if I can get it for USD 10 on my iPod Touch?"

He goes on to state that this contributes to the risk of the iPod Touch displacing the DS (and one would assume PSP as well),

"It's a serious threat to pricing. And once people start to look at this as a substitute for the DS for smaller kids, for 12 and unders, then you're going to train a whole generation of 12 and unders that this is a perfectly acceptable gaming experience at that low price point."

I believe his line of thinking here is seriously flawed. I beleive this for three reasons:

1. Different platforms merit different pricing. I'm surprised at the first quote. Madden on PSP today retails for under $40, vs $60 on PS3 or 360. By his line of thinking, why would anyone buy the $60 version? The reasons are that the experiences *are* different, the consumer may own a particular platform and not be swayed to another for an individual title, and the economics of each platform is different (dev cost, distribution costs, etc). To take it to the extreme, There's a version of Prince of Persia on cell phones that doesn't go far in displacing the $60 console version, despite selling only for a couple dollars.
2. Meritocracy in the market. Pachter seems to claim that kids playing on an iPod touch won't 'move up' to other platforms as the previous generation did from GBA to DS/PSP/Home consoles. First, I'm not sure this platform graduation is anything but myth. If true though, the reason the gamers would 'move up' is because the next platform would offer a higher quality experience and or different content to suit their changing tastes. If other handhelds, or home consoles for that matter, can't offer a superior experience to the Ipod Touch, then they will fail - and should fail. On the other hand, if they do offer a superior experience, then they should be able to charge for it. If Nintendo or Sony can't compete on their own merits, it's not up to EA to prop them up - and if they do, then they should be compensated in a way that lets them lower the price of titles to better compete.
3. No man, nor publisher, is an island. The Appstore, while not an open platform*, is certainly more open than the controlled, curated, catalog of titles available for handhelds. What that leads to is the tens of thousands of apps that we've seen show up on it, and I'm not sure that any publisher, even EA, refusing to publish on it is going to make any difference whatsoever. [I suppose that a cartel of publishers could agree in unison to boycott the platform, hoping that absence of ANY big-name content would poison consumer interest in the device. This has happened in the past with things like music labels boycotting Napster, or (IIRC) movie studios with betamax - however, its legality is questionable, the games publishers aren't organized in such a fashion, and there's enough of an indie community that I don't think this would work anyway]. In any case, the publishers seem to be faring fine while still charging a premium for their IP (see the top grossing list)

I guess what has me so bent out of shape is that it sounds so much like the death knells of the music industry. "$0.99 downloads will kill us all! What will become of our glorious CDs?"

People kept making music. People are going to keep making games. Whether to adapt to change is up to you, but don't expect the market not to change because you don't like the way it's changing.

Make excuses or make money, your call.

Bunch'o'Game mini-reviews

I've played a bunch of stuff recently that I haven't posted on. Here goes:

• Mirror's Edge (360): I picked it up on a whim, and am liking it much more than I expected. If Portal is a 1st person puzzle game, then ME is the 1st person platformer. Recommended.
• Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (360): It's Guitar Hero, so you know what to expect, and can check the song list online. I do think the mixing in of video interviews with the band kind of breaks the fiction of the game, but the fiction was always only a thin glaze over top of the game itself, so not a big deal. Recommended only for die-hard GH fans. I do like the latest GH: Metallica ad though!

• Tomb Raider: Legend (360): It's tomb raider. You know what to expect. It's fairly well done as far as TR goes. C'est tout. I wouldn't recommend unless you are a die-hard TR fan or have never played any of the TR games, in which case you should play at least one.
• Shawn White Snowboarding (360): Controls a little finicky, but I rather enjoyed it once I got the hang of it. Multiplayer is fun as well but a bit non-intuitive as to how you initiate events and the like. Only recommended for fans of finicky extreme sports titles like SSX or Tony Hawk, etc.
• Sway (iPhone): A fun little physics-driven touch-interface platformer. I've spent a surprising amount of time playing it. Recommended.
• Half Life 2 (360): I went back and played through the game since I'd never played Episodes 1,2. Amazing how ground breaking a title it was at the time of it's launch. Highly recommended.
• Wii Sports (Wii): Fun for the kids. Recommended
• Wii Play (Wii): Pretty crappy. Got it for the extra controller, but the mini-games in it are really aweful with only a couple exceptions. Not Recommended.

[update: Forgot to add two titles]

• Peggle (360 arcade): Every bit the fun of the PC original with two plusses and one minus: Multiplayer modes and achievements are great adds, but the controller is a step backward for those that have played it with a mouse before, making that decathalon challenge pretty tricky. Recommended.
• Biology Battle (360 Community games): I spent some time playing some of the community games at GDC and afterward. I have to do a lengthier post about community games in general, but for now I'll just recommend the trial of this game to decide if it's for you. It's a great little shooter along the lines of Geowars but with differences enough to make it distinctive. Recommended.

Akoha: Serious games and 'playing it forward'

Raph had a pointer to a pretty intriguing new game & company called Akoha.

Dubbed a 'social reality game', Akoha centers around the play of cards. On those cards are tasks, like "give someone a book" or "Send drinks to a couple in love". 

You register has having received the cards (by either typing in a code or snapping a pic of the 2D barcode with your phone cam) and then note when/where you accomplished the task in order earn 'karma points' and level up within their game system .

You can track the progress of individual cards as well, making this kind of a MMO meets serious games meets "where's george". This comic explains the whole game pretty well.

I immediately ordered a number of card packs but am worried that they won't arrive before GDC, as I think they'd be awesome to be using there.

As Raph points out, this is pretty close to Cory's Whuffie brought to life. (minus the viewable-by-anyone indicator in Down and Out. Maybe a FB feed? How about bad-ass hats, t-shirts, pins, etc for Level 10 bad-ass charity cleric?)

A very cool concept.

What's more, I looked up info on the company, only to find that their based in Montreal, right near Deluth. (If anyone at Akoha ends up reading this, how about a special edition card for "buy someone at Akoha a smoked meat at Schwartz's". I'll play it next time I'm in town!

Cool iPhone "Serious" game

I bought Ian Bogost's new iPhone game, Jetset.

It's cool for so many reasons. It's a game with a message (thus the 'serious' part), it's location-aware, it's social, and well... it's just cool.

"A game for the frazzled globetrotter in all of us. Keep up with the changing rules of airport security on your iPhone or iPod touch. Play in airports to earn unique souvenirs to keep, give to friends, or redeem for prizes"

Players have to run security at airports as a TSA agent, under an ever-changing set of rules. That'd be fun enough but:

• For over 100 different airports in the world, you earn unique 'souvenirs' if you play AT that airport (location-awareness via GPS)
• All of the items in the game that you may have to confiscate from travellers (e.g. pressurized cheese) have real-world stories about how the TSA banned them for one reason or another. (In an email conversation with Ian, he mentioned how certain items with real-world stories behind them were required to be removed by Apple because they were risquee in one way or another. I can't elaborate because he'll be discussing this in an upcoming press article. I'll link when available).
• Share earned souvenirs with Facebook friends

Go buy it!

iPhone games mini-review, market thoughts

It occurred to me that I've bought and downloaded a bunch of iPhone games (17 to be precise - for a total of ~$20) but not commented on them. I'll also post some thoughts about the market in general in the next few days..

I'm doing a rough stack-rank based on my perceived value for time and money spent:

• TapDefense: A tower-defense game for the iphone. It's good, it's free, it's playable in bite-size chunks of time. Same mechanic that made this genre addictive on the PC works here. There's even an accelerometer-driven earthquake tower just to make it special.
  

(Image courtesy Flickr user C4Chaos, Creative Commons attribution, sharealike)

• Rolando ($9.99). NGMoco's flagship title. It's a *great* platformer showing just how much fun a platform the iphone can be. Innovative use of multi-touch & accelerometer. Worth the $10. Only down side is it's not exactly something you can play for 30 seconds at the grocery store checkout line (like tapdefense). Still, great title.

• JellyCar (free): Fun physics-based, toon-rendered vehicle platformer
• SolFree (free): Four different solitaire games, free. It's on your phone and sometimes you've got time to kill.
• Sudoku (free): Same comment as above.
• Enigmo ($1.99): A fun Lemmings/IncredibleMachine style puzzle game with 3D graphics and touch UI. Fun, and higher quality than many iphone games. Touch-driven UI can be finicky.
• TouchPhysics ($0.99): It's CrayonPhysics for the iPhone. It looks cool, and physics puzzlers are always fun. However, the lack of precision and resolution made it frustrating for me. Between those two, things had a 'snap to' feel to them, far more than Crayon physics on a tablet PC, which felt magical.
• Labyrinth LE (Free): It's a great 'virtual' version of those wooden maze/marble games you had as a kid. Great demonstration of the accelerometer. There's a paid version with more levels.
• iBall3D (Free): It's a better version of labyrinth. However, I prefer Labyrinth's more minimalist and wooden-table feel.
• FourFree (Free): It's connect four. Fun if you have kids.
• TicTacFree (Free): It's tic tac toe. Fun if you have kids.
• Piccross ($2.99): A reveal-the-image puzzle game. Gets to be *okay* after you clear the initial levels which are really there just to learn the mechanics of it. It would be fun if you were playing to try and beat a time, but this makes it frustrating as the 'picking' precision is too fine for the iphone's touch interface. [Disclosure: I bought this mainly because a friend of mine developed it, but I'm trying to be objective]
• AirHockey ($0.99): It's air hockey. Fun if you have kids. It's a little finicky given the speed it moves at and the lack of precision in the touch interface.
  
• Break Classic ($0.99): It's breakout. It's ok. I think it got pulled after getting a warning letter from Atari prior to their breakout releasing (which, btw, I'm going to boycott. They should spend money on building a better breakout, not on lawyers).
  
• Aquahoops ($0.99): It's a virtual version of one of those water-filled pump games we had as kids in the eighties. Entertaining for about 2 minutes as an adult, but my kids loved it.[Disclosure: I bought this mainly because a friend of mine developed it, but I'm trying to be objective]
• AllisJigsaw($0.99): I'm not a jigsaw-game fan, but it's a genre that keeps clocking along in the casual space. Anyhow, I got it because my daughter likes jigsaws. She enjoyed this one in the easy mode.
  
• Cube (Free): It's a 3D First Person Shooter! And that's it. i.e. It's good to download and see that it can be done, but as far as playability, the poor UI, chunky frame rate and lack of precision on the touch interface make it nearly unplayable. Still, it's free and it looks nice.

iTunes Abandons Music DRM - Could Games be Next?

The internets are afire with news that Apple is abandoning DRM from their music on iTunes. Apple fans everywhere will say that this was Jobs intent all along, naysayers will say it was pressure from customer defection to places like Amazon MP3 (where I currently buy my tunes). Regardless, it's a good thing.

[As an aside, it's interesting that Apple caved to the labels' request for tiered pricing, which they've lobbied for in the past. Songs will be $0.69 and $1.29. Compared to Amazon's $0.99. I think the labels are entering a dangerous game by opening the pricing can of worms. They may end up getting the whip 'o the long tail. It's also cool that they are letting people un-DRM their previously-purchased songs, but kind of shitty that a customer has to pay them $0.30c/song to basically uncripple it]

Anyhow, while this is good, as BoingBoing points out there's still DRM-crippled sales around audio books (through an exclusive arrangement with Audible), and Video. Also, BB didn't point it out, but games too, are DRM-crippled at this time.

In the past, I've posited that it seems inevitable that the same consumer demand for DRM-free content will spread from music to video and eventually to games. However, I thought it would go in that order. Movies first after music, games last.

My thinking there was that (a) games tend to have the highest price point ($60 retail titles) and a fanbase most aligned, stereotypically anyway, with the 'young male hacker type' stereotype, they are played on connected compute platforms, so less 'owning the media as incentive to go legit', and (c) movies tend to have a glut of hit-driven inventory even more so than games (not sure about this, but that was my thinking).

In thinking about this in the context of iphone, I'm now rethinking that position.

When looking at iPhone games, or all apps for that matter:

• The vast majority of paid-for apps are $0.99 price point, so similar to music. The convenience of purchase vs pirate is similar to music
  
• The biggest obstacle for most devs isn't piracy, it's obscurity, just as it is for authors and musicians.
• As apps get connected, and I assume more of this will come, there's the possibility of connecting them to services that are for legit customers only
• It's a new platform with a new base of apps, unlike movies which are shackled to a lot legacy agreements about distribution rights and rev sharing and the like.

The question that remains, of course, is whether customers will actually ASK for DRM-free game titles, and if so, for what? 

Music and video content are consumable on other devices. I might want to back them up, play them on my 360 or in the car. DRM stops me from doing that, or at best tells me how and when I can. Thus the bad taste.

The games, on the other hand, are written only for an iphone. so what do I stand to gain from DRM removal: moving to your spouse's iPhone? Upgrading phones? Play the games on an iphone emulator on my PC or mac? I'm not sure, but I'd like to know I have the option. Still that's likely a minority sentiment. Real pressure will only come if masses of customers have something they want to do, today, and start to demand it, as they've done with music. 

The only legit reason that comes to mind that would be truly compelling is if someone (Google? Nokia? RIM?) were to come out with a competitive phone that could (natively or through emulation) run iPhone apps. If that were the case, as a customer, I might be tempted with the other device, but faced with a software library that won't come with it. 

And that might tick me off... and remind me of when I had the same issue with music...

Square sets sail for yesterday's new world

Square announces that they are going to be doing downloadables. Cool.

Of course the money quote is:

"...All formats – Xbox Live, WiiWare, PlayStation Network – are all viable formats for us"

Those aren't all the formats though. Are they? Just those that developers have been excited about for a few years.

PC, iPhone, (DS & PSP also support downloads now don't they?), etc.

Anyhow, says something about the industry's myopia. Kind of like europeans setting sail for the new world when those that settled it are already in wagons heading west.

iPhone Games Market: Promised Land or Cesspit?

While at TGS, I had a lot of hallway & dinner conversations about iPhone games, with people weighing in on whether the iPhone Appstore was the promised land (a la XBLA circa 2005) or whether it was going to rapidly turn into something less than that.

Some thougts on the subject:

• The fact that the Appstore was not part of the initial design of iTunes is apparent. There are some fundamental features you would want to enable here that are lacking. Most significant of these is a "Try'n'Buy" mode which right now developers are implementing by shipping two versions of their games, which is a broken experience. Other examples include couponing, gifting, friend invites, discounting, retail point-of-sale cards, on-deck pre-installs, etc. (some of these, like gifting and friend invites, are going to become especially important when you look at the marketing challenges which I discuss below)
• Two different people involved in the business of iPhone games told me that "Try'n'Buy models actually often result in people NOT buying the games". This may be true, but the opposite means that the customer has made a purchase he/she will regret, and will be more reluctant next time. If it's good product, let them see it and try it. Fooling them into buying it is a loser strategy.
• The "open" policy of letting developers put anything up on the store (vs, say, XBLA's approval process) is good for a number of reasons, but it has implications:

The store is CROWDED. Even more than XBLA, the responsibility of getting your app noticed falls on the developer. Crossing your fingers and hoping to make the "featured" page or the "top 25"page is not a strategy.

The quality level is highly variable, and the long-term effects this is going to have on the customer impression of the store is TBD. My guess is that over time, there's going to be negative perception for this reason, and Apple's going to start reeling it in (either by pushing low-quality titles to the 'back shelf', or pulling them off altogether).

• We are going to start hearing questions about transparency. For example, if the Featured page is a big driver, then how does something get featured? Can people buy their way onto that page? Maybe not today, but the pressure will be there to do so going forward.
• An additional driver for transparency will be that some developers will choose to 'spend their way out of the clouds' in terms of development budgets, quality, etc. If they do so, they are going to want to know BEFORE they develop their titles, if they are going to be allowed to ship. This is especially true for apps that might be viewed as conflicting with Apple's business model or on-deck apps, but also true for games.

All in all, I think some of the shine is going to come off the apple, but that it's definitely a compelling platform and has reached critical mass as a platform that it's here to stay for developers. 

I don't think developers should delude themselves though. This is rapidly going to become an even more crowded space in which quality titles are going to be expected, and in which the challenge will be in overcoming obscurity - which you can read as "developers need to do their own marketing and they need to be good at it". Alternatively, they an rely on a publisher to do that marketing for them, which is one of the reasons that a publisher business makes sense in this space (Ngmoco, for example, was an early entrant into this space).

[Speaking of Ngmoco, they've announced their first couple titles, and while I'll reserve judgement on Maze Finger and Topple, I will say that Rolando, an innovative platformer using both accelerometer and touchscreen, looks awesome. Trailer here]

Last thought: On the subject of marketing, several folks I spoke with were in agreement that devs/pubs need to do their own marketing outside of the Appstore e-tail placement. However, there was some varied opinion on what that marketing should entail. Several folks I spoke to were of the "viral" mindset. (i.e. you do it on facebook and myspace and via mechanisms incouraging friends to join mail lists and such). There wasn't much excitement around traditional mechanisms like, say, print ads. On the other hand, if you think about it, this is a very interesting marketing problem. The iPhone customer, I'd guess, has a widely varied demographic, is affluent (they aren't cheap), and there may not be one answer to he question of how to reach them. Maybe print ads make sense, but if so, where? Wired? Forbes? Tiger Beat?. Maybe do something at retail, but where? Target? AT&T stores? Starbucks? Maybe coupons/invites in your cell phone bill? Will be interesting to see what turns out to be successful here.

Another entrant in the UGC games race

Mashable has an interview up with the folks from Gendai Games who are the developers of Game Salad, another entrant to the drag'n'drop user created games space (e.g. like gamebrix and others).

The main thing that makes this unique compared to other offerings is that it's primarily targeted at Mac and iphone, (including multi-touch & accelerometer support). Mac-only for now, which sounds niche, but is a nice niche to go after, vs the crowded PC space.

On the negative side, from what little text is on the page, it sounds like it's mainly dragging your pix and such onto game templates, vs editing game rules and the like. I could be wrong though.

As an aside, someone needs to define a bunch of terminology for this space. There's a very wide spectrum from GameSalad to GameBrix to Metaplace to XNA. There are a bunch of differences including how much the seatbelts come off for the developer, the business model(s), open-vs-closedness, etc.

Deal(s) with the Devil

So, long after giving other folks crap about it, I cracked and bought an iPhone this week.

My windows mobile phone had died, I'd gone back to and old phone, and was shopping around for something new. In the meantime, I went to DICE and watched people using theirs and realized that I was willing to trade off my complaint about 'sub-optimal phone' in order to get 'Internet in your Pocket'.

Phone's not as bad as I thought, though still far from perfect. But the device is fantastic. Really fun and useful.

Of course, going with it meant that I had to click through no less than FOUR separate EULA's (thus the title of this post) with Apple and AT&T.

To top it off, when all that was done, I got a message asking (paraphrasing, I forget the exact words): "Would you like to go to iTunes and see what songs the record companies have granted permission for using as ringtones". Excuse me? Ummm, no thanks!

The iPhone's killer app

Adam keeps giving me a hard time about my lack of iPhone. I honestly don't want one that bad. Not sure I'd trade it for my given phone even if free. It's a great web browsing device, but there are things I don't like about it as a phone.

Now, on the other hand, I saw this yesterday.

Full Throttle on the iPhone might be worth suffering with a phone I don't like! :-)

The iPhone tipping point

OK, clearly my previous post was wrong and burning tablets have been popping out of bushes, as the hype behind the JesusPhone (aka the iPhone) seems to be justified. I have quite a number of friends that picked one up this weekend and the flurry of mail I've received is heavily laden with things like "sexy", "its like holding the future", "rules changing", "requiring pants-changing", etc.

I haven't looked too closely at the device (already seen a couple floating around the MS cafe this morning, before 8am even!) nor at the service & sign up. However, for all the stuff I read yesterday, one thing stood out:

Signup happens through Apple.

That is the single biggest thing about this entire launch. It fundamentally changes the rules of the game between device vendors and carriers - nay - between the tech industry (new guard) and the telco industry (old guard). Similarly to how iTunes, over time, changed the rules between the big music labels and the online services, only overnight, and more dramatically.

It took a pretty sexy device and a religious user base to get the telcos to sell their soul, but AT&T has done so. And after making a deal with the devil, I'm not sure there's any going back for them.