Felt tables and MMOs, and Match-3's of a different kind

One of the sessions at DICE that I found particularly interesting, if only because it was from a another 'games industry' all together, was one from Roger Snow, a VP at ShuffleMaster, a company supplying the casino industry with all kinds of game products. Among them, licensed table games, which is what this session was about.

The market for table games is $50M worldwide. Small compared to our industry, but then I'm not sure how it would compare to, say, the licensing of IP in the casual games industry, which is perhaps something it's more comparable to.

Snow explained how the bulk of table games on casino floors are public domain games (Blackjack, Poker, etc). In an effort to make games more interesting, people have come up with variants that are more engaging. Things like side-bets, progressive pots, etc, and cross-cultural game mashups are added to come up with things like Ultimate Draw Poker, Four Card Poker, Pai Gow Poker, Carribean Stud, etc.

These games are then, provided the IP is properly protected, licensed to casinos for a flat fee. They then operate them hoping they'll yield more revenue than the public domain fare they are replacing.

I was surprised a little that the flat-fee licensing model was the only model used (at least that he discussed). Wouldn't a royalty make more sense? Pay for performance and all that. I'm guessing that the casinos aren't enthused about sharing revenue numbers with partners and making themselves auditable, etc, and that's likely the reason.

Anyhow. He went on to speak a little about the games in this business and made the following points:

- The business is relatively young. The first licensed game only emerged in the 80's.

- About 50 new games are introduced every year. Only ONE will be successful, and when it does, it will last a long time.

- Acheiving critical mass is important. People need to recognize the game when going from one casion to the other.

- In the past 15 years or so, there have been 10 hits. That's it.

So the epiphany that I had was that this sounded an awful lot like MMOs. How many successful MMOs has our industry seen in the past decade? Maybe a dozen? The critical mass element applies too.

Contrast that to the points Snow made about the slot machine business:

- There's a glut of content, with hundreds or even thousands of games introduced every year.

- Games are given at best a couple months to succeed, and if they don't perform they are pulled from the floor.

- In cases where they do succeed, imitators soon follow, copying whatever the latest twist is on the match-3 mechanic.

- While there's a little technical innovation (bigger screens, better graphics, etc), a far surer path to money is to license a piece of well known IP and wrap a traditional game mechanic around it. Plenty of Wheel of Fortune, Tabasco, Alien, Adams Family, Price is Right, Beverly Hillbillies are just a few examples.

Sounds just a little like the casual games business doesn't it? Right down to the oft-seen match-3 mechanic.

There are of course many differences. Development budgets between felt table games ("some rules and a piece of felt with some circles on it" was how Snow put it) and MMOs, are just one example.

Still, I feel there must be some lessons to be learned here.

Maybe that's why EA's Louis Castle is on Shufflemaster's board?

The (repeatedly false) reports of the death of PC Games

Over the past five years, I've read what have to amount to hundreds of articles, blog posts, analyst reports, etc, on the future of PC games, declaring them either dead, or alive and well.

The reality, of course, lies somewhere in between, or that they are both true, depending how you look at it.

This article by Rob Fahey on GamesIndustry.Biz, is the best article I've read on the subject in a long time. Rather than go for the sensationalist tactic of taking one side or the other, he paints a more accurate, nuanced view of reality:

For once, this isn't the cyclical question of whether consoles will kill the PC market - a question asked so often, and answered with such an emphatic negative, that it finally seems to have fallen out of the industry's discourse, and good riddance. Rather, it is a genuine desire, both on the creative and financial sides of the business, to understand just what shape PC gaming is going to take in the coming years.

For a long time, it was simple to categorise PC games as "hardcore", with console titles seen as more casual. It wasn't a division that was entirely accurate, but it was close enough to the mark to be useful - for a while, at least.

That's simply no longer the case. While the PC still plays host to some of the most hardcore gaming genres, such as massively multiplayer games, realistic flight simulators and real-time strategy titles, a huge new market of ultra-casual games has also opened up on the platform.

It's a good read, especially for those that aren't close enough to the business to get a sense of both side of the story.

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!

NPD's track game subs: Please don't get it wrong!

GamesIndustry.biz reports that NPD is going to track subscription data around games.

This addresses a long-unaddressed market demand for data around online games. Many have asked if the PC game business is as unhealthy as retail game sales indicates, or whether the market is in fact just changing. (Whether all of PC gaming's revenues are being sucked into a giant WoW crater and whether that is healthy for the ecosystem or not is another matter entirely).

I applaud NPD's efforts, but I do worry that they are going to mess it up. A couple of things that make this space complicated to cover:

• Game service subscriptions vs individual game subscriptions. e.g. GameTap vs World of Warcraft.
• Revenue from non-subscription sources. e.g. Advertising, In-game item sales, etc.
• Where the consumers are located. e.g. US consumers subscribing to/playing Korean games and vice versa.
• Hardcore vs Casual. I'm sure they'll cover World of Warcraft. Will they cover Pogo? Likely. Will they cover casual game subscriptions on MSN Messenger? Less likely. Club Penguin?
• Platforms. Does an Xbox Live subscription count? Is that game revenue or platform revenue?

According to their press release, they are polling "thousands of gamers ages 13 and older who are members of NPD’s online panel of 3 million consumers", which seems like a prescription to messing up a couple of the areas above (e.g. just missed most of Club Penguin's user base, most of the casual audience, etc)

Anyhow. Steps in the right direction, but still I worry.

Back from DICE

Back from DICE and my brain is reeling. Lots to post about, but I have to pack and head back out again to Portland. Will post once I get a chance to get through my notes.

In the meantime, Poker Smash is out, and it rocks, according to critics. Go buy it and give the boys at Voidstar the kudos they've earned.

Ignite Portland

I attended the second Ignite Portland tonight. Adam and I went down to the beautiful Bagdad Theatre and just barely made it in to the standing-room only (750+ capacity) venue before the locked it down and turned a ton of people away.

I hadn't been to an Ignite event before but was turned onto it by my friend Rob when he gave a talk at Ignite Seattle. From previous event agendas, I expected more tech & entrepreneurial stuff. There was some of that, but there was a mix of everything from that to explanations of why Germans love David Hasselhoff.

It was very entertaining. I'll definitely try to attend again. I'm also going to try to present there as well. I find the restrictive format (20 slides, 15 seconds each, auto-timed) to be an interesting constraint to work in.

A good thing about the event was that while the presentations varied in quality, none of them was very poor. They ranged from fair to excellent - which is far better than I expected.

The only complaint I have is that the intros and housekeeping - done by those that put the event together - were just crap. (A) They should have been done in the same 15-slide Ignite format, (B) they spent too much time stating the obvious (e.g. the 15-slide/5 minute format was stated multiple times, "They sell beer here" - ya we get it), and (c) most important of all - it should have been HIGH ENERGY!

Anyhow, forgive the venting. I really think they did a good job of pulling the event together, but it was disappointing on the kickoff and quickly recovered.

DRM-free big-budget PC Game

Stardock Games has shipped Sins of a Solar Empire (developed by IronClad Games). Stardock also published Galactic Civilizations II. Both are big-budget retail titles, and both shipped without DRM, with the publisher refusing to DRM-cripple it.

In my Gamasutra piece (original post) on the subject of curbing piracy through personalized content, I pointed to a commitment to a customer relationship. Stardock's a perfect example. They put it best:

I remember hearing at a conference that when an executive at a big publisher heard that Galactic Civilizations II shipped with no CD copy protection that they quipped “I hope bankruptcy treats them well.” Millions of dollars in sales later as one of the top selling PC strategy games at retail (according to NPD) over the past couple of years let’s me say “Ha!” in response. And this is on a game that made most of its money on digital sales.

and...

The bottom line on copy protection is that if you create a greater incentive for someone to buy your game than to steal it, those who might possibly buy your game will make the choice to buy it.

With Galactic Civilizations II, we put no copy protection on the CD. But to get updates, users had to use their unique serial # in the box. That’s because our system is backed by TotalGaming.net’s unique SSD service (secure software delivery) which forgoes DRM and copy protection as we know it to take a more common sense (I think so anyway as a gamer) approach of just making sure you are delivering your game to the actual customer.

Any system out there will get cracked and distributed. But if you provide reasonable after-release support in the form of free updates that add new content and features that are painless for customers to get, you create a real incentive to be a customer.

As I mentioned earlier, Galactic Civilizations II was success in terms of actual sales, critical reception, and most importantly, satisfaction by strategy gamers.

Sins of a Solar Empire is taking the same route. In fact, we hope to have a free update available the first week of availability with new maps, new options, and new features. We consider ourselves lucky. We get to make a game and play it and then get to update it based on talking to our customers. It’s a great system.

And I think most gamers will agree that a system that rewards people for buying your product is preferable to one that treats them like potential criminals.

Amen!

(via BoingBoing)

Pantsless in Seattle

Finished our taxes last night.

Two surprises:

• A healthy refund. (Between all change of employers, a bunch of financial stuff I did, new baby, etc, I wasn't sure where we'd end up).
• When itemizing all the charitable donations, specifically all the non-cash ones, it turns out that I donated, among other things, no less than THIRTY SEVEN pairs of men's pants! This from going from 36" waist, to 34", to 32" to today's 30". Had to buy new pants several times only to discard a few months later.

It's nice to lose weight, but it's not necesarily cheap either!

Poker Smash release date set for Feb 6

The release date for Poker Smash on XBLA has been set.

I'm really excited about this game. For one thing, it's one of the first games I had a hand in bringing to XBLA from very early on. Because of the development times for these things, it's only now ready to ship, long after I've moved on.

I'm more excited, however, because it's just a REALLY awesome game. It's a blast to play, multiplayer rocks, and it's a visual effects feast.

At it's heart, it's a match-3 style game with a heavy focus on the head-to-head multiplayer. That description doesn't do it justice though. It's one of the most polished and tuned match-3 games you'll ever lay hands on. It's the hardcore gamer's match-3 game to boot.

Finally, its a testament to what determined indie game developers can accomplish. Void Star is just a team of 3 guys, scratching together funding from relatives and friends. It's also, I beleive, the best looking and most graphically advanced XBLA game to date, and puts many retail titles to shame in that department as well.

Congratulations to Drew, Ryan and David. I can't wait to buy it when I get back from DICE. Who's up for some multiplayer next weekend?

Wiishy washy

[Note that the Wii will go down as history's most pun-friendly console. Anyhow.]

I noticed that Gamastra has a piece up asking some analysts about whether the mediocre quality of titles on the Wii is an indicator that Nintendo should enforce a higher level of quality.

The analysts seem to all miss the point of the question, or at least interpret it as "what does nintendo have to do to sell more titles", which is not the same thing.

Anyhow, I think it important that someone (even little-read moi) note that this is the other side of the coin to the opinions a while back about Microsoft's process being too rigorous, too difficult, slightly too soul-crushing, etc.

You can't have it both ways folks. Quality takes work and time.

Indie Game Worth Checking Out

The Wonderful End of the World is an indie game that is very, well, Katamari-esque is how it's best put.

However, it's worth downloading and checking out if for no other reason than the brilliant 'Arcadia' level (level 2) included in the demo. Fantastic.

Hey Hollywood, what's that behind you?

It's amateur content... and it's coming on fast!



Simply awesome!

The New Gig

It's been a little while since I left Microsoft and I've yet to post something about the new gig. I actually started a while back, but wanted to wait until I got a good handle on what I can and can't say before doing the post. Now that I have a better idea in that department, I can say what's up.

The new gig is...

...the old gig!

Sort of, anyway.

I am once again employed by Intel. I am Director of Content Strategy for something called the Visual Computing Group. I can't specifically say what it is that we are building, other than to say that it goes by the codename of 'Larrabee', has to do with graphics and a lot more, and is very very cool. The Internets are tracking it a little bit, and you can get some vague details on Wikipedia.

A couple things I wanted to make sure I was specific about:

(1) My leaving Microsoft was in no way a result of any kind of fall-out with them. Some have hinted at such due to the tone of some of my posts, in which intonated some disagreement with some of the directions they are taking. That was true while I worked there as well. I also disagree with some of the things that Intel is doing. Doesn't mean you up and quit. Overall though, I think they are doing great things. I continue to be an enthusiastic Xbox360 customer. I cannot wait to play Braid, Poker Smash and N+, to name a couple upcoming highlights.

I was actually quite happy at MS, but got the idea of leaving when I started having conversations with a friend at a small startup company, who's product I was floored by. Around the same time, a bunch of people that I really trust and respect at Intel started having conversations with me, one thing led to another, and this turned out to be the best decision for me at this time.

(2) I intend to keep blogging, but expect the mix of topics to shift off of casual a little and onto big-budget titles, and more technology focused stuff to drift back in as I exercise my atrophied tech muscles (which were never hulkish to begin with).

That's all for now folks. We now return you to regularly scheduled programming.

The Scrabulous Solution: An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg

The Scrabulous Solution: An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg

Dear Mark,

Following last week’s announcement by Hasbro (and later Mattel, who have the Euro rights) that they were pursuing legal action against two developers in India that made Scrabulous, the Internet has been abuzz with the collective worry that 600k people may lose their beloved Facebook pastime.

It would be a shame for all those involved if Scrabulous were to go away. With over six hundred thousand people registered, Scrabulous is one of Facebook’s most popular applications. The outcome of the situation will affect the satisfaction of Facebook’s customers. It will have impact on perception of Facebook as a viable development platform, and on Facebook’s relationship with its developers (indifferent beneficiary, or protective and nurturing parent?). Facebook’s actions here will also send a message to owners of consumer brands and IP owners about Facebook’s respect for their concerns, and many of these companies could well be future advertisers or partners.

Facebook’s actions here will also be highly visible. The Hasbro threat to the makers of scrabulous was widely written about and even covered on national television.

In my eyes there seem to be three courses of action for Facebook, only two of which are viable, and only one of which is a good idea.

The possible courses of actions are as follows:

1. Step in and help the developers in their legal fight against Hasbro. I believe this to be the non-viable path, or at best sub-optimal. They are quite clearly violating Hasbro’s IP at multiple levels, from look and feel to game rule set, to even the questionable porte-manteau naming. Even if you helped Scrabulous win, this course of action would be bad publicity and costly.

2. Do Nothing. This is a perfectly viable course of action. After all, Hasbro’s not suing Facebook, but rather the devs. However, what’s at stake is bad publicity, the possible loss of one of your most popular third party applications, and with it, the loss of a significant amount of customer engagement.

3. Broker a winning solution for all parties. I believe this is feasible, and is the best course of action. Everyone wins, it’s not significantly expensive, and the possible upside is significant.

So what does this winning solution look like? I’ll first lay out the steps involved, and then the benefits for each party.

First, Facebook acquires Scrabulous. That could mean acquiring the developers in which case you get a couple smart engineers to help implement the steps below, but at minimum, you buy the Scrabulous codebase, the servers running the service today, and the player database.
Secondly, broker a deal with Hasbro (& Mattel) where:

• Scrabulous will be updated in two phases: (1) rebranding it as “Scrabble” or “Scrabble For Facebook” immediately, and (2) at a later date a “Scrabble Pro” will be added as a premium subscription service (more on this later in this post).
• Hasbro, with Facebook’s help, develops “Scrabble Pro” as part of the exercise of getting familiar with the Scrabulous codebase, server administration, etc.
• Hasbro takes possession of the codebase and manages the servers, following the launch of the Pro version of the game. At this point, Facebook is hands-off.
• The subscription business (say a 5% uptake out of what by then may be a 1M userbase, at say $25/yr, would make this a $1.25M/yr business at minimum) goes to Hasbro. Optionally, Facebook could have some recoupable amount out of this to recoup engineering costs in helping with the transfer of code and the interim running of the service, but this seems like a nit.

What is the ‘pro’ version of Scrabble and why would users choose to pay the subscription fee? Hasbro would have a better idea what would resonate with their players, but here are some ideas:

• Richer stats tracking (how many bingos and with whom? Pie charts of wins/losses. Avg score per game, etc.
• Scrabble variants (alternative dictionaries, Clabbers, speed-scrabble, etc)
• Better chat functionality
• Tournament private tables/lobbies
• Leaderboards
• Etc

OK, so why is this final scenario on which I’ve elaborated the “win-win-win-win” solution? Let’s recap:

• The developers of Scrabulous get to cash out and/or get employed by Facebook, and are no longer threatened with Hasbro legal action.
• Hasbro acquires one of Facebook’s most successful apps, has a head start on creating a successful subscription games service within Facebook, and acquires a community of 600,000 users.
• Facebook gets Hasbro as a partner, keeps its customers happy, doesn’t lose one of its top apps, and gets a proof point for a business model that other developers and IP holders may choose to follow. The corporate image avoids egg on the face and is seen as helping out the little guy.
• Scrabulous players don’t lose their beloved game, and have a chance to add new features and variants by upgrading.

What’s to lose?

Regards,

Kim “Scrabulous Fan” Pallister

I'll play "litigation" for a bingo!

As Raph points out, Hasbro has finally threatened the creators of the immensely popular Scrabble knock off for Facebook, Scrabulous, with legal action.

Hasbro is generally pretty protective of the Scrabble IP, so I'm surprised this took so long.

Books for Presenters

As I've been linking to a number of good presentations lately, it's only fitting that I post some reviews on a few books I've recently covered on the subject.

I ordered two of these on recommendations from friends. The third (the first review below, was based on Amazon's recommendations, and was a very poor impulse buy. Anyhow here they are.

Clear and to the Point

Ugh. A horrible book.

It should have been called 'the complete idiot's guide to mediocre powerpoint presentations'. Author Stephen Kosslyn's main differentiator from other PPT books is that he's an expert in cognitive psychology, and the book attempts to explain some of the science behind why we understand things the way we do, and what works or what doesn't....

...and then applies that to run-of-the-mill '4 points per slide, max 4 sub-bullets per point' powerpoint pablum! Yuck!

Worse yet, short of a few points about looking your audience in the eye in between bullet-reading segments, there's very little on story-telling, story building, etc.

I would only recommend this book for the worst '8-point bullet eye-chart' type of powerpoint offenders. Otherwise, skip it.

Presentation Zen

This book is much better.

The book's author, Garr Reynolds, is former Apple employee and currently resides and teaches in Japan. Both influences show, as he is of the 'minimal text, maximum imagery' school of presenting that you see in Steve Jobs keynotes and elsewhere. I've blogged about this in the past (here, and here), and am definitely a fan of this school of presentation style.

More importantly, Reynolds is adamant about properly preparing your ideas first, knowing what you are trying to say, to whom, and how, before ever touching the PC. I also agree with this whole-heartedly, and often find myself telling coworkers to do the same (when they are neck deep in borrowed slides from other people and unsure what it is they are trying to say).

If there's one downside to the book, its that so much of it is borrowed and/or reprinted from elsewhere, much of it online, that I felt like I'd already been through half of it before ever picking it up. Much of it was deja-vu. Still, I recommend it.

Magic and Showmanship

This was something a friend pointed me to, and I have to say I'm glad he did.

This is a book for professional or aspiring magicians/illusionists. What does that have to do with presenting? A lot!

The book spents some time talking about the mechanics of magic tricks, but far more on the theatre of magic. The story arc in a trick, the careful direction of audience attention to something while the orator prepares to surprise them from another direction. I found it to be both enlightening and useful. Recommended.

Plus you might learn an easy trick or two that will fool the five-and-under folks in your life :-)

Passionate storytelling

Another Must-watch ted talk. This one from author Isabelle Allende.

The content of her talk, about the oppression of women and the need for change around the world is compelling. I can't add anything else to the topic other than to urge you to watch it.

I do think that there are also lessons here for presenters to take away.

(1) Passion. She discusses it in her talk, and she clearly has it. This is a great example of how someone that has passion for their topic can engage an audience and infect them with kind of passion.

(2) Story-telling. She effectively uses story-telling to not just make a point, but to make it come up and hit you like a hammer.

(3) Use of humor. Wow. She can go from making the audience laugh, to making them gasp at stories of child rape, to making them laugh again, in the space of a few moments. She weilds humor like a katana. In less skilled hands, someone could kill themselves trying to do this, but in her skilled hands, it make the dreadfull 'lows' in her stories that much deeper. Like a roller coaster's high peaks making the deep valleys that much more terrifying.

(4) No slides. Just goes to show you; Imagery can help, but it is almost entirely about the speaker.

Letting Toddlers Play With Knives

This great talk from Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, is a good watch for anyone raising kids in today's overprotective society.

It really resonated with me. (Spoiler warning: Watch the video before reading the rest of this post. If the link below is broken, watch here)






Of the 6 things he encourages us to let our kids do, my parents -my father in particular - encouraged *all* of them.

1. Play with Fire: I was allowed and even encouraged to do so, including building my own rockets. He didn't even intervene in my making my own gunpowder until one of my rockets actually worked and almost knocked my neighbor off his roof when an ill-timed flight coincided with his choice of days to re-shingle.
2. Own a pocket knife: My dad gave me both a folding pocket knife as well as a sheathed deer-bone handle boyscout knife that had been his when he was a kid. As Gever says, it was a universal tool. We whittled, carved, disected bugs, skinned squirrels (sorry peta people), peeled bark, made conkers, and a thousand other things with them.
3. Throw a spear: I did. When we lived in South Africa i got one. Dad also bought me a bow (not a little plastic one - a fiberglass one that could put an arrow a good inch into a maple), a slingshot, and a pellet gun.
4. Deconstruct appliances: I was always allowed to take apart any device that was going in the trash or was otherwise non-functional. I was given full access to dad's shop including all power tools from as early as I can remember. I beleive at around 9 or 10 I recall being told to "be extra careful" with the electric jigsaw.
5. Break the DMCA: We didn't have it. But dad DID encourage questioning authority and WHY systems were structured the way they were (including the law).
6. Drive a car: I got to sit on dad's lap and drive the car. I also was allowed to build or acquire a fair number of two or four-wheeled contraptions that had internal combustion engines, even though I was too young to legally drive them.

Anyhow. My wife and I have had numerous conversations about 'risky' activities, that usually go along the lines of "what age is it ok for him/her to be doing this/that?", and I often feel that we as a society are far too protective of our kids, and that this may be doing it's own kind of harm. This talk really helped crystalize that sentiment for me.

(Update: Fixed link in post)

Holy Hockey Sticks!

Casey just pointed me at this:

Holy balls.

For all the poo-poo'ing of the PS3 (I'm as guilty as anyone), you have to give them credit for chugging along and selling units as well as 360 did through launch, despite being last 'next gen' console to the party.

Nintendo's graph is, well, phenomenal. For them anyway. Whether it's good for *games* in general is debatable. They get credit for tapping the untapped segments of the market, but I still agree with Chris' rant on the console's shortcomings.

Unintended Effects

Like many, I've been using the holidays to catch up on a backlog of games. This being such a killer year for content, this is a problem, and I haven't even touched a bunch of the "must plays" of the season (CoD4, Assassins Creed, and *bowing head in shame* I haven't picked up Portal yet). Still, I have a year's worth of games with the shrink wrap on them, so I figured I'd get through them before buying more.

One of them is Blue Dragon. I'm not a fan of Japanese turn-based RPG's in general, but I'd heard it was good and I got a free copy, so figured I'd give it a go.

I'm still not a fan of turn based combat in these games, and I have no patience for the character power/attack customization pedantry that Blue Dragon presents me with. Nothing wrong with it, just not my thing.

One thing I did note, though was excessive use of depth-of-field shader effects in both the cutscenes and realtime animation. I think it's a good study in excessive use of a visual effect that is detrimental to the end result.

Depth of field effects can be used for a couple things. It can be used to draw attention to a particular element of a scene (in particular when dynamically drawing the focal point from one distance to another, for example). It can also be used to suggest scale such as in macro photography.

In Blue Dragon, there's a lot of grandiose scenery and scenes in which they are trying to suggest an immense scale. However, in overdoing the depth of field effects, I found it reminisent of tilt-shift miniature faking photos like this:

(from flickr tilt-shift miniature fake pool)

Some examples from Blue Dragon:

I find the bottom shot in particular has a look like an animated scene of plastic toys, not a vast, grandiose world. Perhaps that was the look they were going for, but I don't think so. I think it was just a case of the team getting carried away with the latest shader effects.

There's a lot to be said for using such effects with nuance, but it's difficult to do in an interactive medium where you aren't sure how much it's going to affect the player - esp since some will be playing on different screen sizes/resolutions, etc, and where you are trying to compete for screenshot/trailer drama with a bunch of other titles.

Could an end to game piracy reside in a stuffed bear's heart?

When travelling with the family recently, my wife took the kids to the "Build A Bear Workshop"For those unfamiliar with this great little enterprise, here's how it works: You bring the kids in, they pick a type of bear, various accoutrements, and go through a ritual where the bear is 'brought to life' by filling him with stuffing and inserting a heart. Before inserting the heart, your kids rub it on their head to make it smart, on their muscles to make it strong, etc.

Kind of a sugar-coated version of Frankenstein. :-)

Anyhow, the result is that they get a bear that is 'unique', and are given a birth certificate for the bear with the name they give him.

It occurred to me that this kind of visceral experience - which develops quite an bond between child and bear - would be ideal to partner with a kids virtual-world company to go compete with Webkinz and other kids VWs, which I blogged about a while back.

Of course the thing with good ideas is that other people have the same ones, and they've already beaten me to the punch, with BuildABearVille.

Now the key point is this: With Webkinz, you enter your product code, and the online animal matches the physical product you bought at the store - which for kids, is COOL. With BuildABear, you enter a unique ID number off the birth certificate, and you get an online version that is identical to your one-of-a-kind, custom bear that you built. Of course the "one of a kind" bear is only one of given number of permutations of options, but still, to a kid, this is MAGIC!

So anyhow, it's cool, and I suggest you check it out. Take your kid, or a friends kid, or a kid-at-heart, to your local BuildaBear Workshop and give it a whirl.

So what does this have to do with software piracy? Bear with me (and my puns)...

This month's Wired has a great piece in which David Byrne interviews Radiohead's Thom Yorke and the two of them discuss the shift in the music business of recent times, where music went from being about performance and artist relationship to being about manufactured product and now it's being shifted back the other way, where the manufactured product is no longer monetizable as it once was, and so the value will come from performance and from the relationship that artists can have with fans.

Others have been talking about this too, how the value is in the artist/fan relationship, not in the product per se; and how if the relationship is there, people will gladly pay for it (and the product in turn).

Traditionally in games, the discussion around 'relationship' has been around that of service provision. e.g. You provide a service and the pays for that service on an ongoing basis, whether it's on a per-month basis, per-game basis, per-item basis or whatever. MMO's, Xbox Live, Kart Rider, Gametap, are all examples of this.

But perhaps another path exists, other than "service provision as proof of relationship". What if we think about "Personalized product as expression of relationship"?

So what do I mean by this? Consider things like architecture plans. These are copyrighted, architects that do plans for 'cookie cutter' houses and the like have to worry about their designs being used without their permission. However, an architect hired to do a custom design for a client very likely has to worry less. Why? Because the plans were done for THAT client, and that client very likely doesn't want his design copied and takes pride in it's uniqueness and that it was done for him. "Look at my kitchen. Personally designed for me by Hans Arkitekt."

To take this to games, if we could find a way to build a game for a specific customer, tailored to them, then this should mean that they could share it with someone else, but that person wouldn't want it, they'd want their own. In the same way that I may covet my friend's tailored suit, but that doesn't mean I want his suit, but rather that I want one of my own.

So what would it mean to build a game *for a specific customer*? I'm not sure. But I'm not talking about nonsense like binding it to the user's machine with DRM and the like. No, that's silly and people will find a way to strip it out anyway. No, the personalization has to add value in some way.

It could be an object of social status ("Look, Cliffy B personally autographed my copy of Gears and thanked me for my business"), an element of personal integration ("It came pre-built with my character stats already set up!"), or custom fitting ("all the graphics assets and settings came perfectly tuned for set up for my personal machine").... who knows.

Actually, it's very likely none of the above. Minds more creative than mine will come up with far better ideas. The best example I can think of is that of The Behemoth and the custom trophies they built for leaderboard winners. Still, I do think there's something to this, and the first requirement would be a change in mindset. To change from viewing the game as mass-produced product to viewing the finished game as an asset; 95% completed, and now ready for customization and personal delivery to each and every one of your fans. The extent you *value* each one of those relationships, is the extent to which they'll provide value in return.

I guess like any relationship, you have to decide if you are ready to put some work into it and hold up your end of the bargain...

Magnifica? Magnifico!

A quick review on what Santa left under the tree:

The DeLonghi Magnifica super-autamo-espresso-robo-machine.

Here's a long review of it that I mostly agree with. Here's my short review.

It's the frikkin bomb! I so love it.

Rock Band: Drunken Doozies Download Party Pack

I noticed that Jane posted a wish list of female vocals songs for Rock Band.

I thought I'd add my own, only this time, this is 'songs Harmonix really should have included for drunken Rock Band parties'. Here it is, along with the envisioned end user experience:

1. Cream and Bastards Rise (Harvey Danger): Alright. It's friday night, you've had a hard week. You wouldn't have to flip burgers if those in the fake music biz hadn't screwed over your fake band. F*** 'em! It's about the music man! [Play 5 times until scoring perfect or your angst has been sated. One beer per iteration]
2. I'm the Man (Joe Jackson): That's right. You're the man. Let it be known. [Play thrice, with one jager shot per iteration. Why jager? Because you're The Man]
3. Mexican Radio (Wall of Voodoo): The tequila's been busted out, and now so has this song. (This song isn't on Amazon's mp3 service, but there are a bunch of good covers, see here. If Harmonix opt's for the Bruce Lash version, then move to very end of playlist :-) [play 4 times or until tequila finished and you lose count]
4. Pump It Up (Elvis Costello): Time to rock out. Go. [Play twice or until sick of it. Do tequila poppers during guitar interlude bits. Yeah, you ran out of tequila on #3, so these are 'miscellaneous poppers']
5. Iron Man (Black Sabbath): This one isn't in the download pack. The guitarist got carried away on the last song and kicked the controller out. The singer is now just screaming "I AM IRON MAN!" repeatedly while standing shirtless on the coffee table. [Repeat doing so until controller plugged back in. Drink JD directly from bottle throughout]
6. Bonin' in the Boneyard (Fishbone): The basist has been whining for this one for a while. Fine. [Play once only, and only if he agrees to buy the beer next week. Meanwhile drink the 6 pack of wine coolers he was going to bring over to his ol' lady's place after practice. He wasn't going to get any anyhow. Its a school night]
7. Hornets! Hornets! (The Hold Steady): OK, you got in a fist fight with the drummer over who finished the coke and should go to the 7-11 for refills. Your girlfriend left because Rock Band doesn't make you sexy. Forget her! Priorities! [Play once. Now might be a good time for the rum. Since the coke is all gone, you mix it with vodka]
8. Bro Hymn (Pennywise): You and the drummer have made up. Revel in drunken camraderie. [play, say, 10 times or so. Swill malt liquor and spill a little for your dead homies (don't let the fact that you don't actually have 'dead homies' sway you. You don't have a real band either)]
9. Rock and Roll, Part 2 (Gary Glitter): OK, now we are on a proper bender. The group has reached the point where the chords need to be blurry, and vocals have been reduced to slurred yelling. Screw who has the mic, everyone is the singer now. [Play till you pass out, drinking whatever's left if anything]
10. There's a track number 10, but no one ever gets to it, so they don't know what it is.

There you go. Harmonix, please get right on it. I'll buy first round!

Great laptop bag search of 07

So I figured I'd pick up a new laptop bag.

For a long time I was doing the pseudo-leather laptop briefcase thing, then switched to a backpack that I'd gotten at a tradeshow somewhere. Somewhere along the way I realized I should go the messenger bag route as many have done, as I carried both the same way, slung over one shoulder, ergonomics be damned.

So I started shopping around and am surprised and frustrated by the lack of an overlap between 3 sets of functionality that I'd like to find:
- high level of geek functionality (easy access, lots of pockets for phone, mp3 player, biz cards, pens, etc
- stylish and/or unique (if possible customizable: Why is there no Threadless for messenger bags? Why is 'design your own' limited to a choice of fabric or color, not uploading my own graphics or choosing different strap types, etc)
- finally, while the two above were what I started looking for, I added 'solar powered' to the list after shopping around some. I might give this up, but the idea of gaining a few more hours out of the phone or mp3 player is appealing.

I also like the idea of environmentally appealing (made from recycled/re-used materials), but the high price tag some of these carry is hardly justified and makes it seem its just being done 'for the pitch'. Also, if you really care about the environment then having them shipped from germany or south america or whatever probably negates whatever good you are doing via the recycling.

Anyhoo.

A few neat ones I ruled out:

• All The King's Men: Like the belt and the look. Too pricey for the basic bag you get, not enough pockets/etc.
• Chrome messenger bags: Like the belt system. If I was actually going to use it on my bike frequently, I might have gone this route.
• Freitag: Made with recycled truck tarpaulins, but they are pretty basic and have to be shipped from europe. (there was another similar one from a cool german company using fabric from recycled mail bags, but I can't find the URL now).

A few candidates I'm looking at are below. If anyone has suggestions, feel free to comment.

• BumBakPaks: The look is ok (except when wearing it in weirdo backpack mode), I like the versatility. I like the luggage handle pass-thru.
• Skooba Satchel: High functionality. Seems to get reviewed well. So-so on looks, customizability.
• Booq Vyper: High Functionality. Sleek looking. However, pricy.
• Eclipse Fusion: Kind of an OK look. Lower on functionality than some of the others. solar power! Nerd power! (2.5w of it anyway)
• Reware Juice Bag: OK look, medium functionality, solar power (4W this time), made of recycled soda pop bottles. On the down side, the price could buy a lot of soda pop!

Decisions, decisions...

Hacker Wiizardry

Apologies for the title. I am as prone to Wii-puns as the rest of the blogosphere.

A number of people pointed me to Johnny Chung Lee's youtube vids. Lee has done some interesting hacks with the Wiimote, and posted vids of them along with explanations. They include:

Interactive Whiteboard:



Minority Report-style finger-tracking:



VR headtracking:



These are all very cool, yes. But the real lesson to take away here is that this is what happens when you base your products on open standards (Wiimote uses bluetooth to communicate). This in turn is predicated on not selling your HW at a loss, which means you have to be damn sure people aren't using it for something other than its intended purpose, but that's the subject of another post...

One does wonder whether the folks at Nintendo are benefiting from these vids in some way. If I were them I'd be replicating the experience and doing some game jams around them to see if they have legs.

Game Credits: Labels vs Nuance in a Tag-Cloud Age

[Disclosure/Disclaimer: As I noted in a post a while back, I no longer work for Microsoft. I'll post something about the new gig soon, but I had the following post down as a draft for a while now and thought it important enough to finish. These views are mine and not those of employers past or present :-) ]

The Game Credit thing

A recent Saturday morning consisted of wolfing down the November Game Developer magazine along with my oatmeal and espresso, reading in fits and stops amid the cacophony of Cheerios crunching that my three offspring orchestrated.

The back page article was the months 'Business Level' column by Russell Carroll of Reflexive, and focused on the issues of game credits and specifically on the casual games industry. The issue as a whole has been discussed a lot lately lately. There's an IGDA standards effort underway, Rockstar's not-so-rockstar move on credits in Manhunt 2, etc. This Next-gen article covers the area well.


I have some thoughts on the issue, and the Nov GDMag piece made me jot them down, as I have a few issues with the article.


For those who don't get the subscription (really, you should), Russell makes the following points:

• That casual games portals (like my former employer's MSN Games, or others like Real Arcade, Yahoo games, etc) don't mention the developer or publisher name on pages where they offer the game for sale. Further more, he insinuates a kind of conspiracy may be at the root of this, asking "Are portals marginalizing developers in order to try and keep another Popcap from rising up?" and stating that this is a question that most portals avoid answering (we, while I was with MSN Games that is, have. I'll get to that).


• He states that the issue doesn't exist for "non-casual" games. I believe he really means "retail boxed-product" games, but I digress. I think he's wrong regardless.


• He then claims that his employer, Reflexive, does credit content developers on their site. While I disagree with him on this point, I am grateful that he gives me this mallet with which I can hammer some nails into his argument.

First off, let me state that I agree wholeheartedly that developers should be given credit for their work. On the other hand, I also believe that there are a handful of issues that make this more difficult than it may first seem. I like Russel and respect him but I think he's made this issue a little more cut and dried than it really is.

Before I get to the issues, let's look at an example. I'll take a favorite 'classic' (in the casual space anyway!) example of mine, Diner Dash.

Diner Dash was developed by the fine folks over at GameLab, and published by the equally fine folks over at Playfirst - two companies I love working with, and whom I have a great deal of respect for.

If I go to download Diner Dash on Reflexive's site, I get the following: I see Playfirst cited as the game's creator (incorrect), Gamelab is not mentioned. After installing the download version of the game, I get a splash screen for Reflexive, followed by the game executable putting up splash screen animations for Playfirst and Gamelab.

Installing the same game off MSN's site, I get the following: No mention of developer or publisher on the web page, and after installing, I get the same splash screen order for MSN Games, followed by Playfirst and Gamelab, but then followed by Oberon Media.

Additionally, installing the game from MSN, if you are running Windows Vista, installs an icon in the Vista Games Explorer, with metadata that cites Oberon as the publisher (wrong), and Playfirst as the developer (partially wrong).

Why is this situation so messed up?

Well, there are a handful of issues that Carroll doesn't address in his issue that make this more complicated than it may seem. These include the following:

Channel conflict.

This is a big one, and in many ways is at the root of this whole issue. Channel conflict occurs when manufacturers of goods start to perform roles that put them in direct conflict with companies that normally are partners in the distribution chain. For example, when Apple decided to start operating Apple Stores around the world, it probably didn't sit very well with their distribution and retail partners at the time.

In the digital distribution world, this is a pretty hot topic, since startup costs are relatively low, anyone can at least hang out a shingle and say "we're in the distribution/sales/etc business!".

The reality is that everyone needs to work together to provide a good selection of product to customers wherever they may be. Channel conflict does lead, though, to discussions about how company names are used, and what they imply to the consumer. For example, Are you trying to indicate "Company X makes good games, look for more games by Company X", or are you trying to say "you might get a better deal on Company X games if you bought them directly at the Company X store!".

Antiquated Labels

I believe another issue is that the labels of 'developer' and 'publisher' are rapidly becoming obsolete.

What *is* a publisher anyway? Traditionally, it was someone who provided three functions: financial backing, production assistance, and go-to-market (sales, distribution, manufacture, marketing, etc). However, we are increasingly seeing those roles changed from one title to the next. If a developer funds their own development and production and only uses a publisher for distribution of boxed product - do they deserve the same credit as a publisher who made an early bet on a risky title? What about a company that funds development, but then lets another partner do the go-to-market? Are they both listed as publisher?

The same issue exists with developers. When multiple components of games are outsourced to other companies and/or shared across titles, how do credits work then? We see some of this confusion with publishers moving large franchises from one studio to another for sequels, etc.

I think a (and not necessarily 'the') possible endpoint for all this is something more akin to what we see in the movie industry. Movies from 50 years back had labels more distinctly defined like today's games. Today if you see a movie, you'll see a barrage of company names up front that let you know the names/brands affiliated with a film, but it's not always under concise labels. (e.g. "a John Doe film", "with Company X", "from the minds of Studio Y", etc

These labels become increasingly confused when they move from physical to digital channels. Now the portal may play the role of the retailer and may have a deeper relationship with the customer than just 'a place to buy stuff' (the game may integrate with their meta-game, etc). There are distributors who provide more than just moving a cardboard box from A to B. In the casual space, Oberon media is a big player here. Do they deserve recognition in getting the game in the customer's hands? What if they provided some of the meta-game integration work?

Antiquated labels in an evolving world

The above issue is aggravated by the fact that the world is changing, and these labels that evolved out of big-budget, physically distributed, boxed product games. As muddled as it may be getting for casual games on PC, I think it's going to get far worse for flash and other lightweight web games, mobile, and other segments. We are going to increasingly run into scenarios where new mixes of attribution are going to have to be shoe-horned into existing mechanisms.

An example.

Back when I was making the push to have MSN Games be fully Vista compatible, and helping to define the mechanism by which we'd retrofit games with meta-data for the Vista Games Explorer, we had an issue, and made what I think was a good compromise.

The game meta-data has place for a developer and publisher to be listed. However, there's no concept of the distributor or retailer to be listed, and while *multiple* devs or pubs can be listed, only the first is immediately apparent in the games explorer, and only the first of each is displayed as an active hyperlink.

The compromise we made was to list the developer and publisher, but have the URLs not link to their sites, but to the MSN games site with a flag to display all the games from that one developer. The site has yet to configure itself to that custom flag but I expect at some point in the future it will. regardless, this is a good solution because while it address the competitive channel conflict issue, it doesn't do so by falsely assigning attribution for the games creation.

Multiple layers of channel

Another issue that exists is that while one player in the equation may be trying to do the right thing, its not always apparent WHO the correct attribution should be assigned to! A typical PC games portal may see five hundred different games and/or skus of games in a typical year. Often, many of those come via distributors or publishers. They have to assume that the information they are getting on attribution and credits is accurate, and don't have time to police it all. Same is true for each layer of the channel.

Losing sight of the end goal

One of the things I take away from this 'credit' discussion is that people often are losing sight of - or perhaps just overloading - who the end 'consumer of credits' is, and what the information is supposed to help them with. There are several:

• End users use credits to identify the artist who provides quality (or conversely, shoddy) games to them, so that they may seek out or avoid more from the same artists. There is value at several levels here: A destination portal that provides content I like (e.g. Manifesto), a publisher that puts the kind of polish I like on games (e.g. EA Sports fans), a developer of envelope-pushing shooters), or a designer who's work I admire (Miyamoto, or Molyneux), etc. End users also use credits/attribution to determine who they should go to for support, or a refund - especially true in the digital distribution space. If someone has a problem running Peggle on their system and wants their money back, but forgets where they bought it, this is an argument for there being some attribution to the retailer.
• Companies (developers, publishers) use credits/attribution to build brands associated with quality, family-friendliness, family-unfriendliness, or whatever the case may be. They may also use the attribution to try and strengthen relationships with customers (say, if my game is developed by Pogo, and I have a game portal by the same name, I'm hoping you'll make the connection and come visit - and thus the channel conflict issue).
• Individual artists use credits to build their 'personal brands' or portfolio. They also view it as a form of compensation, in that it just feels good to see your own name up in lights.

Some of these have different answers (Who created this? vs Who should I return this to for a refund?) but we try to jam everything into these two labels of 'developer' and 'publisher'.

Solutions?

I don't have any easy answers. that was the main point of this post is that this is a complicated issue and not just a matter of a few big evil companies trying to keep the little guy underfoot as the GDMag article implied.

I do have a few ideas though:

1. Move into the tag-cloud age. Like the movie business, we should worry less about official 'role labels', and just start listing all those involved. Don't worry about "oh, we did the design, all they did was the mac port". Put your name on enough quality work and people will get it over time. I'm not sure the end user recognizes the difference anyway (at least outside the hardcore space).

2. Understand and communicate your intent, and that of your partners. If you are looking for attribution to promote your studio brand, great. If you are doing so hoping this will drive site traffic so you can sell direct to customers, then don't act surprised when the places those customers are currently buying aren't interested in promoting your brand. [taken to the extreme, you could argue that a commitment to NOT compete with your channel partners could be a strategic advantage, as they may give you opportunities that they may not offer your (shared) competition. This is true for every layer of the channel.]

3. Count on Karma. When in doubt whether to give an individual or a company credit, do so. This is a small industry and the person you 'left off the list' will remember it, and you'll cross paths with them again.

Parting Thought

One final thought is this. It's 'out there' enough that I don't want to list it as a possible solution, but at least food for thought.

What about separating game credits from the game itself? Let games contain URLs to their credits, and let their credits reside as a living body of work, a la wikipedia?

Have the IGDA body create a wikipedia-like 'universal game credit wiki'. it's goal to contain all contributions to all skus of all versions of all games. Games could then choose to opt in to linking directly to their entry, or including credits in the game, or doing both!

A little something to ponder over your holiday festivities. Cheers.

Back from Vacation

I'm back after 8 days in sunny hawaii (only 5 of which were sunny :-( ). We rented a little house on the windward coast of Oahu and had a lovely time. Now, back on the grid and back to work!

Halting State's Sharpening Focus

I purchased Charles Stross' Halting State a while back but only got to reading it while on vacation last week.

It's a fun read. Not a great read, but a fun one, and one that should be required reading for those in our industry.

The book is a story of a couple reluctant heros that get wrapped up in an investigation of bank heist that unravels into a story of international espionage, etc, etc. On that basis alone, it's kind of a 'B' read. It's not a superb story as far as heist or spy stories, and doesn't have the page-turning action sequences of, say, Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash, though there are parts that almost get there.

However, what makes the book interesting, and makes Snowcrash a good point of comparison, is that the bank heist takes place in a virtual world, with a band of rogue players cleaning out a bank and then selling off the items for millions via online auctions. The heros' sleuthing takes place in both the real and virtual worlds.

Where the book succeeds, as Raph Koster pointed out a while ago, is in how well it nails all the details and issues around virtual worlds. To quote Raph:

Among the stuff that pops up, “namechecked” so to speak: PvP sploits. God mode. ORLY. Zombie flash mobs. Leveraging ARGs for real work. Impositional game design. VC bubble shenanigans. Cross-world avatar portability. Cons and cosplay. Discworld. LARPing. 4th edition D&D. Second Life. Mirror worlds.

... add to that Augmented Reality, cross-platform gaming, serious games, using VW's to launder money, etc, etc. Stross shows that he really gets it, and as great science fiction should, projects the possible implications that stem from the 'science'.

The thing that struck me most was this: If Stephenson's Snowcrash drew us a picture of the metaverse (and excited a bunch of people enough to run out and start VRML companies :-), then Stross, some fifteen years later, uses his book as a lense to sharpen that picture for us.

Highly recommended. Go Get it!

Snow Day

It snowed last night, and again this afternoon. Which is fun for kids... and their snowmen brethren!

Its also fun for parents, when they know a flight to Honolulu is just hours away!

Our House in Bellevue is For Sale

Our house got listed. Or see it on Zillow here.

If you know anyone looking for a lovely home in the area, point them this way.

We really do love the house and wish we weren't leaving it, but alas, 'tis not a mobile home and we are relocating.

Good geek home too. X10 lighting, media room, wired speakers all over the ouse. Includes many hundreds of feet of hardwired gigabit ethernet cable, fished with care by yours truly!

ROFL

I was reading Yahtzee's Valve Travelogue and this bit about their Bellevue office locale made me laugh:

I notice out of my bedroom window that there's a store down the street called "Crate & Barrel," which, considering, strikes me as a very appropriate position for either it or Valve, as anyone familiar with the writings of Old Man Murray could tell you

If it doesn't crack you up, then you don't remember this piece.

The OCD side of me says...

...that I should never touch my 360 again, and thus preserve my gamerscore:

Six Lessons for Change

Guy Kawasaki has a great post up about Kiva. Kiva is one of a number of micro-lending sites that have popped up on the Internet over the past year or two. The idea is to connect people that have a small amount to lend with those that have a need to borrow a small amount. Most are focused on letting people invest in people rather than more abstract financial instruments (which of course are all investing in people at some level, but less tangibly).

The difference with Kiva is that its more of a philanthropic effort, with the microloans going to people starting small businesses in poorer regions, in order to become self sufficient. I'm going to be putting some money into Kiva in the near future.

Anyhow, Guy has a list of 'six lesson for change' that Kiva told him, and I'd say that they apply to any corporation - and to any product development and roll-out. The short version is below. For the long version, go to the link above.

1. Create Meaningful Partnerships.
2. Catalyze and Support Evangelism
3. Find a Business Model
4. Bank on Unproven People
5. Focus on Free Marketing
6. Ignore the Naysayers.

Good lessons for those trying to shake up the game industry, I'd say!

Kim leaves Microsoft

I toyed with ideas for snappier names for the post (where do you want to go today, etc), but thought it best to keep it simple. I am no longer with Microsoft.

A couple weeks back, I gave my notice at Microsoft. Given that I was involved in some sensitive, future-looking stuff, they thought it best that I wrap up my activities quickly and take some extra time off. As a result, my departure (which came right before Thanksgiving, and thus everyone was out of office anyway), was unannounced and sudden.

No one should interpret this as it being in any way negative. I was enjoying my role at Microsoft and am still really jazzed about much of what they are doing. Some of the Arcade titles I helped onboard are still in production and I can't wait to see them ship so I can play them. I think Xbox360 and Live are the best game console and service on the planet today. Unlike a lot of people that give me flak about it, I like Vista. I even love my Zune(s) and now that they've added Media Center compat and wireless sync, I think they have some advantages over iPod.

Anyhow.

While I was having a great time there, not one but two opportunities presented themselves to me at the same time. I really wrestled with whether to leave at all and if so for which one. All three companies are going to have dramatic impact on games as we know it - which could I best affect? Which was going to do The Right Thing for the industry and for the medium? Which was the best move (or non-movement) for my family.

In the end, one offer was too good to turn down, and so I seized the opportunity.

I'll post more on the new gig in a day or two. I'm really excited about it. I just wanted to put the word out right now that I'm not at Microsoft any longer.

As usual, I can be found here, at VGVC.NET, or on Facebook or LinkedIn. If you need to know who to contact at Microsoft for stuff related to my previous role, drop me a mail and I'll be happy to hook you up.

Cheers!

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! :-)

EA needs to fire its Euro marketeers

At least those responsible for the campaign featuring topless models to promote Need for Speed.

They should be fired not because they didn't 'go through the proper approval process', but rather because they are lazy, uncreative, or more likely both.

We. Can. Do. Better.

(BTW, I almost typo'd the name of the game above to 'Need for Seed'. PAGING DR FREUD!)

Dialing the poop level to eleven...

...Donald Trump does 'Celebrity Apprentice'.

Saw this on MSN this morning and it caught my eye. I gave up on Trump's show after season two (Branson's show was way better, but out-marketed), but I have to admit I'm tempted to watch this train-wreck-in-the-making.

Gene Simmons is on!

Can I just predict the following exchange:

Trump: "Gene, YOU'RE FIRED!"
Simmons: "Yeah? Well, I'm sleeping with your wife. YOU'RE fired!"

Ooma OOBE, and Apple packaging perversion

A few months back, Vlad and I attended an entrepeneur event in Seattle. Michael Arrington was one of the speakers. He mentioned having a give-away token for a free Ooma, which he'd give to the first person that approached him for it after the session. Vlad was that person, and since he couldn't use it for some reason, he gave it to me.

Ooma is a one-time-purchase device that gives you VOIP phone service over your broadband with no monthly charges, no long distance charges in US, a broadband voicemail box, etc. Your regular household phone(s) plug into it, and then you use the phone as you would normally.

You could view it as a hardware device purchase, or you could view it as a lifetime subscription option to phone service. Spend a few hundred now, no phone bill later (or forever).

I filled out some online forms, and a couple months later, after I'd forgotten all about it, a big honkin box arrived in the mail.

I still haven't hooked it up (for reasons I'll get into later), but I did want to talk about the packaging.

The gizmos (the Ooma, and an an auxilliary 'scout' device) each arrived in a very attractive, very HEAVY, glossy cardboard box.

This is what the devices look like.

Anyhow. The box is super thick, with a cover that is five sides of a cube and slides off of another five sided cube to reveal a felt-covered plastic 'holder' for the OOMA, which conceals the AC adapter, cables, etc. There's a also a large glossy manual and quick-start guide.

The thing this made me think of is just how much everyone has been influenced by the Apple out-of-box experience ('OOBE'). I've heard (sorry, have never purchased an Apple product), the Apple OOBE described in near-fetishist, near-religious, fashion by those that have bought their products. It's clear that others are aspiring to capture the same type of feeling.

Ooma's not the only culprit. I've purchased a couple Zune's and they are definitely mimicking the same thing. Xbox360 as well to a lesser degree.

It does make me wonder about a couple things:

• How soon before this backfires with the environmental movement? Others have learned a lesson here (Barbie was an example featured in Fast Company recently).
• What's the cost of the packaging, and could the savings be passed on to the consumer?
• Again, borrowing from teh Barbie example, could the packaging be practical? Why not sell Zune's or Ipod's packaged in a leather or rubber protective case - an accessory people often buy anyway?

Food for thought.

As for the actual device - I'll let you know how it goes after I actually plug it in. :-)

For those that are curious, here's a shot of the ports on the back.

Space Giraffe Author Having a Cow

Just read this gamasutra piece about Jeff Minter's latest ranting about XBLA. Last time it was the "soul crushing" approval process (aka Minter learns what shipping on consoles is like), this time it's the threat to abandon game development because he's disappointed in the sales of Space Giraffe, especially that it was outperformed by Frogger.

I have mixed feelings about this.

One the one hand, yes, its disappointing that gamers don't "vote with their money" and reward indie development and original content. I too find it frustrating that Pac man or Frogger outperform some original fare.

On the other hand, its their right. Its also just the reality of how things are, so get over it. Same thing exists with movies, music and books.

I think he'd do well to also point a finger or two at himself. The game is good, but it's hard, it's far from accessible, and the point it tries to make isn't immediately apparent (if your game takes someone as bright as Jon to explain it, then you have a problem).

To borrow Jon's comparison, if you write Ulysses, don't be disappointed if it doesn't sell like Harry Potter.

One other thing that is an important point to note in today's try-n-buy world: People will try the game. So Jeff (or others for that matter) can blame Frogger or other games all they want, but at the end of the day, if you build a game that really is all that, then people will try it, and hopefully buy it. If the trial doesn't hook them, then that's not Frogger's fault, is it?

They don't call it 'priming the pump' for nothin'

There's been a lot of linking to Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack's comments (and subsequent clarification) about the Quebec government's subsidies of game development companies. The clarification was that by labelling them 'insane', he meant 'better than good'.

He still maintains, though, that the subsidies are not maintainable in the long term.

I think he's missing the point. The point was to prime the pump and jump start an industry hot-bed. They've absolutely done so. Now that they have, if the subsidies were to go away, it's not like Ubi and the others would just pack up and leave, would they? There's a local dev community, an infrastructure of schools producing new talent, etc.

I don't think they were ever meant to be sustainable.

There's an argument that they are sustainable (if the delta in growth, new jobs, the taxes those people pay, etc, are enough to fund the subsidies), but that's beside the point.

Sweet MAME table idea

I built a MAME cabinet about 13-14 years ago - long before you could buy them and before you could buy USB 'arcade quality' controllers (it may have been before USB itself for that matter!). I got rid of it when moving up to Seattle, as I didn't have room for all my arcade cabs in the house here.

I haven't thought about building another until I saw this link (via boingboing) for a cool 'hideaway' version. This was done on an IKEA dining room table, but I think it could be done similarly in a living room coffee table.

Hmm... I've been looking for a reason to buy that router attachment for my table saw...

On EA's numbers...

A number of people have linked to Gamasutra's look at EA's quarterly results. The eye-catching factoids causing the linkage are (1) the significance of GameStop as their largest retail customer, and (2) that the Xbox360 SKUs were responsible for the lion's share of their revenue (218M, or roughly half of their revenue, the closest other platform being the PS2 at 73M).

It's certainly good information to hear for Microsoft, but it still leaves questions unanswered for me. I'd be very curious to know what the same set of numbers looks like in terms of margin per platform. My guess would be that the DS would one of the top slots on the list. Also, I'm curious if this is indicative of a long-term trend, or if it was offset this particular quarter by any big software releases.

Peeking-inside blogs

Just about everyone has heard of the now-famous Post Secret blog, where people mail in secrets on postcards. It struck a nerve with people as it peek into the quirkiest, saddest and darkest secrets that people keep.

Today I came across another similar blog, Sasha Cagen's To-do list blog, which as you can guess, does the same thing, but for to-do lists. Seems to give a similar but slightly higher-level view into people's lives.

Like PostSecret, she's done a book. It seems to be getting better pick-up, perhaps because the lists are not quite as dark as some of the PostSecret ones. Perhaps her publisher is putting more effort into it? See the trailer below as an example:



I do wonder if there's a similar coffee table book to be made with a game angle to it. Designers' notes? Funny things found in code comments? Hmm...

Gaming and Worst Consumer Trends

So minutes after posting the Bronfman quote and saying we should take heed, this came across my desktop:

DRM, Fanboys, Region Encoding among PC World's "10 Worst Consumer Tech Trends".

Of the 10 sins cited, the games industry hits on the majority of them. Some of course, are an artifact of business and of other industries as well (e.g. licensing fees around GH tracks). However, a couple of them really resonated.

#7 Region coding: I know there are business reasons for it, and that there are sometimes technical reasons for it. That doesn't change the fact that it's a kick in the teeth to the consumer who just wants to play the game you didn't release in her region.

#1: DRM: Amen. I *really* don't know the solution here, but man, we need to figure it out. One look at the writeups for the PC version of Bioshock vs the Xbox360 version, and you know we have a problem.

Quote of the week

Edgar Bronfman, music mogul, speaking at a mobile conference in Macau:

"We used to fool ourselves,' he said. "We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won."

He things mobile operators should take heed:

"The sad truth is that most of what consumers are being offered today on the mobile platform is boring, banal and basic," he said. "People want a more interesting form of mobile music content. They want it to be easy to buy with a single click - yes, a single click, not a dozen. And they want access to it, quickly and easily, wherever they are. 24/7. Any player in the mobile value chain who thinks they can provide less than a great experience for consumers and remain competitive is fooling themselves."

Should the game industry also be paying attention? I think so.

Stolar stellar? Sorry seller!

GamesIndustry.biz has an interview up with Bernie Stolar, Google's 'Adsense for Games' (formerly Adscape), director and advisor.

Man, I hope he provides some value behind the scenes, because from how this interview reads, it only backs up what I thought after seeing his session at Casual Connect.

Google, you don't need rock-star names for spokespeople. You are supposed to be rock stars! Please dig a smart guy out of the back somewhere and have him be spokesperson.

"Not just lying.... lying through theatre"

Unbeleivable.

Rockin' Robin

...tweet, tweet.

Robin's got a rockin' review of EA's Rock Band with a bunch of shots of the character creation system. I hadn't heard much about that side of teh game, with most of the early write-ups focusing on either the song list, the peripheral pedantry, or the competition with Rock Band.

She really does make it sound fantastic. Now that I'm hitting my ceiling on GH-III (I aspire to 5-star medium, but alas, that's my limit), this may have to be the next purchase.

Lessig's TED Talk

...is just brilliant. He's such an awesome presenter and his talk is right on the money (pun intended). Go watch:

World of Datecraft: For when 'soloing molten core' has become a euphemism

via Kotaku, a dating website for WoW enthusiasts, World of Datecraft.

I know little about the game, but I do foresee a Hoarde/Alliance Romeo & Juliet in the making.