Book Review: Team of Rivals

Before leaving for E3, I had the chance to finish Doris Kearn Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, and quite enjoyed it, despite a couple flaws.

The book is about Lincoln's relationship with his famed cabinet, made up of what had been some of his biggest rivals in the run up to his winning the republican party's nomination as presidential candidate. Much has been written about how he structured his cabinet out of people that would not only counsel him objectively, but take strong contrarian stances to his position on issues. This book explores those relationships, from the run up to the presidency until his assassination, and does so pretty deeply through letters, diaries, and other accounts of the communications between them.

Perhaps those that went to school in America are more well versed on Lincoln and on the history of the civil war than I am, but still I think there's a lot of depth here that offers some great lessons on character and leadership.

Also, again, because I don't know a lot of the history here, I found the accounts of the great battles and turning points of the civil war to be fascinating. I also didn't know that Lincoln's assassination was part of a triple assassination (the other two planned killings, of vice president Johnson and secretary of state Seward, were abandoned and unsuccessful, respectively).

The main complaint I have about the book is that in gushing praise upon Lincoln, it fails to make any criticism of him. Even while talking about his failed calls in selecting some of the leadership of his military leaders, it apologizes on his behalf. The book also gives disproportionate weight to some things in his life versus what must have been the heaviest at the time (e.g. social functions and the like, compared to war campaign decisions).

This critique aside, the book is still a good read and a good crash course and inside peek on a great leader in action.

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Seven Fables Kickstarter project

Mark Stephen Meadows, a couple of who's books I've reviewed (here, here) has a cool new Kickstarter project project going, building an interactive iPad app and a leatherbound collector book around seven fables taking place around the sea.

I spent a little time last year on Mark's boat in Mexico and he's a pretty interesting character, and I'm confident the book and app are going to be marvelous. Go support it!

Project Cafe Speculation

Since we're a couple days away from Nintendo's presser at E3, I'm calling last chance to speculate on what Nintendo has up their sleeves with "Project Cafe" that hasn't already been leaked.

The most fervent rumor discussion is around the controller, which is supposed to be some kind of tablet with a 6 inch screen, buttons and a d-pad on the side, and tilt sensors and the like.

Anyhow, here's my prediction:

- Nintendo will claim the controller can also play stand-alone games.

- They will position the controller as being a "tablet that comes free with your console" and will show some entertainment functions for it

- The 'comes free' is a bit of a ruse, as buying a second controller will have a hefty price tag

- They will put on a brave face about the 3DS and that business being alive and well

Over time, though, I believe they see the writing on the wall about their hand-held businesses being commoditize and subsumed by phones and tablets, and so this is their attempt to in turn commoditize those businesses. I think its a weak attempt to do so, but there's some logic to the strategy and should allow them to circle the wagons with their core base.

It'll be interesting to see whether Nintendo can pull off yet another hail-mary pass (like they did with the Wii and the DS).

Shh!! 3 Unspoken Lies About Social Games

The inimitable Greg Costikyan wrote an excellent piece for Gamasutra, lambasting Social Games, and claiming that they are in fact not very social at all.

I agree, and thought I'd add two more topics that came up in conversation at Login recently, and in conversations with a couple social games developer friends.

So let's give Greg Credit for calling out the first lie on my list:

Lie #1. Social games are social games. (Truth - they aren't very social at all)

And to this I'll level two more accusations.

Lie #2. Social games are viral. (Truth - they aren't)

Social games are often cited as "viral", or having the opportunity to be so, because of the social network on which they reside. However, short of the early days in which FB allowed apps to spam a user's friends list, this just isn't the case.

Companies like Zynga are rumored to spend many millions on advertising within FB to acquire users, but if the games were truly viral, they would spread on their own, being recommended whole-heartedly by friends via word of mouth.

The fact that few social games have been able to exceed the virality of the average dog-on-skateboard Youtube video - let alone the virality of an Angry Birds - is proof that they aren't viral. (Some examples do come to mind though. Parking wars and Cow Clicker certainly got a lot of watercooler talk.)

Lie #3: Social Game Publishers are building Games, not Products. (Truth - most have little respect for the medium other than as a revenue generator).

I'll cut to the chase: To my knowledge large publishers in this space, like Zynga and Playdom, don't have developer credits listed in their games.

I wasn't able to find them anyway. I had a couple developer friends lament about the fact that there were no game credits and that when they'd asked management at these companies, they'd been told no.

I think that speaks volumes about those publishing these games and what they think of the people working on them, and of their contributions. "It's just a product, and you are just a cog".

There are a few companies out there doing the right thing (I'm looking at you Brenda!), but I fear these are the exception.

With all the excitement around 'Social Games' these days, it's important that we don't delude ourselves about some of the lies being told.

//rant off

Beyond Aperture: Unofficial Portal 1 Epilogue

BoingBoing points us to this beautiful Portal (1) epilogue. Well made, clever.

Book Review: Anathem

Very few people are going to like ALL of Neal Stephenson's books. I've read a number of them, and usually, but not always, like them (I loved Snowcrash and Diamond Age, was ambivilent about Zodiac, disliked Cryptonomicon, and loved the System of the World trilogy).

One thing I've found is that the time he takes in building up to the action is pretty consistently one quarter of the way in. The problem is that in a book like Anathem - a thousand page monster - this means it's quite some time before you get to the action.

In this case, it's still worth it. The long slow build-up does two things. First, the main character is part of a monastically-styled class in the book's world, and this long deliberate build lets the reader get immersed in the slow, pensive, pace that the 'monks' move and live. Secondly, It really takes the reader on a long and deep journey so that you find yourself - like the main character - gaping in wonder at how far you've come in the journey since the start.

And in that journey, well, it does go quite a ways. Picture somethings on the order of a Dune or Lord of the Rings; starting in Name of the Rose, but ending up in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The book also serves as backdrop for commentary on what I believe is Stephenson's distaste for the growing rift between the literati and the 'illiterati' in modern society.

As I said above, it's a long and arduous read. If you can get through long and deep sci-fi reads, though, you'll find a really great adventure here.

Anathem

Does LA Noire represent the next 3 years of AAA game innovation?

I started playing through LA Noire a few nights ago and am digging it thus far. As Red Dead Redemption taught me, the combination of Rockstar's immense game worlds and my limited gaming time, I won't likely finish it until sometime in 2012. Still there are a few initial thoughts I thought worth writing up.

The game doesn't have me *loving* it yet. Not in a Portal 2 (which I loved start to finish) kind of way, or even in a Red Dead Redemption (which I had 'moments of swooning' for) kind of way. That said, I think it offers some interesting hints on future direction.

LA Noire is very much a Rockstar game. Like both GTA and RDR, it offers a large 'open' world, many side-quests and missions, in-game mini-game type activities. The story is - so far anyway, I'm only five cases into it -more linear than GTA and RDR.

Still, there's no reason that this game needed to be anything other than 'Grand Detective Auto', just as many people labelled RDR 'Grand Theft Horsie'. It could have been the good-guy version of GTA, with lots of cops and robbers shootouts in a late 1940's setting. And they'd have sold tons of it.

Still Rockstar chose to take a couple risks in straying from the usual, in trying to make not a cops-n-robbers game, but a detective game.

The first is that the game has an element of point-and-click-adventure to it. Searching crime scenes, finding bits of evidence, writing these in your notebook, and then recalling them at the right time later to solve a puzzle - these are all reminiscent of the best of early 90's Lucasarts titles. More in keeping with the theme, and more unique in today's market vs the plethora of shooters.

The second, and bolder, risk they took was in making interrogation a core element of the game. The facial animation that's been much talked about, together with what must have been a massive spend on voice-and-mocap acting, were needed to add a more innovative - and thus risky element to the game. The game asks you to interview witnesses and suspects, and then lets you decide whether to believe, doubt, or accuse them of lying. Doing so requires that you look at the evidence you've got thus far, as well as reading the characters faces and body language. In doing so, it not only bumps into the uncanny valley - it throws the player headlong into it. Is it perfect? No.

I don't like the way this guy avoids eye contact!

The interesting thought to ponder here is where Rockstar chose to invest and/or innovate.

It certainly feels like we're near the asymptote on performance that can be extracted out of the current generation of consoles, and next generation isn't coming until (depending who you beleive) 2014.

That means another 3 years or more of making AAA titles, in which the publishers/developers need to garner interest in their titles, and they can't use screenshots alone to do it.

So, what do you do if you are trying to make money in this space. Well, for one, you focus on efficiency. Aside from that, you invest in content production (like all the voice acting in this case, and the more detailed facial models), and in innovations in gameplay (like the lie detection element; or the revisiting of point-n-click adventure).

I think this is a good indication of how others will be spending their money too. Production quality, art, and innovation in gameplay. I hope we'll see more big budget titles with experimentation along these lines over the next few years. Kudos to Rockstar for taking these risks.

VaioS laptop

Early in the year, I said that one of the trends we'd see was what I called more 'bespoke' design in our computers & electronics. More looking like items of fine craftsmanship, less prominent branding (or - gasp - no branding at all), simplicity and elegance over LEDs & complexity.

The new Vaio S series is certainly an example in that direction. Unfortunately, it still has the logo/branding, but on the plus side, it has a brown/gold option that immediately made me think of Robin Williams life-editing cutter laptop in The Final Cut (an awesome sci-fi flick, if you haven't seen it) which I've pointed to before.

Sony Viao S

A replica of the Final Cut laptop

Williams holding the prop from the movie.

Game Journalism in the Age of Digital Books

Last year I authored a number of posts (like this one) on the future of ebooks, and also did a few book reviews and comments on digital typography (like this one), as well as pointing at the excellent thinking on the subject by guys like Craig Mod and James Bridle.

Suffice it to say that digital books and digital reading is a very exciting area of development, one ripe for many years of innovation. I'm continually surprised at how many people look at the iPad - essentially the industry's second take on a digital reader after the Kindle - and are calling it done.

It took us a few thousand years to get print into decent shape. I think we should at least give this one the decade, ok folks?

Anyhow, I was encouraged to see my areas of interest overlap when seeing two different experiments in taking game journalism into the new age of digital print.

The first is The Final Hours of Portal 2, by Geoff Keighley. Keighley spent three years with behind-the-scenes access to Valve & the Portal 2 team, and delivers a fifteen thousand word ebook/application. Less a review and more a gushing fan souvenir, it's nevertheless an interesting experiment - taking the lengthy text on the game and embedding video, interactive application elements, etc, to deliver an in-depth experience any fanboy would love.

I'll post a longer review when I'm done getting through it, but regardless of any flaws, I recommend you spend the $2 to download this to get an idea of (some of) what's possible.

The second example I came across is the Kill Screen Review of Infinity Blade. Great use of interactive typography to actually convey a key element of the game - in the text layout itself, not just in the text.

Go check out both of them, as I'm sure you'll be entertained and inspired.

Book Review: You Are Not A Gadget

I found a few of the ideas in Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget interesting and provocative. Despite that, I can't recommend the book.

The high level goal of Lanier's manifesto is to call into question the unbridled enthusiasm of the Pro-Internet, Web 2.0 movement, without taking the luddite stance that some do when taking issue with the same technology and progress. Lanier believes in technology's power, he just isn't naive enough to think that only good can come of it.

Some of the concerns he raises include whether we should consider the influence that system architectures have upon us and our culture, the cost of software & hardware design lock-in, and whether open source and open content models can innovate as well or in as many ways as traditional methods.

These are all good topics, worthy of discourse. Unfortunately, I found Lanier's screed to be a long-winded ranty and poorly structured attempt at doing so. Your time is better spent reading The Master Switch, or Bill Patry's book for starters.

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto

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.

Book Review: The Whuffie Factor

I picked up The Whuffie Factor well over a year ago, got about half-way through it, and then got distracted with other reads. I forced myself to pick it up again and finish it off. I suppose that gives some hint as to what I thought of it.

It's not a bad book, mind you. It's just that, well, let me put it this way: If you are already somewhat versed in the subject matter, if the terms whuffie or social capital don't require explanation - then you already get it. If you don't, then maybe it's useful. My father-in-law, for example, picked it up while visiting and found it interesting.

Furthermore, for those that expound on the social media scene, there's this annoying trait of that tight-knit circle that they all share the same 20 anecdotes about the successes and failures (Zappos, Threadless, etc). If you read Hugh MacLeod's stuff, you get it with a hard edge. If you read Seth Godin, you get it with some inspiration and some good analysis. In Tara Hunt's case, I found it was just the regurgitated story, without much new to add.

So, in short, if you can infer from the title what it's about, then its probably not for you. If you know someone looking for a crash course, maybe its for them.

The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business

Algorithmic Vegetables

Good talk on the downside of personalized search, and what it means when we don't tell ourselves that we need to eat some vegetables before we get our desert.

In other words, what would Edward R Murrow said to those writing our search algorithms, and to us using them?

Revolution-era pragmatists

Recently when I reviewed "The Best in Technology Writing 2010", I mentioned that Clay Shirky's piece on the radical revolution/reformation of the newspaper industry, 'Thinking the Unthinkable' was one of my favorites.

I revisited it recently, and really liked the observation made in the following passage:

Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists. While those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven't been ordinary, however. Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world increasingly resembled the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic micropayment adoption, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans, but saviors.

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.

He is writing about newspapers, but the above passage could be speaking about any large incumbent (or group thereof) in any industry undergoing radical change. I've seen it at Intel and Microsoft dozens of times, and I confess to having played the role of accuser and accused at different times.

Book Review: The Ascent of Money

Naill Ferguson's The Ascent of Money is probably best summed as one part history, one part crash course in finance and economics, and one part treatise on the fallibility and hubris of mankind. Another way to describe it might be as a cross of The Big Short with To Engineer Is Human, stretched out over a window of two thousand years.

The book gives a crash course on the history of finance, looking in turn at the advent - and roles of - currency, credit, banking, the bond market, the stock market, insurance, housing, and of course the intersection between all of these in things like derivatives, mortgage backed securities and the like. Each is examined from birth through to current day, as well as looked at in a global context.

Through it all, Ferguson gives a history of bubbles, from the "first bubble" in which an enterprising Scot bankrupted all of France in the early 1700's, through to the mortgage-backed mess the USA finds itself in today. Here is where I found a similarity with To Engineer is Human, in that it is a story of how we inevitably fail to learn from History. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that when we do, time and greed inevitably erode the safeguards we put in place.

This is what the book's closing chapter discusses, is whether such cycles are inevitable, and whether we do as much damage as we protect against, when we mess with the cycle of creative destruction.

While finance in general can be a bit dry, Ferguson does a good job of making this entertaining. The history of finance has no shortage of colorful characters and he introduces the reader to many of them. Even if you are not that enthused about the topic, it nevertheless will give a good overview of it that will entertain. Also, it serves to remind that the "current state of things" (i.e. the last 20 years or so, further back from which people have a tendency to subscribe to different rules) is by no means the way things must remain.

Finally, I'll add that the final chapter's coverage of reasons why people tend to predict the future of financial markets properly applies equally well to the tech industry as well. There are lessons to take away here that have less to do with dollars and more to do with our tendency to believe that "this time is different". If history shows us anything, it's that we repeat it.

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

Book Review: Poke the Box

I've reviewed a few of Seth Godin's books in the past, and while I've given them mixed reviews (see here, here, and here), I guess I get enough value out of them as I keep coming back for more. So it was that I found myself reading Poke the Box.

Lately, I've found his books have become a bit fluffier, but that this is OK if you come to them with the right expectations. Whereas some of books like Meatball Sundae and Permission Marketing approach topics with some depth and structure, Poke the Box seems to follow the lines of some of his later books like The Dip, where he takes a single idea and just riffs on it in a seemingly random order. More importantly, the riffing seems to just flit about the surface of the topic without going into any real depth.

The short version of the idea presented is two-fold. First, that in order to get something done, you need to start something, and that the ability to take initiative is a valuable skill in and of itself. Secondly, question the status quo and poke at the edges of, well, everything.

He's right about both of these being a good approach in today's workplace, and he presents a couple really fun anecdotes on the way. If you approach the book in that light, you may enjoy it. just don't expect a lot of depth or structure.

Poke the Box

Book Review: Outrageous Fortunes

Did this one as an audio book. It's not bad, but has some flaws.

Outrageous Fortunes is a look at "Twelve Trends That Will Shape the Global Economy". They are mostly macro-economic and political trends that the author claims will shape the world in ways that most pundits aren't predicting.

Ideas covered range from predicting a stemming of China's growth curve, to theorizing about the potential collapse of the World Trade Organization and what might follow in its wake.

I'm not sure I believe all the theories presented in the book. I'm not versed enough in most of the subject matter to call the author out on any of them, but it does seem like he's as single-minded in some of his predictions as the pundits he's claiming are getting it wrong.

Regardless, I do like the contrarian thinking, and the gaming out he does in approaching some of these ideas. At the very least, it'll get you thinking about implications of some of these things.

Outrageous Fortunes: The Twelve Surprising Trends That Will Reshape the Global Economy

Implications of the Amazon-IGDA spat

In case you missed it, there's been some interesting goings-on in digital distribution land, in particular with Amazon's Android Appstore, and the dev community (via their proxy, the IGDA) taking issue with some of the terms in their distribution agreement.

The IGDA, in service of it's members, posted an advisory calling Amazon out on several of the points they viewed as egregious and called attention to the risks they believed developers were taking on in accepting such terms. You can read the IGDA's letter here.

On their developer blog, Amazon responded the following day, stating simply that the policy in question was from a dated text file, and that a PDF elsewhere on the site contained the correct terms.

The response seems fishy. The IGDA's letter states that they reached out to Amazon several times and that Amazon were unwilling to change terms. If it were simply a matter of referencing the wrong terms, surely they would have pointed that out. Secondly, Amazon's response doesn't actually address the concerns stated in the IGDA letter. Even taking Amazon's 'correction' into account, many of the IGDA's concerns still seem valid.

It will be interesting to watch how this plays out.

However, I wanted to call attention to a couple things I think are worth noting about this chain of events.

1) As Dan Cook pointed out in his excellent GDC presentation, platform owners and/or retailers may act in a way that is detrimental to developers, depending on their motivations, business interests and the stage of their life-cycle.

Amazon here is a retailer with far less interest in the success of the platform than they have success in capturing revenue/market share away from other android store fronts. This is a formula for a Tragedy of the Commons where it will be the developers upon whom the livestock graze.

So, this current Amazon/IGDA tete-a-tete serves to draw attention to the issue from that perspective. In a case like this, Amazon may be very different from Apple. For that matter, Amazon's Android Appstore may be very different than their Kindle Appstore.

2) Another way to think about this, is as a form of collective action. Not formal collective action such as a union might undertake; but rather collective in the sense that as the hive-mind of the developer community becomes educated about the implications of terms, they can jointly act.

3) As Dan also pointed out in his presentation, large companies generally don't like bad PR, especially when it presents them as Goliath to a game developer David. I think this is a great example of the kind of collective developer action we are going to see to try to shame platform owners into curbing one-sided practices. I'm surprised their weak response isn't developing more outrage.

We've seen previous efforts in this vein. e.g. When MS was proposing changes to the XBLA royalty structure, or when MS did a dashboard update that buried the indie games channel. In both cases, developer outcry caused at minimum a public response, if not a back-pedal on policy.

So what is the real implication?

Developers, and the indie community in particular, have always had a 'sneaker net' with which they supported each other with information about platform and distribution portal learnings. However, today with social media tools and groups like the IGDA, developers better armed than ever to take action when terms aren't in their favor

The question portals, distributors, and retailers should ask themselves is how they would feel about their terms coming under public scrutiny. Today this is about Amazon, but in reality it's about 'little guys' vs 'big guys'. The little guys are realizing they wield more power than they thought, and are starting to learn how to use it. One need only look to the past months' developments in the middle east to see examples of it in other contexts.

[Update - April 19: IGDA responds to Amazon's response]

Headtracking on iPad

This is a nifty trick:

Suwappu! Awesome augmented-reality toy concept

Back in January, one of the trends I called out for 2011 (see #5) was that we'd see more of gaming virtual and physical worlds meeting.

Latest thing to come across my radar (via BoingBoing) is Suwappu, a design concept by London design firms Berg and Dentsu (London office).

Some thoughts on the concept:

- I *LOVE* the idea of using AR to do/modify the facial expressions.

- The twitter feeds seem weak - especially the prius ads, ugh - though I'd like to see each Suwappu character have their own twitter feed, or a series of them depending on mood/context. Like networked tamagochi.

- Facial expressions might be hard due to latency (faces drifting on bodies). Maybe has to wait for higher-power smartphones, or ship it with a little smartphone tripod (note: I wrote this before the video was finished playing, turns out they used one too) so it remains stationary. Work the fiction such that the tripod/phone is a "doorway" for kids.

It may be design concept now, but seems a natural fit for someone to pick up on. A very feasible leap from things like UBFunKeys (which I spoke about back in 2007).