GDC was fun, informative and productive for me and iQ212 this year.  I think my GDC Mobile lecture accomplished its goal of getting people thinking and talking about casual and mobile design and the issues that even good games face when entering the mobile gauntlet.

My talk was called “Tetris: the Best/Worst Mobile Game Ever”.  Nice coverage of the talking points is here. 

In short, I declared Tetris as the best game ever.  Then I deconstructed the game, to look at the design elements and to see why it was such a great game, and how its play transferred to mobile. 

Slim Jim brand beef jerky was used as an example to illustrate the shelf space problem on mobile carrier decks.  A supermarket has all kinds of beef choices: filet mignon, short ribs, and prime rib roast, etc.  They have the shelf space for it.  But a convenience store only sells one type of beef, Slim Jim.  Small footprint, long shelf life, broad appeal, always in season, and in snack size portions.  It is because of this shelf space issue that carriers feature Tetris and that Tetris is a perennial best seller.  So Tetris is not beef jerky, but carriers are a bit like 7-11.

At the end of my talk, I asked the room, “If Tetris were invented today, how many of you think it would get published by mobile carriers?”  Exactly one guy in a room of 75 people raised his hand.  It is a telling indictment on the state of mobile when the best game in the world would not get published today.

GDC is right around the corner.  iQ212′s Rick Marazzani is speaking at GDC Mobile on Monday Feb 18th at 4:15pm.  The topic is Tetris: Best/Worst Mobile Game Ever.  It will cover a bit of Tetris history, design, its dominance on mobile, and how to build a mobile game to beat it.

Also at GDC, we will be showing off our portfolio of games, and demonstrating a beautiful new puzzle game for potential mobile and PC casual distributors. 

Ping Rick to book a meeting.  Be sure to catch his talk. See you at GDC!

There is no such thing as a casual gamer.  They are not the teens on NewGrounds, or college kids playing Jetman on Facebook, or old ladies playing Slingo. Everyone is a casual gamer.

The meager casual games space has tried to fracture itself, segment into target markets and demographics.  Frankly, why carve out such small pieces of the game pie?  Why not go for EVERYONE?

Time, attention, platform.
Every person is intrinsically aware of how much time they have available, how much attention they want to pay, and what platforms they can use.  Whether gaming or cooking or exercising, we all consider these factors. 

Please consider that…
• Avid hikers don’t take 50 mile backcountry treks every day.  More often they just stroll through the local park.
• Golfers don’t play 18 holes every day, more often they putt into a cup in their office.
• Chefs don’t cook themselves five-course meals every night, more often they have a sandwich.
So why do we assume that “gamers” will only play long, intensive, high-end games?  The result of that broken logic is that “casual” games are made for old ladies, thereby alienating the rest of the world.

The same considerations above apply to all people seeking interactive entertainment.  They are aware of the constraints to their time, attention, and the platform.

• WoW takes lots of time, lots of attention, and a connected high end platform.
• Monopoly takes lots of time, not much attention, and several friends around a table.
• Sudoku doesn’t take much time or attention, and can be played almost anywhere.

People play according to their time and attention available. Furthermore, people know what their platforms are capable of.  Folks can imagine whether or not a game is right for a platform.  They won’t play Solitaire on their Xbox360 anymore than they’d play Halo 2 on their Moto Razr.  It seems that only games industry insiders think they know better than the masses.

A real world example.  When a major portal launched a games channel a few years ago, the conventional wisdom was that teens would want to play arcade and extreme sports web games.  New twitch games with more youthful appeal were launched, and the kids didn’t play them!  The most popular games were and remained puzzles and traditional card games.  These kids already had Playstations and Gameboys; they played twitch games on the platforms that were best for twitch.  Online, on the family PC, in the browser, they played the same games as their Grandma because they were right for the platform.

The wisdom of the masses continues on mobile, where the top selling games are predominantly casual games.  It is not as if only old ladies are buying mobile games!  Mobile is definitely a casual platform.  Tetris, Poker, PacMan and Trivia are tops because the masses are aware of limited Time, limited Attention, and limited Platform whilst mobile.

To be a mass-market hit, games need broad (not old-broad) appeal.  Tetris is a great game, but if it were called “Molly’s Fashion Magic”, it would not have taken over the world.  On the other side, if Diner Dash were called “The Operational Art of Culinary Service”, it would have flopped like a medium rare steak dropped on the kitchen floor.  The best casual games cast the widest demographic net.

There will always be markets for all sorts of games: short and long, light or intense, and simple and intricate.  The most money potential comes from applying casual game thinking to mass-market theming.  You are better off with your target market being EARTH than AARP.

Casual games are any game that takes up small snippets of time, do not command undivided attention, and work on a wide range of platforms.  Likewise, a casual gamer is anyone with a moment to play, any amount of mental bandwidth, and any platform.  We are all casual gamers.

The way to make a mass-market game is by making it FOR the mass-market.  Tautological, isn’t it?  Too often, though, the people making games are not aware of what the Average Joe is watching, the typical Soccer Mom is reading, or what’s “playing in Peoria”.  Most Game developers make games from their frame of reference.  As a result, most games are by and for 30-something, Sci-Fi watching, Slashdot-reading, iPod-listening, Gap-shopping, guys who grew up playing D&D and Nintendo.

How can we get a different perspective? One way to gauge a game’s mass-marketness is to consider how your Mom would react to it and use it.  Odds are that your Mom has more in common with the Average American than the typical game developer does. 

Consider this: when your competition makes a game, they are constantly thinking about your Mom.  Don’t blame me, it’s true, I am just the messenger.  Your competition is obsessed with pleasing your Mom, her likes and dislikes, and how to get her to buy their game instead of yours.

Below is a snapshot look at the Average American, drawn from the US Census, surveys and market data.  In it I have substituted “Your Mom” in place of “The Average American”.  Let’s see how we do:

Your Mom has a household annual income of $48,201 and lives in the state where she was born.  She listens to CDs by Carrie Underwood, or Daughtry, or some other American Idol.  She watches four hours of TV a day, and her favorite shows are Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, CSI, Grey’s Anatomy, Wheel of Fortune and Oprah.  Mom drives a white or silver Japanese car, but almost half of her friends own big American trucks or SUVs.  She saw most of the Spider-Man, Shrek, and Pirates of the Caribbean movies in the theater.  Odds are she is Christian, owns a Bible, and prays almost once a day.  She reads Nora Roberts, James Patterson, Mitch Albom, and anything Oprah suggests.  Mommy talks on her Motorola cell phone about 25 minutes a day, but has never downloaded a game to it.  (By the way, did you know her ringtone is “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas?) Her favorite restaurants are Outback, Red Lobster and Ruby Tuesday.  Your mom shops at Walmart, Sears and Costco.  She websurfs 30 minutes a day on her dial up connection (though she uses broadband at work and will upgrade to broadband at home next month) and visits Yahoo, Ebay and Pogo. She has no idea what a WoW Guild, XBLA, Free BSD, BlueRay, or Podcast is.  Oh yeah, she wants you to call her more.

So as you consider the gameplay, theme, platform, difficulty level and marketing of your game, consider your mom as a mirror of the mass-market.  Don’t ship without observing your mom playing your game cold, and seeing what she finds fun, rewarding and challenging.  Doing so could expand your market reach, and the average American represents a potential market of 300 million people.

Note to the guys making “Panzergruppe Tactics 4: Eastern Front”, you already identified the 59 people who will buy your game, so good luck with that. 

For the rest of us making games for the mass-market, we’ll keep thinking about your mother.

The casual game sector is poised to burst into the virtual world ranks of EA and Blizzard.  VC firms are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the makers of games like Pam’s Pie Palace and Jewel Jammer, entrusting them to create massive persistent scalable interactive universes. It is hard to walk down Sand Hill Road and say “It’s like Ultima meets Seinfeld” without getting hit with a sack of cash.

The formula is self evident: First step, blend together the engineering of WoW with the casual publishers’ 2% of the shareware for Women 35-54 market; Next do step two; and then profit in step three from your Casual MMO.  To that end I have compiled an exhaustive and comprehensive list of all the casual game publishers who are NOT working on a casual MMO (see below).

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I have written about games needing Big Moments, just as life does.  It might not seem like much, but iQ212 got its first Harry and David holiday gift box delivered this week, as a gift from one of our partners (who? wait for the press release!).  In the growth of our company, this is a Big Moment. 

I may be sentimental this time of year, but getting the gift box was way more impactful than the signing of our CA incorporation papers (a bureaucratic denouement).  Getting the giftbox really validates our work over the past year; reminds us that we are not toiling in a vacuum.  The next Big Moment for iQ212 will be our company Christmas party; a celebration and “thank you” to the team and their families.  I guess every startup has similar moments, but this was ours.  Future big moments? our multi-platform product launch; paying taxes; cashing our first royalty check; IPO?!?!?.  Right now I am happy eating this pear.  Happy Holidays.

What a blast form Christmas past! I saw this on FARK today.  Some guy digitized the Sears Christmas Wishbook from 1982 onto Flickr.  I looked through the toys section with my daughters and not much has changed.  They found most of the same toys and brands that they have on their 2007 Santa lists (Barbie, electric guitar, Legos, Breyer horses, etc.). 

But Wait, There’s More! The Bestest part are the old-school electronic games!  Here is a link to a Flickr slideshow for the games section.  Check it out! How many of these did you have?  What didn’t your mom get you? How many DO you still have? (I bet Chen has most of them, in original packaging, in his garage!) 

One thing I noticed is that prices from 1982 to 2007 are about the same.  The prices for Barbie, Lego, Playmobil, and other staples are the same as they are now at Walmart.  And even Intellivision  was $259, the same as a console today.  The major price shift is in small electronic games; back in the day they cost fifty bucks, and now they are disposable Happy Meal toys!

So, what was on my Wishlist in 1982? Dark Tower, Vectrex, Merlin, and a bunch of Atari games.

It is that time of year: when there is a chill in the air, crappy flip phones attached to two-year contracts are given as gifts, and John Szeder (the Mayor of Mobile) composes another Yuletide ditty.  Please to enjoy…

Twas the night before Christmas, and on the carrier decks,
Many publisher’s games were revenue wrecks.
The GLU had just melted, Vivendi got sold,
Tetris part seven had just been declared gold!

Holiday crunching on games for new phones,
Caused QA headaches, long hours and moans.
The handsets are buggy, the firmware is broken,
Developers wished they lived in Hoboken.

The iPhone was shipping, a million people had bought.
Cheap javascript knockoff games are the best that they got.
Android was announced and was coming on the horizon,
And soon, you could get open access on Verizon.

“We are open!” declared carriers “come use our pipe!”
People were too busy making free calls on Skype.
So cheer up! It’s Christmas! And while the carriers slumbered
Open access for all means their days are numbered.

So ship your games and fix bugs with good cheer,
And Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year!

     –John “Burgermeister Meisterburger of Mobile” Szeder

This was just announced by CMP in a press release.  I am honored to be selected to speak at GDC Mobile this Feb 2008.  It is way cool to be in the same lineup as Mitch Lasky, John Szeder, DC Collier, Rob Tercek and others.  I have been a fan and attendee of the Games Developers Conference since as long as I can recall being in the games biz.

Back in the day, EA’s stance on GDC was, “There are only two reasons to go to GDC: to look for another job, or to divulge company secrets.”  I am sure there is plenty of blabbin and headhunting going on at GDC, but there is way more happening too.  I regard GDC as a reunion for honor roll students.  Friendly rivaly, tough competition, lots of learning, but most of all comraderie with one’s accomplished peers.

My talk is in the Design Track and will discuss the Best and Worst mobile game ever.  Hope to see you all in February 2008 at the SF Moscone Center for GDC.

In the past two weeks, shares of mobile game publisher Glu (GLUU) have tanked nearly 50%.  The business press have attributed the plunge to: 2008 guidance, revenue outlook, European troubles, brokerage cuts, take your pick.  The bottom line is that Glu was worth about 10 bucks a share last month, and now it is about half that.  This makes Glu a prime candidate for acquisition.

Glu is a really good mobile publisher, with strong studios, good distribution, terrific licenses, and up-and-coming internal IP.  With a market cap now at $157 million, cash reserves of $72m, and revenue of $63 million, this time is ripe for someone to acquire Glu for just 1.5X revenue.  This is a deal by any measure.

Who is in the market for a strong mobile division that could become instantly profitable after eliminating merger redundancies?  Warner Bros. has a relationship with Glu and recently acquired Travellers Tales.  WB has previously announced a $500m video games fund. Comcast is on the short list of media companies that lack a mobile branch.  IAC would benefit from mobile diversification. Heck, even EA would have made sense at one point, but Glu’s loss of Hasbro, and deals with EA’s rivals (Activision), would now curtail their interest. Microsoft has licensed them IP, and would benefit from an instant mobile infrastructure. 

And the long shot prediction to acquire Glu…(cue drumroll, hold envelope to forehead)…Popcap.  Popcap is swimming in cash, has games at Glu, and their concentration of Popcap casual game IP could make Popcap/Glu the #1 mobile publisher.