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

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.

The article is about emoticons, not EMOTICONS ^TM, but is still interesting ;-). Alex Williams wrote the article in the Sunday NYT Fashion and Style section.  It was about the history, and cultural status of emoticons.  The gist is that the use of emoticons is now mainstream, mass-market; used by young and old in both casual and business emails and IMs.  Hmm, I bet they would make a terrific theme for a game! :-P

LINK: Sunday July 29th 2007 NYT Article about Emoticons

In the few past years, several “industry experts” have declared both the TV sitcom and the Match-3 puzzle game, “dead”.  True enough, both formats have seen better times (as in #1) as far as ratings and critical acclaim.  Friends and Bejeweled are so 2003!  What else do these two different forms of mass-market entertainment have in common?

Both get cloned.  Call it “ripping-off”, or just riding the wave of public demand, both sitcoms and puzzle games spawn copy cats.  Suburban families, falling gems, urban hipsters, or nothing, results in a slew of similar shows/games.  Just as several UK shows enjoyed greater success when re-envisioned as US shows, several Japanese console games have been reinvented in the US to lead the casual game market.  Sometimes an imported premise results in something great (All in the Family), but even then that show spawned six spinoffs!  For my money (and Popcap’s!), there is nothing wrong with taking a clever premise and making something better and more marketable out of it. 

Popular culture is cyclical, and both sitcoms and games are subject to the whims of the entertainment tides.  Too often, though, entertainment industry executives tire of a format, genre, or game mechanic, and then insist on changing gears and chasing a fad.  When Idol is hot, every studio wants more talent shows; when medical dramas are the craze, dozens of hospital shows are greenlit.  What stays constant is the mass-market’s demand to be entertained by GOOD programs.  Just because the industry insider is tired of the same ol’ pitches, does not mean that the public is done consuming them. 

It’s like the tortoise and the hare.  Shows like Ozzie and Harriet, or The Simpsons settled into long runs.  Similarly, Bejeweled was not a smash hit for being number one once, but for being in the top twenty for five years.  Today, in a publishing market that is cool to Match-3 games, they still sell very well with the public (as PC downloads they ranked third behind Click Management and Hidden Object, but ahead of everything else by a wide margin.)

The Sitcom, and Match-3 games, also share similar benefits (some are benefits to the publisher, others are benefits to the player).
• Affordable to produce – sitcoms have one set, match-3 has one screen of assets
• Shallow learning curve – you can play any match-3 just as you can laugh at any pratfall.
• Lack of Complexity – both are done in a sitting, and can be picked up again anytime without missing a beat.
• Limited attention span – you can do other tasks while simultaneously enjoying them.
• Approachable – the themes and interactions of both play well to the broadest audiences.
• Localizable – they can easily be repackaged and enjoyed around the world.
• Multiple formats – this is the cincher.  Just as sitcoms translate well to additional revenue streams like web, DVD, airline viewing, iPods, syndication, etc., so do Match-3 games easily port.  In fact, a Match-3 game can more than double its revenue on mobile alone.  That leaves iPod, console, arcade, set-top-box and other revenue opportunities as gravy.  Aveyond and Dream Day Wedding don’t port as well and will miss those opportunities.

Critics and experts may get bored with things as they become popular, but the mass-market always knows what it wants.  Next time you watch The Office on your iPod or catch a new Simpsons on Sunday, consider that you can also play Bejeweled on your iPod or find a fresh Match-3 game online.  Sitcoms and Match-3 games are staples of popular entertainment and will be with us and evolving for decades to come.  Match-3 games are not “played out” to the audience, and more importantly, they are fresh and approachable to the 95% of the world who has not yet discovered “casual games”.

Poor Infusio.  They just learned the hard way that mobile licensors are just warming the mobile slots for the media companies they are licensing from.  According to this article “Microsoft sued over Halo mobile“, MSFT wants out of their agreement with Infusio, and Infusio is accusing MSFT of sandbagging on approvals of Infusio’s Halo mobile designs.  
 
The way I read it, Infusio paid $2mil for the priviledge of teaching Microsoft how to build and deploy mobile games.  Midtown Madness, AOE and ZooTycoon were just chum to get the waters ready for Microsoft’s grand entrance.  Now that the Redmond gang are up to speed in mobile, they want their rights back so they can publish themselves into the deckslots and goodwill built up by Infusio.  It doesn’t hurt that Halo is their crown jewel and they will have their own internal mobile game to launch with Halo 3. 

The ultimate upside in a deal like this is not getting to publish Halo; the gold medal ribbon is having Microsoft acquire you.  This lawsuit seems to indicate that Infusio ain’t gonna win the gold medal ribbon.

I got this email today from John Szeder, the Mayor of Mobile.  Merry Christmas!

Twas the night before Christmas, the porting was done.
Greg Ballard was flaunting his new S-1.

“We’re burning $10Mil, our poor ship will sink,”
“unless we get bought by Time Warner, Inc!”

All other execs thought glu were the champs,
because their comp plans were just stock and food stamps.

Hands On re-orged, to their 2005 management team.
Like a season of Dallas their ’06 was just a dream.

And Dchoc is shipping a title with  brands.
The logic for which, no one else understands.

Tira keeps JUMPing and THQ moved to the sticks,
Limelife keeps making games for chicks.

And Santa stood ready with his phone at the North Pole
“NO SIGNAL” it said in the world’s biggest coverage hole.

And he wished he had games to play as he rode off into the night
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

John Szeder is the CEO of mobile developer and publisher Mofactor, the creators of Duckshot.

I caught five minutes of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show on CBS last night [I was looking for the news, honest! ;) ] In that five minutes I was shocked to hear the models SPEAK! The VS angels held interviews and had lots of soundbites backstage. Not a good idea. Bad idea! In the catalog, their voices sound like Kate Winslett and Rachel Weisz!!!!! They really do, ask any guy. In reality, on CBS, they croak like chain-smoking Albanian telephone operators. Where are Lina Lamont and Eliza Doolittle’s diction coaches when you need them? “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.” “Rrrounnd tones!”.

Top Ten ways the world would be different if our bathrooms were run like mobile game decks:

10) Though 35 year old women purchase and use the most toilet paper, focus groups of 18 year old boys would dictate the color, scent, and ply count of all TP.

9) The best selling toilet style would be an antique wall-hung pull-chain water closet designed in Russia.

8) There would be 147 standards for the width of TP rolls.  Most TP holders would hold a roll with 64 sheets the size of postage stamps, and only a tiny fraction could accommodate a roll of 256 two-ply sheets.

7) Flushing would require the simultaneous use of both thumbs.

6) Toilet paper would only be sold at the hardware store, or by mailorder from Scandinavia.

5) Bidets would be used only in France.  (oh yeah, they already are.)

4) People would adopt “If its yellow let it mellow, if its brown flush it down” as the norm, to avoid overage charges for water.

3) There would be a lot of crap in the system.

2) It would be impossible to talk while pooping.

And Finally, the number one way the world would be different if our bathrooms were run like mobile game decks:
1) 96% of people would still be using wooden outhouses!

Movies, TV, … games ?          http://www.princeton.edu/~ina/infographics/movies.html = infographic

The killer infrographic (linked above) reinforces the point that entertainment consumption worldwide is not too different than what we enjoy here, mostly because our entertainment is happily imported around the globe.  One could argue that the newpaper is still local, but Rupert Murdoch and CNN are doing their best to undermine even that provincial bastion.

One point of contention with an assumption in the infographic.  I would be inclined to give Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Bridget Jones and Tomb Raider to the UK.  Or at least split the difference with them.  That said, they were hits in America and the films were made by US studios primarily for the US market.

Overall point being that (except for in France where entertainment imports are restricted) in the UK and most European nations, only 10-20% of their entertainment is produced in their home countries.

Bottom line: If it plays in Peoria it will play in Piccadilly, Prague, and Palermo.  It is not presumptuous for us to make a hit product and expect it to be a hit around the world.  There is an appetite around the world for our brands, stories, production values, and technical abilities.

John Hench, the legendary Imagineer who worked for over 60 years for Disney gave a lecture about his work.  Below are some exceprts that express how he, and Walt, set about desiging for a mass-market audience. Good lessons for making OK games good, and good games great.

“Audiences respond to our animated movies because they are about survival. People respond to them. Survival is the basis for all games. There is a power of theater in it. Maybe why we have no resistance to entertainment is because it teaches us about survival. At the park, we toss a pseudo-menace at you and we allow you to win. You might feel you are going too fast for safety but it really is safe and eventually, you win and you feel good about winning. They are feeling things, maybe something they haven’t felt in years because they’ve been doing humdrum kind of things where they haven’t felt those feelings.” 

“There is a greater sense of order. At a state fair or carnival, everything clamors for you, so you look and look and try to make sense out of all these chaotic images. You are forced into making a lot of judgments. At Disneyland, when it comes to a ‘decision point,’ we try to offer only two choices. We don’t give seven or eight so that you really have to work hard to decide which is the best of those choices. We only offer two and then a little farther along, we give another two. They are still getting those seven or eight choices eventually but we are unfolding them gradually in segments so it is less overwhelming.

“This low-level of consciousness which we exploit is the extraordinary invention of the (Disney) Studio. Other parks fail at details because they are built by people who don’t understand images. Images override everything.”

There are lessons here for all game designers who seek a wider, even mass-market audience.  You can read more about Mr. Hench’s lecture in Wade Simpson’s full article here.