Sorry for hogging all the carrier deck slots!  iQ212 has three mobile games live NOW on tier 1 carriers. We are livin’ the cross platform vision.

• Monopoly Tycoon for EA is a new twist based on the Hasbro license.  We improved the tycoon play with a clever once-around auction mechanic (thanks for the inspiration Dr. Knezia!) that works superbly for mobile gameplay. It is on every carrier and every handset everywhere on earth.
• Redneck Fishin’ is our own game IP and is published by Vivendi Games Mobile.  Yes, it plays like it sounds, you toss TNT at fish in a pond.  It has a cute/funny story where Brandi and Randy must save their homestead from Sheriff Buford. It is exclusive to Verizon and ATT at first, watch for it on other carriers later this year.
• Emoticons is our original puzzle game based on the chat smiles.  It is published on mobile by Konami.  You can play it on web, PC and now where ever you go whilst mobile.  Launched on T-Mobile and Verizon.  More carriers coming soon.

Microsoft is the new IBM. Google is the new Microsoft. Facebook is the new Google.

In the 80s, it was said that no one was fired for picking IBM. Microsoft was the hot new innovator in the 80s. In the 90s, got stagnant and then beloved for embracing open source. Microsoft turned into a villian. Five years ago Google was the new innovator that everyone loved. Now they are playing the kind of tricks we used to expect from Microsoft, while Microsoft is earning new love, probably coming from new leadership from Ray Ozzie.

It might feel early to some, but I think it’s time to say that no one will be fired for picking Google for their IT services. Search engine and adwords aside, Google’s office suite (especially email) is strong enough for the enterprise. But while Google has awesome products–products that are more exciting than Windows and Office ever were–it’s also playing games in the market.

Case 1: Android. Is Google serious? Yeah, it’s a move against Apple and the iPhone, but where’s the beef? Android phones should have been here by now. It’s not too late for Android to make a mark, but it does seem like Google announced early to scare off competitors. Fortunately, it hasn’t worked. Nokia/Symbian going open source is a strong move. And Motorola had news recently about their Linux phones, which actually are coming out. The more people at the party, the better for us users.

Case 2: Knol. A lot of people have noticed over the past few years that the top link on many searches at Google point to Wikipedia. For whatever reason, Wikipedia does not use Google adsense. They don’t have any ads. I remember Jason Calacanis begging them to put ads there, but they didn’t listen. Google can’t have so much traffic going off into non-monetized land. Their solution is to clone wikipedia and put ads on it. And just to make sure the traffic is going there, they seem to have juiced their search results. Techcrunch reported last week that Google Knol entries are appearing high in search results much faster than should be expected. That’s the kind of behavior that inspires Justice Department types. But worse, it erodes confidence in Google search results.

Case 3: Friend Connect. Google has clearly blown it in the social space. I don’t count them out entirely, but they have not been winning. Orkut is insigificant. They’ve been sneaking social features into Gmail and Reader, which depending on your perspective either treads close to or steps over the social contract with users. With Friend Connect, they seem to be pushing Facebook towards being more open and letting users keep hold of their data. This is a net positive for users because Facebook didn’t blink. They accelerated their own Connect strategy. Still, Google comes out looking like a bully in this.

At F8 last month, Zuckerberg talking about how the mission of this company is to bring people closer together, the enable better understanding of each other. That’s a big goal that sounds a lot like Bill Gates’ mission to have a computer on every desktop. Google’s do-no-evil motto seemed hip a few years ago, but their misteps sometimes make it seem like a joke. Their stated mission is to connect people to information. Boring. Give me the world-changing missing every time.

Lest there be confusion, I am in no way suggesting that Google itself is evil. It’s a corporation. Individuals are judged by morality, not abstractions. And I’ll be the last person to indict business and businessmen. If I could offer humble advice, I’d suggest to Google’s leadership that they not allow their teams to pull these tricks even if they seem to make sense in the short run.

Leon’s insightful writings regularly appear at www.leonatkinson.com

iQ212 has been in business for a year and we have finally launched our first game, Emoticons^TM.  It is an original puzzle game that is now available for PC and web/facebook, and will soon launch on mobile carriers.  Hopefully you will be seeing and hearing lots more about Emoticons as it spreads to new game portals and platforms.  Please try it out and let us know what you think. www.EmoticonsGame.com

A Pew Internet and American Life Project report is forshadowing the near future where mobile is really the most personal computer.  In a recent report, when asked how hard it would be to give up a specific technology, folks are more likely to say the cellphone would be most difficult to do without, followed by the Internet, TV, and landline telephone.

Backing up the story that we Americans love us some cell phones.  This week whilst watching Celebrity Rehab on Vh1, one of the participants made an interesting statement.  Jessica Sierra, a former American Idol contestant, was presented with a stay at a clean living facility to continue her clean and sober success after graduating from the Pasadena Recovery Center.  Jessica was distraut over the prospect, worried that an extended stay in rehab would interfere with her ability to work, and to EARN MONEY TO PAY HER CELL BILLS.  Here is a cocaine addict who is more concerned with her cell phone than with sobriety OR crack!

Those jokes about the T-mobile SideCrack, and the RIM CrackBerry are not so far off after all.

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.

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.