June 2010
1 post
Reply to O2's Ronan Dunne About Their Proposed...
(Posted here because O2 took to censoring comments from Ronan’s blog post)
(Which can be found here: http://j.mp/DataBlog )
Ronan, your position on data makes no sense at all. Here’s what’s actually going on:
O2 (and other cell carriers in the US and other places) are simply terrified of what happens when the larger bulk of their users starts to realise that they can use...
May 2010
5 posts
BTOpenzone
Does anyone understand the rhyme or reason why some of their hotspots are iPhone accessible and some are not? It drives me nuts because it means my iPhone will often jump on a hotspot automatically only to be disconnected from the Internet (such as while listening to Last.FM)
April 2010
10 posts
Interpersonal Intellectual Orgasm
From (of all places) a horoscope mail I was sent. Can you think of a better description of the ideal relationship between game developers and players?
A reader named Emory proposes that we add a new meme to the cultural lexicon: *interpersonal intellectual orgasm.* Here’s how he describes it: “It happens when your conversation with another person becomes so intense that nothing else...
Seth's Blog: "Powerpoint makes us stupid"--these... →
February 2010
22 posts
Mafia on Buzz, 8PM GMT (12PM Pacific), an... →
Glitch: the new game from Stewart Butterfield and... →
Twitter Reactions: See What Twitter is Saying... →
Facebook Passes the 400 Million User Mark →
StartupList: Day 1 — Thank You →
Become a Gmail Master Redux [Hack Attack] →
My instant reactions to the new Facebook redesign...
First impressions matter. So, in that vein, I just clicked open my Facebook profile, and here’s my immediate reactions:
Like the new featuring of games and apps in a much more visible space. Much better than the grey bar at the bottom which people couldn’t see.
Dislike the disappearance of Lists. I use lists quite a lot to see what’s going on in my various groups of friends....
StartupList: Day 1 — Thank You - Venture Hacks... →
Time to Liberalise Immigration (#government...
(http://startupvisa.com/modified-eb5-visa/)
There’s a really interesting movement going on in the US at the moment calling for the creation of a “Startup Visa”. Broadly speaking, the movement’s founders believe that entrepreneurship is the soul of the US economy but that the immigration laws in the US are acting as a serious constraint on the supply of entrepreneurs into...
Wired 9.12: Take The Autism-Spectrum Quotient Test... →
Be Authentic (#games #marketing #social)
In a previous post I wrote that the primary mistake that game makers have often made is lacking a marketing story behind their games, and how that reflects an attitude of thinking of your players as distraction-seekers rather than would-be members of your treehouse. Even when they accept this, the follow-on mistake that game makers then commit is that they try and create a fake story at the last...
WatchSeth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain on Vimeo (via Vimeo)
January 2010
20 posts
Ethical Design: Are Most Social Games Just Virtual...
Alan sent me a link to a curious new game on Facebook the other day called Warstorm. The idea seems to be that of a card game in which you select heroes and troop units and fight battles. At first I thought it looked interesting, with comparatively high graphical polish compared to most and even some reasonably stirring music. However, after taking time to choose cards and build a squad etc, the...
New SGN CEO on the Future of Social Gaming. →
The coming Facebook games price war (#socialgames)
Long anticipated and dreaded, Facebook is essentially going to turn off what has been effectively free banner advertising for game developers like Playfish or Zynga for a little over a year, and it’s absence will be noted. Notifications are dead.
It seems likely (anecdotally) that the major developers are all serving at least one Notification per day to every user who has their app...
Bedtime thought: Will the end of Notifications in Facebook lead to a price war in game ads?
Twitter Fail Whale is back. I blame @BillGates joining today.
Steve Blank: Rethinking the Product Development... →
Facebook Platform Email API Going Live Today;... →
Players are for life, not just for Christmas
Probably the most critical problem that most game makers share is that of not understanding their customers. Publishers often throw huge resources into developing and publishing a game, advertising it, and doing PR for it etc, only to have it fail in the market. And then they blame external forces for this (market conditions, piracy, the recession, whatever).
The mistake that they are making is...
Ribbon Hero: Microsoft Office becomes a game.... →