PAX Booth Babe Controversy

March 14, 2011

PAX East has come and gone, and with it quite a few great memories of yet another great gaming event.  We’re lucky to have it in Boston.  I wanted to highlight a minor controversy that erupted during the convention, concerning the use of models (so called “booth babes”) within the individual game exhibits–because the organizers [...]

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Massachusetts Challenges

March 11, 2011

I was at MIT BIG today, and sat on a panel about starting a gaming company in Massachusetts.
Afterwards, Hiawatha Bray quoted me in an article that combined PAX East with a discussion of the challenges met by Massachusetts companies.  I’m pleased to have gotten the word out on two points:

The total awesomeness of the fact [...]

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Social Games are Evil (and other stupid memes)

March 3, 2011

Have you heard the news? Social Games are evil. And they aren’t even games.
Of course, the term “social game” isn’t very helpful. When people criticize games as being evil (as Jonathan Blow did), or as not actually being games at all (like Nintendo’s Iwata recently did), they’re talking about social network games. I’ve pointed out [...]

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Startup Visa

March 1, 2011

While countries like Singapore and Chile and many other emerging economies are embracing the role of the entrepreneur, United States policy is lagging dangerously behind. Other countries embrace entrepreneurs and experts–while we’ve allowed visas that benefit startups to lapse. For a great introduction to the topic, please watch the following video:
Starting-Up in America from Starting-Up [...]

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Net Promoter Score for Social Gaming

February 28, 2011

Fast Company just published a list of their 50 most innovative companies for 2011 in their March issue. Their write-up for Zynga was particularly interesting; one of the things that leaped off the page for me is the suggestion that Zynga (and perhaps social game companies in general) have reached the apex of what can [...]

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Stages of MMORPG Addiction

February 26, 2011

I made the following graphic a few years back to describe how most people play through an MMO experience. It’s been buried until now, but I thought I’d take it back out.

World of Warcraft has been fun, and has defied this cycle to a large extent–but I’m about to check out RIFT and see what all [...]

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Why Won’t VCs Invest in Games?

February 25, 2011

I was giving a talk to a group of MBA students at Babson the other day, and was asked about why venture capitalists don’t fund game companies.
Of course, the premise of the question isn’t quite right. It doesn’t happen often, but venture capitalists do invest in game companies–everything from game content to game technology to [...]

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Non-technological Innovation

February 24, 2011
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In some recent posts I mentioned that an entrepreneur utilizes innovation to create a business; a few people thought this overemphasized technology.
You can certainly have innovation without technology:

Business model innovation: new methods of payment, new ways to package services, new pricing models. Long ago, mortgages were a huge innovation. Book-of-the month clubs were a way [...]

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Trump Network as an Entrepreneurship RPG

February 23, 2011

If you’ve used the Internet in the last year, then no doubt you’ve seen advertisements for the Trump Network. Here is one that I just saw on Facebook:

I admire Donald Trump for his ability to leverage his name into success in so many markets. Nevertheless, I was a bit surprised when he attached his [...]

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Storytelling in Games

February 22, 2011
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I’ve recently had a lot of positive things to say about the role of storytelling: that it’s the way to make games (or any experience) a lot more fun. It helps focus you on experiences. Storytelling places your player in the center, because the story in a game is about them.
Now I’m going to say [...]

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