Pizza Time!

Well, we here at GamearraY are burning the midnight oil towards our Orange Israel launch. It is amazing how in every R&D project the "last mile" is always the most tedious, but also the most important.

After dozens of man-months, you already have all the heavy infrastructure up and running with sophisticated algorithms and an impressive backend, but the smallest thing in the interface, such as a non-clear message can confuse users and result (in our case) in decreased downloads and hence decreased revenues.

Anyway, I am devoting most of my time to that task now, but I will try to squeeze in a few posts, maybe in the weekends. Now I have to go to order some pizzas, otherwise known as "programmers fuel"...

But before I go, I will leave you with this great parody from MadTV (SNL wannabes) sent to me by one of the programmers here. I won't explain it, but it is related to one of my earlier posts about the iPhone.... and its quite good... (And if you didn't see Steve Jobs' keynote where he announced the iPhone, you'd better see that first to understand the context)...

So here it is - enjoy...

Finding the right tools

I spent a lot of time during the weekend finding the right tools to promote this blog and to provide means of keeping touch with its readers (Yes, that's what I did with my weekend...)

The variety of solution that are out there for bloggers are just mind boggling! You have blog search engines, RSS feeds enhancers, statistics gathering and analysis tools, links managers, mailing lists, widgets providers, hosting for videos/pictures etc.

I am personally using Feedburner to "burn" my feed (don't ask me what that means - these guys just told me it's good...), ShinyStat to know how many readers I have and from which countries, Technorati to search enable my blog, MySpace to store external images (not post related, and yes I know that's not what MySpace is for...), YouTube to store videos, Google Groups to send posts as emails (and I am checking now FeedBlitz out for the same purpose, so people won't have to have a Gmail address), I think I enabled readers to Digg my posts (I can't even remember) and I am now exploring whether del.icio.us is worth the trouble... I may have forgotten some, but you get the picture...

Now these are only the one I use, and I am relatively new to the blogosphere. Anyway, blogging gets really complicated (if you want people to actually read what you are writing... otherwise it is quite simple, but then why write at all?...).

I wish there was a one-stop shop for all these things, but the reality of things is that though some try to give you a broader package (Like Feedburner's recent stats addition), there's always a best of breed solution that gives you exactly what you need in a specific area, so you wind up using an aggregation of different services. So, what's the conclusion? None for today, just wanted to share my blogger's plight with you guys... next post I promise to actually blog and not just complain about blogging...

Surfing against the waves...

Mobile web browsing has always been a "second best" experience up until now. And in fact when I am saying second best, I don't mean it in the Carl Lewis vs. Ben Johnson way, but rather in the Carl Lewis vs. a three-legged turtle: slow, lame and has a hard shell... (BTW - To fully appreciate this analogy you have to know that a shell is also another name for a user interface - really, look it up here!).

There are two approaches to mobile browsing. One says that since devices are getting more sophisticated and can support more elaborate operating systems and also have bigger screens (not to mention the great bandwidth of 3G networks and up), it is just a matter of time until mobile phones will have browsers that don't require any special treatment of the web on the mobile. The other approach says that mobile browsing will always stay a different experience and as such, will need special treatment and solutions.

If you read my blog regularly, you probably know that I think that the latter is more accurate. Sure, the first approach holds an amazing promise with it: No need to change content, everything that is on the web, is on the mobile: regular HTML pages, Dynamic HTML, Java Applets, Flash applications, ActiveX controls, the whole "gang"... Also, no need for resizing and reformatting due to different resolutions.

This dream would of course be the nightmare of companies that are trying to bridge the current gap between the web and the mobile web. These include transcoding solutions, mobile browsers vendors and even current J2ME applications and games.

However, the reality of things makes this dream stay in the fantasy realm. One of the most major trends in the web world today is transferring logic from the server side to the client side, thus making the browser work much harder and become not as thin as it was several years ago. Current web applications use AJAX that usually (or more accurately always) involve sophisticated JavaScript intended to emulate desktop applications behavior as the past passive web applications. Many of those application don't work on older browsers (BTW - Internet Explorer 6.0 is getting old real fast nowadays...)

This means that not only mobile devices have to catch up with all the technologies I mentioned before, but they also face the challenge of keeping up with desktop web technologies that as it seems now will keep pushing more and more logic to the client side. And not to forget the device fragmentation problem: In order for us to be able to serve mobile web content as regular web content - ALL devices from ALL major vendors have to adopt this approach and implement it, since if you have to do something special for one, and another special thing for another - you have transcoding issues in your hands...

Another major factor is screen sizes, that as I mentioned before won't get substantially bigger. As far as I know the highest resolution that is convenient to watch on a 2+ inch screen is about 480x640 (Not really widely available on the market - but I saw it in last year's 3GSM). Even this resolution which is considered to be great for mobile phones, is not that good for web: Today many sites have ceased to support 800x600 since most users use 1024x768 and up. So if you bump into a site that doesn't handle lower resolution you would have to scroll horizontally, which is no picnic, especially with a handset...

So, it seems that we still have to be creative regarding mobile web. Today's array of solution include specialized mobile browsers, server-side transcoding both for images and for the text/HTML itself (That is also a problem - different devices treat several HTML tags differently). Also, J2ME applications cover the gap when a better experience is sought after (For example Google's Gmail mobile application).

Anyway, it seems to me that between the ideal, almost Utopian approach and the current day solutions, there is a lot of margin for new and exciting developments, and in fact I am inspecting one myself these days. Anyone else?...

P.S. - No turtles were harmed during the writing of this post...

Soon to come...

I haven't gotten around to post too many posts lately due to the fact that we are in the midst of the integration process of GamearraY in Orange Israel. We are going live there soon, and there's a lot to do, so even though I have a lot of issues I would like to adress here, these might be somewhat delayed.

Working with an operator is a very demanding process, lots of coordination between R&D team, project managers, IT/Security personnel etc. (And that's after passing all the legal/commercial stages way before the actual work begins).

One of the major tasks is of course skinning the entire platform to fit the operator's brand. As you can see in the picture our opening screen for our mobile application was painted orange (I wonder why?...) and our platform will be whitelabeled as "MyGame" (which I think is quite a good consumer name).

When we go live, I promise to update here. We have worked a lot for this project to happen and I can't wait to actually see it on the air. Then I will be also able to elaborate on the business model, and of course give the link to the skinned site.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, there are many issues I would like to address in the following posts, and among them are: Mobile cameras, Mobile TV business models, What makes mobile applications useful, The rising and falling handsets vendors, Operators and their walled-gardens (not for long?...), Operators vs. Gateways/Brokers and more; I am writing all of this here so I won't forget...

So "stay tuned", I'll try to "squeeze in" some of these despite all that's happening (And I promise to lower the dosage of double quotes; I have used too many of those in this sentence...)

Korea and Japan - Mobile pioneers

I met today with executives from KOTRA, the commercial section of the Korean embassy. It made me think (again) about the the gap between the western markets (US/Europe) vs. the Far-east Asian markets, and Especially South Korea and Japan (China is also an interesting place to look at, but entirely different).

I think that there's a huge potential in linking western innovations to the Asian markets. Now, don't get me wrong, these markets have also enough innovation of their own... But still it seems to me that some of the mobile content products I have personally seen in the past year could be a perfect match for these markets, but instead the developing companies are first targeting the western markets, since they are easier to reach, which is of course a sound decision, but it seems that along the way the Asian opportunity is forgotten altogether.

It seems that advanced mobile content services are greatly adopted by the Japanese and the Koreans. And it all starts from the handsets, if you have an antique handset, you can't download any content at all. Handsets in Korea and Japan are more sophisticated, but this has nothing to do with their availability or prices.

Nowadays, you can get a great device even in Europe/US, but problem is that people are just not "buying it"... It seems that a rather small proportion of the population even cares about the advanced features. I really don't know the Korean/Japanese cultures to be able to figure out why there's such a huge difference, but I guess it's worth exploring.

It seems that these cultures have pioneered the advancement in mobile content. The only question when evaluating a product that launched successfully in Korea/Japan is whether it will be successful in western markets (with a certain delay) or will it not be applicable at all. Take Cyworld for example (The link here is to the US site just in case you are not fluent in Korean...). This virtual community built by SK Telecom and launched in Korea back in 1999, is something we are just now starting to see in western markets, and it seems to connect quite well with the whole personalization trend across the web and the mobile.

Now let's look at the numbers: In a research by Juniper the Asia Pacific region which has dominated the market since its inception is forecast to contribute 38% of cumulative revenues in the next 6 years. It also mentions that Japan and South Korea are the most dominant within that region.

By the way according to the research, Europe is the second region with 31% and North America comes in third with 22%. However, in terms of the number of content downloads, Asia is and will be accountable for 60% of downloads in the world (!). The gap between the numbers (38% vs. 60%) is due to the lower prices of content downloads there (mostly influenced by the other economy factors there).

According to another research revenues from mobile gaming this year only in South Korea by itself will exceed $275M. And this is where the worldwide market is estimated at $1B-$3B, which means that's approximately 10%-30% of the worldwide market for a single country.

These numbers are amazing, and what's more amazing is that western companies don't find the time/resources to explore opportunities there. However, as Trip Hawkins, the CEO of Digital Chocolate (who also founded EA, the #1 gaming company, valued at more than $15B) says in a recent interview: "If you look at Japan and Korea, you can see where the world will go." BUT: "The markets of Japan, Korea, and China are relatively closed. You can only really do business if you are located there, and you also have to be pretty intimate with the cultures. Most mobile companies are not large enough to operate like a Microsoft."

The good news are that some companies do find a way to pass these barriers. For example, Newt Games, a french company, which launched Mogi Games in Japan (with KDDI). Mogi is not only an M3RPG (=mobile MMORPG), which is already a challenge in western markets nowadays, but it also adds an LBS aspect to the game. Mogi players have to collect virtual items that are "placed" in physical locations. For instance, an apple can be placed in a specific address in Tokyo, to get that item (which you see on the map in your phone) you would have to actually go to that address, or contact a teammate that is close by. I can't begin to describe the different challenges here in western markets. Just defining the audience that would be interested in all these things (or even finding them...) would be quite difficult.... However, in Japan it all makes sense.

Anyway, I can write forever on this subject, so I'd better stop here, but I am planning on researching this subject more in-depth. If I'll have something new - you'll hear about it first...

YouTube Downtime

Hmmm... Just when I am using YouTube to share some great videos in my blog - a scheduled downtime is what I get...

Makes you think about the responsibility of all the videos/pictures/you-name-it sharing sites - I know it's free and I know it's not exactly what you would call "life supporting", but I guess there are millions of frustrated bloggers and blog-readers right now all over the world, not understanding where their videos went...

Anyway, if you bumped into my blog and the post below about the Wii commercial doesn't show the videos (which are the whole point of this blog entry) - YouTube is probably still having its "nap"... So, you can read the other posts, but get back for this specific one - I promise it's worth it... BIGTIME...

Mac vs. PC and Wii vs. PS3...

Well since I just posted a story about Apple, and one of my main fields of expertise is gaming, I though I'd share with you a great commercial I just bumped into (And no, I am not affiliated with Apple or Nintendo in any way...)

I guess most of you already know this brilliant Apple commercial that emphasizes the user-friendliness of the mac vs. the business-only image of the PC (And you haven't seen it, you have to see this video first to understand the context of the next one):



Now (Actually a few months ago, but I just bumped into it now), The G4TV channel has made an homage to this commercial, comparing Sony's PS3 with Nintendo's Wii console (which as it seems now is turning to be a great success). The result is much better, and more "easy on the eyes" if you like (And I like...):



Just hilarious... I think the peak is when the "PS3" is screaming "Have you ever even heard of the Blu-Ray?!? It's the future..." (Referencing to Sony's battle against the HD-DVD...). Maybe you missed that line since the "Wii" is showing what she can do in the exact same moment...

And BTW - This commercial already got attention even from feminist columnists... I guess that's the reason why it is not a real Nintendo commercial but rather a fake G4TV one...

iPost on iPhone...

Well, this is how the apple.com homepage looks like now... Just another sign to show you how much hope apple is putting in this hybrid device... That is if you didn't figure it out yet from Steve Jobs's kickoff keynote at the Macworld Conference & Expo 2007 in San Francisco.

Actually watching this keynote made me laugh; judging by the screams of the mac-enthusiastics audience I thought for a second that maybe Madonna stepped onto the stage and is about to perform one of her songs, but no - it was just Steve Jobs, announcing a new gadget...

All the excitement aside, we all know that in fact Apple is actually a follower here, as both Microsoft and mobile device vendors such as Nokia already have devices that are a combination of a phone, an MP3 Player and an internet device as the iPhone claims to be.

However, apple succeeded in renovating the MP3 players market and turn it into a mainstream device, leaving first movers such as Creative way behind. Add to that the fact that Microsoft's smartphones are far from being mainstream and Apple's natural talent for user interface and I think we can safely assume that the door is open for Apple to make the next revolution, provided they deliver everything they promise.

I have written a lot in this blog about the size of the device being a barrier from making it to the mainstream market. This challange is true for the iPhone too: On one hand, you want the screen to be as big as possible to allow convenient internet browsing (not to mention video watching). But on the other hand, if the device is too big, people who are "in it" for the phone, and just enjoy the extra features would simply not carry it.

Anyway, these are just my initial thoughts, to get a real perspective on whether it answers the many challanges ahead I would simply have to try it myself. So, Steve - If you send me one, I promise to give it a go...

User Generated Games

GamearraY in Action: Game Wizard/FaceGrabber and Game Editor


I was asked to participate in a panel about user generated games in the Casual Connect Conference this February in Amsterdam. This made me look back at the long way I have walked since I first came up with the concept of GamearraY till this day.

When I first came up with my idea of allowing people to actually create their own mobile games back in 2004, it seemed weird to a lot of people. And this shouldn't be too surprising, as in that time even more "mainstream" user generated content (such as videos, pictures, blogs) were not as popular and hyped as they are today (Can you believe that YouTube was founded just two years ago in February 2005?...).

And even now, when everyone knows that user-generated content is the way to go, it seems that games still did not get the "treatment" that videos, pictures and blog got in the user generated content department.

However, there's something in the air, and I do believe that this is going to change very soon. In fact, I am also aware of several initiatives of several companies besides GamearraY that are now in the process of launching their own user-generated games portal. These companies include a known games publisher, a known media corporation and as always mobile content companies. Some of these are also in contact with us to use our technology for that end.

But for me, and for many other gamers, user generated games is not new at all. In fact it has been here for a long time, maybe not served as neat as consumer user generated content (UGC)sites, but there is already a community of people who make their own games or modify other people's games.

And I am referring here to the phenomenon known as modding. Modding is short for "modifying" and in the gaming world it means taking as existing game and modifying various aspects of it (usually the assets but sometimes also the logic itself). This is usually done either with tools provided by the game publisher itself, or sometimes by hacking the game and changing stuff inside even if the publisher didn't actually want that to happen.. So for example you can take a dark 3D-Shooter and turn the scenery from a battlefield to an hawaiian village and the missile launcher to a "coconut launcher" etc. (And that's a real example from a mod to the classic Duke Nukem 3D).

Now one of the questions I am always being asked is whether people actually want to make their own games, or rather play ready made ones. By the level of involvement that "modders" are showing - I can definitely say that they do. There are entire sites and groups dedicated to modding, and the members are usually investing their time in creating complex art work such as 3D models of new monsters and heroes. Just to get a taste you can go to Planet Quake (hosted at GameSpy) which is dedicated to modding of the legendary 3D shooter Quake. The site includes news, featured "mods" and it has a very active community.

Aside from modding, which is usually a term used for modifying 3D games, there are also other games that have accumulated a big enough fan base that started producing their own games. One such genre is Sierra's old AGI quests (King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest etc.). People have actually reverse-engineered Sierra's quest engine and built an editor for it, and people actually made a lot of amatuer games back in the time).

Now, these all require a lot of effort and talent, and usually indeed groups of artists and programmers and other creative people come together to form groups that actually make mods or games (For example the modding groups PPM and Pocket Plane). This comes to show that there is real interest in making games. The question is - how wide is the market for that?

It is clear that not all people are "modders" and in fact, even though they have quite an impressive footprint on the web, these guys form a rather small community. However, we should remember a few things here. First off, unlike consumer-facing sites, they use professional offline tools, and the level of complexity they are involved is rather deep. What if people had easy access to online tools that allow games modification, and not only that - they didn't have to actually model 3D sprites (not an easy task...) but just pick and choose existing characters and place them wherever they want, maybe accesorize them etc. (BTW - this is not unlike what people already do in the "*craft" games, but in a different context).

In addition, like any UGC community, the ratio between the contributers/uploaders and users/downloaders is 1 to 1000s (and even more). So, we don't need everyone to be able or even to want to make their own game, we just need a core community that has the ability and desire to contribute and can produce quality content, that will appeal to thousands of users. The only thing we have to do to make it happen is to provide the community with both the tools for content/games creation and the community tools (publishing, messaging, profiles etc.)

I also wanted to write a bit about the difference between user generated content and personalization, but it will have to wait to the next post as I have to get going. Just to touch on the subject: most of the things I described here is UGC. However there's great potential in just allowing people to perosnalize games, meaning put their own face on top of the body of the hero, their teacher/boss face on the villain etc. This can appeal even to non-gamers, and this is why in GamearraY we put extra emphasis on that segment as well by providing a 3-steps wizard, and a "FaceGrabber" that allows quick and easy game personalization. To see that youcan watch the video above or simply go to GamearraY and personalize our "School Getaway" game.

(Sorry for the extra promotion in this post to GamearraY, but what can I do - we are the best at user generated and personalized games... and here I did it again...)

Mobile Blogging

While I cannot claim to be an expert on mobile blogging, I do feel that now that I have made my first post from the mobile I have some insights, if only as a user...

The trigger that made me post from my mobile was that after I took a picture with my K800i, one of the menu items alongside "delete" and "take new picture" was "Blog this" that took me to Google's Blogger web-site (which happens to be the service I am using to write this blog). This is a result of some integration work between SonyEricsson and Google and I guess it is not the only cooperation we will see.

Anyway, while the picture I took didn't come through at the end, I started typing some words. I have to say that on first thought mobile blogging seems to be the most natural thing: Blogging is all about self expression and telling everyone about your experiences , and what's more natural than writing about your experiences right after they actually happen (in contrast to waiting until you are at home in front of your computer etc.)

And it seems like the mobile phone could be our saviour here: It is always with you, it has an internet connection and it even has a camera through which you can (theoretically...) capture the moment.

But as soon as I started typing my post, I understood that there's a HUGE barrier here: The keypad... At this point I have to mention that I consider myself to be quite a good SMS-er... maybe I cannot compare with today's kids that grew with mobile phones, but I am quite good... But still after a few sentences I was completely "exhausted" (if that's the right term to use in this case..).

Everyone knows that typing with standard phone keypads is quite annoying, and even with the new T9 dictionaries that don't require you to strike each key a few times (if it is a known word) it is still no match for the computer's keyboard that actually lets you use both your hands and not only one finger. When you type on your mobile phone, most of you fingers are "busy" holding the mobile phone and you have only your thumb to type with. You can also try to type with your other thumb (or the other fingers of your other hand) but this may prove to be uncomfortable usually, due to collisions between the two fingers on their way to the next letter...

Anyway, one of the requirements for a good blogging expereince is being able to express yourself freely - when you are limited in such a way that your thoughts precede everything you type by far, you get quite frustrated at the end.

You may say that with advanced devices like Blackberry and Nokia's E61 things are different since it is much easier to type, but it is still no match for the keyboard and these are not mainstream devices - and never will be. Not because of their price (Which can be quite low in some packages) but because of their form factor. If it doesn't fit in your pocket without competing for space with your private parts - it is not a mainstream device... (And forgive me for being so colorful...)

So, to conclude, I haven't become a fan of mobile blogging, but I do think that if we acknowledge these limitations we can create an experience which is more adapted to mobile devices. For example mobile photo blogging can work -you can post a picture with some short descriptive text (no longer than a common SMS) - and there you have it: People can see what you did, where you have been - and that's mobile blogging for you.