musings of a social architect

Parappa Plushie!

Could there be anything cuter than this Parappa the Rapper plush toy, complete with maracas? I don't think so :-) Too bad they're currently sold old - this definately goes on my holiday gift list.

UK Top 10 mobile games downloads - March 2005

Courtesy of Mobile Game Developer, here are the top mobile games this month in the UK.

1 WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? - MACROSPACE
2 STEVE DAVIS SNOOKER - IOMO
3 TETRIS - IFONE
4 GOLF CLUB - IOMO5 LEMMINGS - IFONE
6 3D POOL - DIGITAL BRIDGES
7 PACMAN - NAMCO
8 PUB POOL - IOMO
9 PUB DARTS - IOMO
10 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS - DIGITAL BRIDGES

370 million SMS messages a day in Korea

Though textually.org, I found this report about SMS messaging in Korea. italics mine

t turned out that Koreans send nearly 90m SMS messages a day. According to the statistics submitted by the Ministry of Information and Communication, daily average number of SMS messages sent as of March was 86m.... Considering that the number of mobile subscribers stood at 37m as of the end of March, an average subscriber sent more than two SMS messages a day.

However, the number soars to 370m adding the number of SMS messages sent from web to phone.

Hmmm... this means that people are sending 3x as many text messages from Web2phone as they are from phone2phone. So in Korea, the integration between PC-based communications and cellphone-based communication is moving along nicely.

I'd love to see similar stats from Japan -- where PC penetration is much lower than in Korea.

I wonder how this'll play out in the US?

Counting my Blessings

I'm finally settling in for the night, after a long, stimulating, productive day. Started off the morning by shipping off a bid for a mobile game development deal. Then I had several meetings at Yahoo -- with Kira Synder, a wonderful designer I worked with at There.com, and Neal Sample, a new friend that I met through Carly Staehlin.. Afterwards, I met up with Keith McCurdy and his team at Kayak Interactive, who I know from Electronic Arts and various startups. Then back home to fire off emails, finalize the design of a website project, make dinner for my family, and cuddle with my son before sending him off to bed.

It was great to reconnect with these cherished colleagues - it makes me remember how much I love the games industry, and how much I've learned from the people I've worked with. I feel very blessed to be able to have interesting work and a loving, close family. This is what I've always wanted - and today, I was living out that vision fully.

Neal and I both have kids, so we talked a lot about kid-friendly games. I recommended John Maeda's great Tap Type Write program, which is an art piece - and my single favorite computer S/W for toddlers. We spent many happy hours playing TapTypeWrite with Gabriel (who called it "the letter game") and now Neal gets to have some silly typographic fun with his little one.

To top it off, we're having incredibly gorgeous weather here -- the kind of clear, bright, vividly sunny days that make you feel light and happy, just by stepping outside. Life is good, and today I'm counting my many blessings.

"Uncomplicated" -- Hilarious Levi's Spot

I am so loving this Levi's ad, featuring GI Joe as a confused metrosexual.

Video Games Good 4 U?

As a parent of a 6-year-old who loves to play games of all types, it's great to see some evidence that video games might actually be good for you. One recent study found that playing video games was correlated with business skills. And then there's this review in The New Yorker about Steven Johnson's new book, "Everything Bad is Good for You," which claims that playing certain types of videogames is making kids smarter.

I see this effect first-hand. I see my son learning critical thinking and strategy skills as he plays Zelda or Pikman on the Gamecube. I see him learning about cause-and-effect and basic physics when he plays The Incredible Machine on the PC. I see him learning to read and sing on key as we play Karaoke Revolution on the Playstation.

I'm still gonna set a timer when my kid is playing games to make sure he doesn't O.D. -- and we'll continue spend a lot of time outdoors, riding bikes playing soccer, climbing trees, etc. But it's good to know that there's some support for the idea that the time we spend playing games is valuable, too.

Experience-based social networks

Recently, I've run across a collection of stimulating, insightful blog posts that crystalized something I've been mulling over for awhile.

1. zengestrom.com: Why some social network services work and others don't

Think about the object as the reason why people affiliate with each specific other and not just anyone. For instance, if the object is a job, it will connect me to one set of people whereas a date will link me to a radically different group. This is common sense but unfortunately it's not included in the image of the network diagram that most people imagine when they hear the term 'social network.' The fallacy is to think that social networks are just made up of people. They're not; social networks consist of people who are connected by a shared object. That's why many sociologists, especially activity theorists, actor-network theorists and post-ANT people prefer to talk about 'socio-material networks', or just 'activities' or 'practices' (as I do) instead of social networks....The social networking services that really work are the ones that are built around objects.

2. mobilegirl: No man is an Island

While Jyri uses "object" I tend to think of it more as "activity". People love to do things together, humans are social by nature. They group together to get things done. They meet one another based on similar interests.... When I was interviewing people about sharing pictures back at school last year, they talked a lot about "group sharing", but the groups were of specific purpose or activity. Some talked of making slideshows for the soccer team others talked about sharing with their burning-man friends. People oriented their groups of friends around things they like to do.

3. Seth's Blog: Nouns and Verbs

Investments are a noun. Investing is a verb.
Paint is a noun. Painting is a verb
A gift is a noun. Shopping for or giving one is a verb.

People care much more about verbs than nouns. They care about things that move, that are happening, that change.
They care about experiences and events and the way things make us feel.

I come out of the games industry, where people socialize around structured fun -- AKA games. Many (not all) games are object-based social experiences, as Jyri describes. But games are activities -- and as Anita points out, socializing around shared activities is much more powerful.

Activities and experiences are verbs -- and verbs are what get our attention. That's why online, persistent-ID games are so powerful, and so good at holding our attention - they're experience-based social networks where your persona evolves over time.

I'm looking forward to seeing today's object-based social networks evolve in this direction.

Barbie USB Drive

Gizmodo reports that a Barbie USB drive is available for purchase. With Mother's Day coming up, I can't imagine a more perfect gift for Moms everywhere who remember being tortured by images of Barbie growing up (tttttthat's me, folks! :-)

Alternate Reality Games

Last Tuesday evening, the folks from 4orty2wo Entertainment (who made the "I Love Bees" Halo prequel-virus) spoke at the local IGDA meeting. It sounds like it was a great meeting - wish I'd been there to hear it myself. According to this excellent writeup, the game creators used five key principles to design their game (AKA highly effective stealth marketing program):

1. "Hive Mind" -- the game is designed to engender team play and collaboration. In this model, the team (or "swarm") is a problem solving engine, and solving the problem requires group cooperation.

2. Web-native story structure -- the story consists of deconstructive narratives aimed at placing the audience in the role of an archaeologist piecing together clues. The narrative is broken into fragments, and by re-assembling the fragments the players solve the puzzle.

3. the "Electronic Sphere" -- a place where the installed base is "everyone" and the platform is "the world"

4. "Hiding in Plain Sight." -- the game is connected into traditional forms of marketing and becomes must-see advertising. The game is cooler if it comes at you through many different conduits.

5. Top-secret game creation -- only 3 individuals from Warner Bros. and 5 individuals at Microsoft were aware of the game before it launched.

Slides from Mobile Monday talk

My Mobile Monday talk went very well - I got lots of requests to post my slides, so here they are.