Are social games the waves of the future? Richard Garriott thinks so …
“So, I believe the casual gamer and the social gaming platform represent the largest ever yet seen emergence or change within the gaming industry. And all of us in the development community have a choice to either participate and lead in this journey or get left behind.” – Richard Garriott
Brad McQuaid thinks so…
“I am pleased to announce that I am a co-founder of a new company based here in the San Diego area. We’re starting small and growing as needed. Our focus is going to be on bringing some sophistication to casual/social gaming.” – Brad McQuaid
Steve Jobs seems to disagree. Between the IPAD and the Iphone, Apple has thrown it’s had in the mobile applications ring:
“The transformation of the PC to new form factors like the tablet is going to make some people uneasy because the PC has taken us a long ways,” – Steve Jobs
By some accounts the social gaming ship has already sailed. However, Playdom is still busy buying up facebook game developers to the tune of millions of dollars. On the one hand saying social gaming is losing millions of players when the number of players could already fill a largish country doesn’t amount to much – but nothing says all those customers are paying customers.
As for the No Prisoners, No Mercy team we tend to believe that the man behind the apple, Stephen Jobs is the most likely to have things sussed. Still the FCC and broadband providers are still busy providing the fly for Mr. Jobs ointment. While the people who busy themselves about the business of trying to afford broad band at least one politician, republican representative John Shimkus, is busy pointing the finger in the opposite direction.
Here is an excerpt from this morning’s Tech report by way of Politico.com:
Over the weekend, Republican Rep. John Shimkus slammed Google as the culprit behind the FCC’s new, forceful push for explicit authority over broadband providers. “This is a political debate by major interests on the West Coast that have helped support the Democratic Party, so that’s why they’ve supported this agenda,” Shimkus told C-SPAN’s “The Communicators.” When pressed then to reveal who those “interests” were, he said: “You know who they are. Our friends at Google are one of the major focuses; they have their interests. … They have supporters and allies, and that’s what this is about.”
Our first thought is to give Google a thunderous round of applause and a virtual standing ovation. The wee problem is that, as well all know, give a politician an inch and he will take a parsec. The opposite end of that particular pendulum is the Internet kill switch that messers Lieberman-Collins-Carper want to place in the hands of the Feds – that same bill that has just cleared the Senate Committee on Homeland Insecurity and Government Affairs.
If mobile applications are the future, the President Obama is busy doing his part –
This morning the president signed a memorandum that would mandate Federal agencies find ways to free up 500 megahertz of airwaves for consumer mobile broadband services over the next 10 years. President Obama said in a statement that “few technological developments hold as much potential to enhance America’s economic competitiveness, create jobs, and improve the quality of our lives as wireless high-speed access to the Internet.” (source).
In a speech Larry Summers (Director of the White House’s National Economic Council) likens the move to the opening of the land grant colleges and the transcontinental railways (source )
The big question on our minds is, after the FCC is done with wheeling and dealing with broadband providers will we all get railroaded.