February 2010 Archives

I have taken a job as a Producer for the iPhone games company ngmoco! I start Monday, March 1, working at their offices in San Francisco, near the baseball stadium in SOMA.

My last job was running GameLayers, building social games in Firefox and Facebook. We didn't manage to sustain our studio with successful games - I'll be sharing some of what I learned during a March 11 session at the upcoming Game Developers Conference: "Fate of a Small Social Game Studio."

Fortunately, the people at ngmoco should be great collaborators and teachers. The company was founded by veteran executives from the console/computer game industry with a passion for innovative mobile gaming, the type afforded by devices like the iPhone. Right now ngmoco is one of the top iPhone game companies, known for experimenting with new business models and device-native game experiences.

Between 2000 and 2004 I wrote frequently about the potential for mobile games. For example:

3 January 2003 - Multiplayer - the Only Mobile Game

Single-player games are a waste of devices built for human communication (from TheFeature.com)

16 June 2004 - Mobile Entertainment: The Power of Play

Mobile entertainment serves a critical social function -- it will teach us how to be connected citizens (from TheFeature.com)

I took a few years off from the mobile game industry to go to graduate school, and to run a social games startup. Now I look forward to helping ngmoco make a connected social future of fun!

I’m looking for something new to work on. I’m meeting with smart people and promising companies to find the right opportunity.

As I started this process, I was still caught up in my startup. Most of the time GameLayers was five people. We shared a lot of responsibilities, and as CEO my roles included investor relations, team cheerleading, public relations, evangelism, new product development, strategy, product management. Also taking out the trash and booking plane tickets, arguing with the landlord. So, for a formal, larger corporation, what roles was I ready for?

My ready answer was “I get excited about things and I share my enthusiasm.” Between writing, speaking, or building a game out of the entire internet, most all of my professional work comes from sharing what I believed. Most of my profesional beliefs can be summed up in two sentences:

• the internet will become better as a wider range of people participate in it
• games and play can facilitate social interactions, teaching us to be better 21st century humans

So now I wonder, what can I do to facilitate the further evolution of these beliefs? GameLayers did not turn out to be a sustained long-term business. So I would like to learn how sustainable businesses are made - ideally businesses that work to increase the range of participants in online sharing and entertainment. Any idea that I have, or any idea I want to support, I would like to be able to support the idea as well as the people who contribute to the idea and need to feed their families.