The Funware Blog @ rmbr

If you’re going to be in SF for the Web2 Expo in April, and you’re interested in hearing a panel about Funware organized by the exceedingly charming Justin Hall of PMOG, come by and say hello (I’ll be speaking on it)! We’re going to discuss some exciting topics and probably have a spirited conversation with semi-conscious bloggers who will have spent the entire preceding night partying super hard in San Francisco. That’s how they roll, those bloggers.

UPDATE: If you want to attend Web2Expo, they have graciously created a discount code for you: websf08sbg (Enter that into the registration website and save)!

More naievete from the Web2.0 press about game design and “ownership”; this time, from MA & Techcrunch about who invented college “Risk” first.

Let’s get a couple of things straight:

• You cannot patent a game design.
• You can trademark many elements of a game (like the board and the name).
• The provenance of most game designs is murky at best.
• Like most art, game designs build on past work, and are - by definition - somewhat derivative. This doesn’t mean that there’s no originality (far from it), but it does mean that there are few purely original game designs that don’t rely - somewhat - on the work of others.
• There are many amazing game designs and game designers. Really good ones rarely resent the work of others, in my experience.
• Time and time again, the games industry has proven that first-mover in game design usually benefits the company in question.

The questions of intellectual property rights and respect in the games industry are profound, complicated and evolving. It’s all too easy to turn this important issue into a “who slept with whom” fluff-piece (sorry, but true!) about some college entrepreneurs laying claim to the design of an ancient war game.

Let’s make this discussion more meaningful. While I work on a new article, you can read these (informative!) articles about games and intellectual property. Or, you can just skip the chaff and go directly to Valleywag. You know you want to.

IGDA IP Rights SIG (Check out their whitepaper)
Game Matters Blog (an oldie but a goodie)
Hey That’s My Game - Gamasutra
Myths about Game Patents
Patent Arcade

I was recently catching up with the (excellent) New Scientist magazine, when I read a fascinating interview with the researcher John Ioannidis. He has pioneered work in the analysis of experiments and authored a landmark study from 2005 called “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”. You can read the abstract and full report at the NIH here. While his work mostly deals with epidemiology and medical research, there are some findings and hypotheses that are super relevant to a startup as well.

Among other notes, Ioannidis observed that since researchers typically first conduct a small study, then seek grant money for a larger assay, it might be difficult to raise that capital if the initial results were negative or equivocal instead of hugely positive.  So, as someone setting out to prove a hypothesis (and it’s always prove, never disprove), you’re incented to structure your first course of inquiry (and result) to maximize excitement right out of the gate.

It occured to me when I was reading the article that the valley’s tech startup model is entirely built on this premise. You take  a small lug of cash and do something quick and exciting with it. If your first result is mind-blowingly awesome, people throw money and resources at you and you move forward. Anything less, and you find yourself reconsidering your vision, capital structure and partnerships (even friendships). Failure is spelled with a small ‘f’ in Web2.0 speak (or maybe just as failr) - and any business without immediate traction is in trouble.

As a general rule, it’s tough to argue with the success of the model, though it does make you wonder about the self-referential nature of the products that have risen to prominence on its back. For every Google - an unquestioned winner in the mass market - there are 10 tech industry “hypemachine” startups with a dense following in the 408,650 and 415. Witness Twitter or Mint - both of which are exciting companies, but with followings that barely scratch the surface of the markets they play in (messaging and finance). Ask 10 people in the valley what they think of those players, and you’ll find a ‘fait accompli’ attitude pervades; “Twitter has won the short messaging war”. Geez, I didn’t even know that we had gone to war in the first place.

Like all other businesses, our success or failure is ultimately determined by consumer behavior: time, enthusiasm and money. The central premise of professional investment capital is the ability to predict the future outcomes of promising, young startups - but I wonder if we’re too enmeshed in our own sphere (drinking our own Kool Aid, as it were) to be able to distinguish things that average people like (Photobucket) vs things that tech nerds like (Flickr).

About 12-18 months from now we’ll be able to clearly distinguish the wheat from the chaff. I, for one, am excited to see what happens.

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