Well, response to our launch of rmbrME has been fantastic! Lots of awesome bloggers have covered it, and most people think the concept is cool. Check out a quick smattering of our media coverage:
Haven’t you always wanted a better way to “friend” people you meet in real time? Consider: the business card is wasteful and requires data entry post-meeting. Writing down a number leaves you prone to losing the scrap of paper. And entering phone numbers (or, GASP! whole address book entries) in real time after a meet-up will leave you scratching your head (”Who’s that?”) or punching the air (”God, that took forever”).
Besides, it’s an unavoidable conclusion that meeting people in real-life, and making new friends (activity partners, etc) is one of the world’s oldest games, and its most enjoyable. Most of the people who say they don’t play games (or get accused of doing so), actually relish this little bit of entertainment.
So, it’s with great excitement that we announce the launch of rmbrME. rmbrME gives you the power to send a socially-networked friend request to anyone you meet in real life using just SMS. When you meet someone in real life, simply send their phone number or email address to 762763 (RMBRME) and they will receive an instant invitation to connect to you on any/every social network (FB, Myspace, Linkedin, etc) you choose. The services works with all mobile phones, carriers and social networks and requires no downloads or subscriptions.
You can now check out the site at rmbrME.com and sign up for your account. Let us know what you think! I’ll update the blog periodically with news coverage of our launch and more info about the site. There’s also a ton of additional Funware news to come, so stay tuned!
Well, the Web2.0 conference was super interesting, even though I couldn’t stay past Wednesday evening. Our session, ably moderated by Justin Hall with Rajat Paharia and Chris Chapman, was fairly well attended and became a bit of a sensation after this article in Computerworld (posted just minutes after we finished). And after the session I was the recipient of nearly a dozen (!!) amazing Funware ideas from the audience. It was really extraordinary and very heartening to see all the creative energy flowing through the attendees. To whit, some of those ideas are really good - I hope we get to work on them at some point.
If you want to read the musings of another blogger - LaSandra Brill - she has an interesting perspective on the session as well.
I’m sure many geeks have seen the breathtaking Tenori-On device that’s been under development at Yamaha for the past few years. Somehow, I was only recently turned onto it by the charming Brandon Boyer at a recent late-evening beer-patio mashup. Tenori-On is basically a 16 x 16 grid of LED buttons that let you create music by interacting with the lights as they flash across the device. If it sounds complicated, it is!
Of course, we don’t need another interface to making music. Every single sound that humans can hear can be summoned using a keyboard - whether 101 or 88 key. Even the name of the input device is evocative of its role. So, why develop a new musical interface that only seems to complicate the process of making music? After all, we’ve been making music since the dawn of civilization, and our current complement of instruments (both digital and analogue) are pretty amazing.
Because it’s more fun. Waaay more fun. In fact, Toshio Iwai, the creator of the Tenori-On, is a game designer (and artist) who explores themes of music and electronic media. Take a look at the video, and let me know if you own one of these beautiful devices. I’d love to come over and play some music. Literally.
Kids generally do a bad job at brushing their teeth. Many have hypothesized that making the experience more fun (branded toothbrushes, colored pastes, teddy bear videos) would lead to better adherence, and they’ve gone down the road to prove it.
Well, from our friends in Taiwan, comes a toothbrushing game that melds spatial virtualization with toothbrushing to create an objective-oriented game to clean those dents. Using Wii/eyeToy style technology, the game gives kids control over a virtual character that appears in their mirror, brushing to win! Check it out. I love Taiwan.
Thanks to the folks from NewScientist for the news!
Hey - are you working on some cool applications that feel like Funware? Are you using game design/mechanics in a non-game context - say, for example, publishing a leaderboard and challenges where they wouldn’t normally be seen?
If so, drop me a line. Here are the opportunities that may open up to you:
Some reporters at major publications are working on covering cool, new Funware apps
I am going to write a series of profiles for this blog about great applications of game design outside of games
I have been asked to write a Funware series at another major site, and I’d love to include you
You get to be my friend. Ok, you can be my friend regardless.
Anyway, if you’d like to let me know about a project you’re working on - confidentially, of course - drop me a line at gabe at rmbr, or friend me on:
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.
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.
At the Game Developers Conference this week, we’ve been fortunate to attract a fair amount of interesting attention. Here are a few, select items from the press and blogs so far:
Most of the people who say they don’t play games (or get accused of doing so), actually relish this little bit of entertainment.