Several months ago, my wife Eve had a blood test and was subsequently informed by her physician that she was “very” deficient in vitamin D (also known as the “sunshine vitamin” because our bodies naturally generate it when exposed to solar UVB rays.) Since we live in Seattle, where it’s perpetually cloudy for approximately three-fourths of the year, Eve’s deficiency wasn’t too surprising. She started taking vitamin D supplements, and I started doing some research on vitamin D in general. I discovered three important things:

• A very large percentage of 1st world residents are vitamin D deficient because we spend so much time indoors (and often use sunscreen when outdoors), and,
• Vitamin D deficiency is linked to a disturbingly wide range of very serious diseases, including cancer, heart disease, autism, osteoporosis and multiple sclerosis, and,
• Because the “daily recommended minimum” intake of vitamin D is 400 IU (the amount found in many multi-vitamins), many people mistakenly believe that a multi-vitamin is a sufficient source of vitamin D even if, like me, you go weeks at a time without significant sun exposure. Even people who get sun exposure before or after work may not be entirely OK; most UVB radiation penetrates the Earth’s atmosphere from approximately 10am to 3pm. The National Institute of Health recommends 5 to 30 minutes of sun exposure between those times at least twice a week, sans sunscreen, to people who wish to self-synthesize the recommended minimum amount of vitamin D.

Much of the available data about vitamin D presents a paradox that confuses many people. Vitamin D can be toxic in extremely high doses, so people are afraid to consume too much. On the other hand, if you investigate dosage limits, you’ll learn that just 30 minutes of full body sun exposure (at the right time of day) will cause the average person to synthesize 10,000 IU of vitamin D — 25 times the daily recommended minimum — which suggests that it’s pretty darn hard to overdose on vitamin D, but which also might make you think you don’t need supplements if you get any sun whatsoever. Unfortunately, for the reasons I mentioned earlier, most indoor office workers would probably still benefit from approximately 1,000 to 2,000 IU of vitamin D supplements per day (2.5x to 5x the daily recommended minimum.) At least, that’s what the experts say.

So, a few months ago, I started taking 2,000 IU regularly. Then, a few weeks ago, I visited my doctor and asked for a vitamin D blood test. The outcome? My vitamin D level was “slightly low.” I don’t even want to know what it looked like before I began taking supplements.

The ironic thing about me writing this post is that I’m a pretty serious skeptic when it comes to supplements of any kind. And for good reason: most studies have demonstrated little-to-no benefit from the vast majority of popular supplements. In fact, some well-regarded physicians have gone so far as to say that every supplement except vitamin D is a complete waste of money. A more balanced take on supplements can be found in this fantastic diagram, which visually depicts the varying levels of research supporting any given supplement. You’ll notice that very few supplements other than vitamin D and omega 3 make the cynic’s cut. My own physician heartily recommends both those supplements, and none other.

The bottom line is that, as of now, there’s enough evidence to support vitamin D supplementation for most indoor office workers. Of course, given the pretty dismal track record of even our most prestigious healthcare research institutions, I wouldn’t be surprised if ten years from now new studies dispute the benefits of supplementation. But I’ll take my chances (and heck, maybe I’ll even buy one of those UVB reptile sun lamps… it might help improve my mood during the long, dark Seattle winter!)

“People are willing to pay for magic.”

That’s what my friend Brian replied when I told him that no one in Microsoft’s target audience would purchase an Xbox plus Kinect for a minimum price of $300 when they either A) own a Wii already, or, B) can purchase a Wii (with MotionPlus, Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort) for just $200. Brian, as I frequently must admit, is a perceptive fellow.

People are indeed very willing to pay for magic. They have lined up around the block to pay $500 minimum for a slice of magical iGoodness from Apple. They lined up to watch Avatar in 3D (multiple times.) And they — that is, we — will continue to line up for the products and services that dazzle us, recession or no.

So, if you want to know who “won” E3, perhaps one way to figure that out is to apply a magic test to the products that were unveiled there.

Sony’s Move

By essentially copying the Wiimote’s nunchuck, Sony forfeited one of the few ways it might have differentiated the Move from the Wiimote w/ MotionPlus. Furthermore, the Move games I played exhibited noticeable lag, despite frequent assertions from booth attendees that the Move is lag-free. Lastly, there was nothing in the Move 1st party content portfolio that particularly stood out for me (Ubisoft’s Child of Eden was thoroughly intriguing… but also multi-platform.)

Verdict: magic tricks lose their luster after we’ve seen them too many times. This trick is getting old.

Microsoft’s Kinect

I’ve been waiting a long time for someone to make camera-based games that actually work. And there’s no question that controlling your media center with your voice and a wave of the hand is a magical experience, in theory. (How many people spend a small fortune on a universal remote? Now imagine that, minus the remote, plus a system that recognizes you on sight, and you’re starting to appreciate the possibilities.) Interestingly, pre-orders have made Kinect the #1 best-seller in the video game category on Amazon.com for the past six days; a clear signal that many people have bought into the initial hype. And finally, I will personally attest to having witnessed many people (usually women) positively cooing with pleasure while watching Kinect demos at E3. (Mostly Ubisoft’s fitness offering and Harmonix’s delightful Dance Central.)

That might or might not be enough. Nobody wants a universal remote that doesn’t work when you’re sitting. Being a Jedi loses some of its appeal when you’re paralyzed from the waist down. Noticeable lag isn’t a deal-breaker, but it certainly reduces the total potential number of magical experiences. And it’s still unclear how a party game works when anyone who walks into the party room can accidentally break the experience.

Verdict: very possibly magical… as long as you’re not sitting down, not in a crowded room, and not hardcore.

Nintendo’s 3DS

You turn it on and play games in 3D. No glasses. No excuses. It just works. Today, you get Kid Icarus dodging lasers in 3D. Tomorrow, it’s a safe bet you’ll get Mario hopping into your face.

Now that’s unadulterated magic.

The Magic Test, in summary

If you’ve seen it before, it’s probably not magic. If it doesn’t work the way you feel that it should (or doesn’t work in “normal circumstances”) then it’s probably not magic. But if it’s novel, fun, and just works, then you just might have magic on your hands. This test can be applied to game development, not just hardware development.

Don’t take my word for it. Just think about any performance given by the world’s greatest magician.

No, not Houdini. Steve Jobs, of course!

For those of you who visit this website regularly but don’t subscribe to the feed, I’ve added links to my GR shared items at the bottom of the left-hand navigation menu on the site.

I’ve been casually tracking the daily active user numbers for the top 40 Facebook game developers for the past six weeks. Why the top 40? Because that’s the quantity displayed by Appdata.com on the first of 200 pages. Why daily active users? Because monthly active user numbers are widely considered to be an unreliable statistic for Facebook games, whereas DAU is, if not perfect, at least more directionally accurate.

I was mostly curious to learn how “hit makers” are faring on Facebook. (The 40th developer on the list has just 200k daily active users, so it’s safe to assume that all the heavy hitters are represented in the top 40 list.) Facebook’s total population has supposedly been growing by leaps and bounds over the past several months — it jumped from 350m “active” to 400m in the three months leading up to February 2010) so theoretically daily active users for the top 40 game developers should be growing as well, if for no other reason than there are more potential customers on the platform. However, it turns out the DAU count is down slightly since March.

How about Zynga, the king of Facebook?

How about EA+Playfish, Crowdstar & Playdom (2nd, 3rd and 4th place behind Zynga, respectively)?

All flat-to-slightly-negative, with the exception of EA+Playfish which experienced a small increase in DAU over the same time period. Coincidentally, Gamasutra and Inside Social Games jumped on this story on Friday (two days ago), identifying the falling active user numbers and blaming the drop entirely on “recent changes in the way Facebook manages notifications.” You should be skeptical about that assertion. While changes to FB notifications may well be having a significant impact, the larger issue is simply that Facebook has clearly entered the inevitable misery phase, which I predicted just a few months ago.

The Facebook game development scene has become crowded. Facebook’s platform managers are making decisions that are unpopular with many of their developers and looking to monetize developer activity more aggressively. And the average “hit game” has yet to shift from the “early glory” stereotype to the Facebook game of the future (whatever that might be.) To use a historical example, Facebook is like the MMO market when it was all about Everquest — just waiting for a World of Warcraft to show people what a truly successful social game actually looks like. Of course, Facebook’s WoW won’t look anything like WoW itself, and may not even have a higher development budget than the games launching on Facebook today. It will definitely have a better retention rate, better monetization, and better (less spam-like) viral functionality.

Remember all those VCs and pundits saying it’s too late to become a top dog on Facebook? The guys currently choking the halls of one-too-many social gaming summits? To heck with those guys. The next several months (and perhaps longer) are going to be very ugly for the Facebook game development community. Lots of small developers are going to lose money. We may even see a big Facebook developer collapse under the ungainly weight that they have packed on while attempting to bloat their revenues pre-acquisition/pre-IPO. But this phase will end, and when it does, Facebook’s “triumphant return” is going to make XBLA’s triumphant return look like peanuts by comparison. The only question is: who will ride that wave and who will drown before it arrives?

PS. If anyone has access to the complete DAU data for Facebook — i.e. all 200 pages of it — I’d be curious to know if there’s any meaningful evidence of Long Tail activity over the past several months. If there’s anywhere the Long Tail should be manifesting itself, it’s Facebook IMO.

PPS. If you’d like to download the data I used for those charts, please feel free to grab it here. It took a while to get the data in useable form so I’ll be glad if someone else finds use for it. :-)

Update: interesting to note that on May 7th, around the same time as Gamasutra’s article, Techcrunch revealed that Zynga and Facebook are currently in the midst of a very ugly war and Wired published an article labeling Facebook “rogue” and advocating for a new social standard. Last Friday was truly a nasty start to Facebook’s inevitable misery phase.

What I find interesting about this commercial (aside from the cheesiness) is how pure it is. Unlike its predecessor, Super Mario Bros 2 was a game about defeating your enemies by throwing stuff at them as opposed to jumping on them. So Nintendo focused their commercial almost exclusively on that aspect of the game.

If the first Super Mario game was all about “amazing jumping” (as Miyamoto has supposedly said), then the sequel added and focused on “amazing throwing.” The developers got it. The marketers got it. And not surprisingly, the rest of us got it, too.

What’s the essence of your game? Can you say it in a few words? Can everyone else you’re working with say it in a few words?

If not, why not?

For a couple weeks now, I’ve been getting calls from friends in the industry bemoaning their lack of inclusion in the upcoming Summer of Arcade promotion on XBLA. The tone of the calls has varied, but they’ve all shared one thing in common — frustration with Microsoft. As I’ve thought about it, I’ve come to the following conclusion: Summer of Arcade will have to change or, at very least, cease to be Microsoft’s ultimate promotion for the XBLA service.

First, a bit of history. Summer of Arcade was the brilliant brainchild of my good friend, Jeremy Wacksman. It was born of the realization that Microsoft desperately needed something that would draw positive attention to XBLA and make consumers, developers and the press take it seriously (bear in mind, this was during XBLA’s “inevitable misery” phase, when no one had anything good to say about the platform.) SoA served that purpose beautifully; it kicked off XBLA’s “triumphant return” and changed the tone of public conversation from “XBLA is full of crap” to “XBLA is the only place you can find games like Castle Crashers and Braid.” It also established the $15 price point on XBLA — an important and under-appreciated feat.

Dealing with rejection

Summer of Arcade still gives consumers and the press something positive to focus on. Unfortunately, SoA seems to be turning into a net negative for the developer/publisher community. Today, many companies will target a summer release in hopes of making it into SoA and may even choose to hold a finished game in their pockets for several months for that purpose. A couple months before SoA is scheduled to begin, ~five lucky development teams find out their games have been blessed; significantly more discover that they’ve been rejected.

You might be thinking, “oh well, that’s how the cookie crumbles; not everyone can get lucky.” Unfortunately, this isn’t simply a question of “getting lucky” or not. Rejected developers and publishers — aka the majority — find themselves faced with a difficult decision: rush to release their game before SoA or wait to release after SoA. If they release before SoA, it may compromise the game’s quality and/or pit the game against many other high quality games that were rejected and released early (it also truncates the time that a company has to execute marketing activities). If they release after SoA, they’re pitting their game against the SoA titles and/or the retail holiday titles… a scary proposition. Some developers might also lack the financial flexibility to delay launch for very long. Either way, this feels like a lose/lose situation to developers and publishers, and it makes many of them angry. The fact that Microsoft only distributes one game per week during SoA only exacerbates the situation because it contributes to an overabundance of competition before and after.

So what can Microsoft do to change things?

So what does this mean for Summer of Arcade? I can imagine four likely scenarios. The first scenario is that Summer of Arcade simply goes away, but I doubt that will happen. The second scenario is that Microsoft stops limiting which games can be released during Summer of Arcade, but only promotes “the chosen ones.” Unfortunately, this may confuse consumers, and it will still offend many developers and publishers who hoped to be “chosen” and now find themselves competing against overwhelming PR firepower, so it isn’t a great solution.

The third scenario is that Summer of Arcade becomes a pay-to-play event. In other words, if you pass Microsoft’s quality filter (an important caveat), your entry into SoA will depend entirely on whether you’re willing to pay for a slot (in direct payment or, more likely, in greater revenue share to Microsoft). Much like a 30 second ad slot during the Super Bowl, the SoA “slots” would be priced high enough that demand for them would be relatively measured (as opposed to today, where demand is insatiable.) And to those who complain, Microsoft would point out that much like physical retailers, Xbox LIVE has a right to sell some of its “shelf space” and to arrange special promotions for the purpose of attracting customers. In the retail world, one name for this is MDF, or Market Development Funds, and game publishers are very accustomed to MDF arrangements with the biggest retailers. (Before anyone gets too excited, I should note that not once in all my time working for Microsoft did I ever hear anyone discuss or even speculate about the possibility of selling SoA slots. This is my own imagination running wild here, and nothing more.)

The fourth and final scenario is simply: Microsoft introduces more “top-tier” promotions that developers and publishers care as much about as Summer of Arcade. There have already been attempts by Microsoft to do this, but I would argue that none of these new events have resonated with the community quite like SoA did when it first launched. It’s hard to know why, but perhaps the reason is that these new promotions have not been sufficiently differentiated from SoA. Bottom line: *if* Microsoft can somehow create a few more promotions as compelling as SoA, the net result should be greater total sales for the platform and fewer developers/publishers obsessed with getting into SoA.

I really don’t know which of these scenarios will play out. But no matter which, I’m confident that given the increasingly negative feelings developers and publishers have about Summer of Arcade, it’s only a matter of time before the promotion changes in some sort of significant way or at very least is rendered “less important” by the introduction of other, more meaningful promotions. So perhaps the real question underlying this post is: what kind of platform (and what kind of retailer) does Microsoft want XBLA to be? We’ll soon find out.

PS. A special thanks to Kim Pallister for his help with this post.

For such a juicy situation, the online debate about Infinity Ward has been pretty dull. A summary, for those who haven’t been following along: 99.99% of people believe that Activision committed a grievous error and is clueless about the value of talent — the other 0.01% of people work for Activision. Either the wisdom of the crowds has revealed itself, or anyone who sympathizes with Activision has been unwilling to speak up for fear of being mocked.

It won’t surprise regular readers of this blog that I’m on the “pro talent” side of the debate. Making great games on a strict schedule is exceedingly hard, and anyone who can reliably manage a team to that end is probably worth their weight in gold. That said, there’s an interesting question to be asked here: if we take for granted that Jason & Vince were worth their weight in gold, is it possible that they were simply demanding “too much” compensation in their ongoing negotiations with Activision (i.e. all the gold, and more on top — leaving too little for Activision’s shareholders?) Or was Activision simply greedy and unappreciative?

I doubt that we’ll ever know the definitive answer to that question; the relevant facts seem unlikely to become public knowledge. And since Activision has bungled the removal of Jason and Vince so badly that most of Infinity Ward’s senior leadership has already decided to jump ship, this situation will almost certainly end poorly for the company. Activision’s shareholders can’t possibly be well-served by the crippling of the company’s marquee studio. But hypothetically speaking, if Activision had managed to retain most of IW’s lieutenants and other employees, would it still have been a terrible mistake to drive away Jason and Vince?

I’m inclined to believe that, yes, it was a terrible mistake. That said, research on this topic is all over the map. On one hand, there’s plenty of data to support the value of star performers like Jason and Vince. Some very famous companies, like Pixar, have very publicly attributed their great performance to the leadership of one or two key stars at the helm of each production. And Pixar has obviously served its shareholders very well.

On the other hand, multiple academic studies have indicated that in Hollywood, top-tier stars tend to consume all of the value they generate (in economic lingo, “stars capture their economic rent.”) A recent study by Anita Elberse of Harvard Business School went further, claiming that when film studios employ top-tier stars, their financial valuation does not significantly increase (financial valuation being the only metric that shareholders ultimately care about.)

Film production and game development are obviously very different beasts, so it’s unclear to what extent the experiences of Pixar or other film studios are relevant to the game industry. It’s also unclear that we can compare “stars” like Jason and Vince to “stars” like Tom Hanks, as they play very different roles (if you’ll pardon the pun.) Nevertheless, it’s unquestionably true that game development, like film production, is a complex team effort – Tom Hanks couldn’t make Castaway by himself or with a weak supporting team.

So, to rephrase my earlier question: as more individual game developers become celebrities (which seems to be the direction in which our industry is slowly tracking), will video game publishers begin to look like Hollywood studios and find themselves at the financial mercy of their stars? Or will video game publishers find a way to become like Pixar and thrive hand-in-hand with their star creative talent?

Time will tell. But I’ll say this: I’m glad that I don’t work for the average game publisher. ;-)

Lots of people are talking about the iPhone announcements today. Most relevant to game developers: Apple is putting viral invites, matchmaking, achievements, and leaderboards into the OS; adding the ability to gift apps; introducing a slick in-app ad network called iAds; and (finally!) limited multi-tasking if you possess a 3GS or better. This is an impressive list of features, and as a consumer, I’m pretty excited about it.

As a developer, it doesn’t change my feelings about the platform much. It has been evolving into an ecosystem in which F2P is the most viable business model (as exemplified by Ngmoco) and it will continue to evolve in that direction. In fact, the introduction of iAds will likely accelerate the trend as developers race to compete with one another for a share of ad revenue. When Steve Jobs says of iAds: “This is us helping our developers make money so they can survive and keep the prices of their apps reasonable,” he really means “this will help maintain downward price pressure in the app store, which I love because cheap apps help sell iPhones!” (Btw, was anyone else struck by Jobs’ use of the word “survive?” I think that’s the closest he’ll ever come to admitting that life for developers is rough in the world o’Apple.) And if you’re still not convinced that F2P is the future of Applesville, let me remind you of now-common revelations that anywhere from 60% to 90% of app downloads are pirated.

Console Killer?

Piracy is just one reason why I balk when people call Apple’s products “console killers.” The truth is that the iPhone+Touch+iPad triumvirate defies simple categorization and collectively represents a new kind of market for games. It isn’t being positioned to destroy the console market, though it’s clearly having some impact on the portable console space in particular. (Gotta say, I love the title of that article –> “iPhone Is Eating Sony PSP and Nintendo DS’ Lunch.” I guess Nintendo’s 70% of the market doesn’t qualify as a full meal anymore..?)

Successful game consoles have historically limited piracy in Western markets to a great degree. Successful game consoles have historically supported (if not required!) high game prices. Successful game consoles have sharply restricted who can develop content for them and who cannot. Successful game consoles have, as a result, made experiences like GTA 4 and Call of Duty MW2 possible, and there is a non-trivial segment of the population that still wants to buy those games. And perhaps a non-trivial segment of the population will still want to buy the games that will be available on the successor to the Nintendo DS, even if those games cost $30… as long as they are sufficiently differentiated. But Apple doesn’t care about any of this, because Apple doesn’t need to own the “high end” game space or become a “traditional console!” Apple is perfectly happy catering to the mass market consumer (and/or the pirate) who is buying its high-margin devices, watching its iAds, and generating microtransaction revenue via in-app purchases.

What about quantity?

This is partially why I am not impressed when people point out that there are only 2,500 Nintendo DS games as compared to 50,000 iPhone+Touch games. With a few notable exceptions (such as GTA Chinatown Wars and CoD: WoW: Zombies), there is limited overlap between “premium” DS experiences and “premium” iPhone+Touch experiences, and that overlap may shrink if publishers begin to fear that the iPhone cannibalizes too much revenue from other, more profitable platforms. (Also: today, the iPhone+Touch has a big advantage over the DS: no retailer margin! I have to believe that this advantage will be reduced or eliminated when Nintendo releases its next major portable console.)

No… the iPhone+Touch+iPad is a beast all its own. Not a console killer, but something equally impressive. A weird hybrid of some of the best and worst aspects of open and closed platforms, with a touch of crappy retailing thrown in to boot (sorry Apple, but the new gifting feature doesn’t make up for how poorly apps are merchandized.) It’s a place where indies looking to make a buck might find their fortune in the F2P space or with a (rare) 99 cent mega-hit. It’s a place where larger companies might profit from cross-platform F2P games and/or opportunistic use of known IP. It is, to be clear, a remarkable place that anyone serious about the games business has to keep abreast of… but it’s not the be-all and end-all of gaming. And it probably won’t be anytime soon.

PS. Comments on Adobe vs. Apple reserved for a future post. For now, I’ll just say that I’m still pretty excited about the F2P opportunities in the Flash games market.

For those who attended my lecture at GDC and would like to see the slides (which I have annotated for your convenience), please find them here.

If you missed the lecture but are a regular reader of this blog, fear not. Much of the content was based on articles that I have posted on this blog over the past year. The new content pertained primarily to iPad vs. Kindle and some neat new research/data on the Long Tail. Fun stuff!

Turbine’s D&D Online is generating 500% more revenue since adopting a complementary free-to-play model. Interestingly, the revenue spike is driven in part by a doubling of paying subscribers — a nice demonstration of how blended revenue models for online games can be particularly profitable.

Facebook will be taking a 30% cut from developers who use its Credits virtual currency, claiming that “early testing has shown that users paying with Facebook Credits are significantly more likely to complete a purchase than the average Facebook user.” 30% is an unsurprising percentage for Facebook to begin with because the bar has been set there by so many other digital platforms; most developers are unlikely to object as a result. I, on the other hand, would rather not forsake 30% of my revenue if I don’t have to (but then, I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook eventually forces everyone’s hand by proactively merchandising titles that use Credits…)

Apple has banned thousands of apps containing adult content from the App Store without warning. With each passing day, this platform feels more like the “worst of both worlds” — i.e., all the disadvantages of an open platform (like too much competition, piracy, etc) and all the disadvantages of many closed platforms (remorseless management, poor merchandising, etc.) The emergence of successful F2P games in the App Store may be exciting, but it strikes me as a silver lining.

Wiiware reportedly generated $59m in 2009 (30% growth of 2008)… which doesn’t make me much more excited about the platform. Note that only one original WiiWare game apparently earned more than $2m in revenue in 2009, and that’s the incomparable World of Goo. And the next runner up may actually be well below $2m — it isn’t clear from the report.

Nice Gamasutra editorial on crunch. I liked this line: “In film and television, if an early treatment was suddenly plunged into full production, it would be considered a catastrophic failure of the development process. In the game industry, when a fledgling creative vision is suddenly staffed with talent, it’s considered ensuring success. This is a fundamental fallacy in our thinking.” I agree with the author on vertical slices: nice risk management in theory, but in practice an amazingly fun but crude-looking prototype is more valuable.

Offerpal and Amazon (via Mechanical Turk) have joined forces to essentially turn every single F2P game into a crowdsourcing game.

There’s more to life than games:

Brilliant satire: if the practice of journalism were like the practice of medicine in the United States