The Gong Show

I have started reading all the app update messages in the App Store before upgrading my apps to the latest versions. The update messages typically fall into two buckets: 1) minor bug fixes and 2) big major feature pushes with lots of exclamation marks and Unicode stars.

I’ve never read an update message trumpeting that the app now does less than it did before (and nothing else). Makes sense because fewer features is not a commonly recognized achievement.

Yet all my favorite apps and services are the simplest ones. The ones that are respectful of my time.

On a whim I opened Angry Birds recently, which I had not done in at least six months. I was surprised at how much each interface screen looked like a Christmas tree: new features dangling off it like ornaments, without proper consideration for balance or integration.* If I could downgrade to the version of the game from 6+ months ago, I would. Granted, design for games and apps are quite different, but in this instance the design challenge is shared.

A small suggestion to battle feature bloat: if a feature of your app is only used by 1% of the active user base, just kill it. This is a crude heuristic and won’t always work, but it’s a good start. And celebrate your merciful kill in your app update notes.

*I wish I could take credit for the Christmas tree metaphor because I really like it, but I believe credit is due to @dens by way of @bryce.

Like any good investment idea, timing is essential.  I think now is the right time to aggressively pursue social casual gaming on consoles.  Why now?

• All the major consoles (Wii, Xbox 360, PS3) all have open marketplaces so distribution in the consoles market today is easier than it has ever been before.
• The Kinect is the fastest selling CE device ever. It’s a casual interface into an otherwise hardcore console that is quickly teaching Moms all over the world that the XBox is a friend, not a foe.  As 50-something year-old women get more comfortable with consoles, they’ll start experimenting with different features and games, and this demographic is Zynga’s best performing demographic.
• Services like OnLive will open up gaming on the TV to new markets that don’t want to invest capital in yet-another-box attached to the TV, which means expansion of the console audience.
• the Unity platform has made developing for the console market dramatically easier and cheaper than has been historically possible.

Why do I think this is a good idea for a new company to pursue (instead of a new distribution channel for Zynga)? Because I think gaming at the 2-foot distance is fundamentally different from gaming at the 18-foot distance.  Consoles are designed to be played from afar, and a startup that focuses solely on the 18-foot experience could have a leg up on encumbants that come from the desktop and mobile worlds.

If you’re working on casual games specifically targeted at the console market, drop me a line.  Or just take this idea and run with it.  It’s probably worth what you paid for it ;)

Video games based on movies almost always suck.

Movies based on video games almost always suck.

Why this is true is debatable. But empirically, it’s almost always true.

Something is always lost in translation when characters and brands attempt to cross media.  Books <—-> Movies have the same problem.  Books <—-> Video Games also generally suck, but this conversion happens less often in general.

I went into Electronic Arts most recent quarterly financials out of curiousity.  They have $1BN in content licensing liabilities on the books. They have to pay content owners $1BN to make what will most likely become lame, badly-translated games.*

Zynga will IPO soon, and I have been consistently impressed how they’ve built enduring game franchises that people love without ever licensing content.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they dabble with licensing content in the future (because they have a culture of testing *everything*, and so testing games that leverage content licenses is a worthy experiment).  But, I doubt Zynga will ever use content licensing as a crutch to support a lack of their own creative style. Zynga’s continued success with their own homegrown brands is really remarkable and generally an exception in the games industry.

* Big caveat: a portion of this $1BN is in licensing fees to sports leagues, and EA’s sports games generally don’t suck.  So, this is an important exception, but for the most part, my point still stands.

I’m four weeks into the free and open Machine Learning class taught by Andrew Ng (Stanford Computer Science professor). The class is hosted at ml-class.org.  

This class is the future.  I’m completely blown away by the quality of every part of it: The material scales nicely in difficulty.  The user experience of the site is terrific.  Andrew Ng does a great job of keeping the videos short, but still delivering a strong lesson with each dose.  The programming assignments teach you the core lessons without all the cruft and overhead of writing real-world code.  The Q&A community feature is active and helpful; people answer questions with a solid, positive attitude. Everything is free… the programming environment is Octave which is free, open source software, the lectures and grading procedures have essentially zero marginal cost (they’re all automated), so the course can scale nicely to hundreds of thousands of users.

The best feature: 1.2x video speed! You can play the lectures at slightly-faster-than-normal speeds to cruise through easier material at a quicker pace.  All Khan Academy videos should offer 1.2x playback speeds right away, it’s an excellent feature.

If you’re working on an education startup, take notice of what’s going on at ai-class.org, ml-class.org, and db-class.org.  These classes have created a new set of expectations for what learning online can be.