brinking - nabeel hyatt

Looking for a cofounder? Come to the new OpenCoffee Cambridge June 4th.

There are a couple changes coming to OpenCoffee Cambridge, the anti-networking, networking meetup focused on creating a regular, casual, "hang out" time for local entrepreneurs/VCs. The idea, originating in London, was a regular "open office hours" that wasn't about pitching and cocktails but instead part idle chatter, part co-working, part demo-time, and mostly about fostering the kind of vibe all us startup folks would like around us.

• Different Bat-time, Same bat-channel: First is that it is moving from Thur to Wednesday, this is mostly due to towing on Thurs that have led to at least four tows  that I know of. Additionally folks agreed we should move the time to 8:30am-10:30am, to allow for folks who work full time in Central Square to make it a more regular drop-by spot on their morning coffee run.

• Loose.. but kinda in a focused way: We had such a great reaction to a previous OpenCoffee on Facebook Apps that we are going to try and give one coffee every month or so a focus. Based on feedback we are going to make the June 4th OpenCoffee a kind of startup team match game. If you have an idea you are trying to get started and are looking for a partner, co-founder, other core members, or if you're ready to co-found but are waiting for that moment of insipiration, come by with an open mind and hear some of the interesting ideas you can have an impact on. This is specifically for super early stuff -- folks looking for comrades, not hires. And even if you don't fit that profile, all are welcome, no RSVP required, just make sure to buy a cup of coffee from our great hosts at Andala. We're past that stage at Conduit, but I'll be there for moral support in any case.

Other topics people have brought up are doing in the future are online games, the viral loop, the online advertising marketplace, and using the advantages of being Cambridge-located. I get to about one coffee a month, but with it being earlier I might make it a regular stop for coffee in the morning. Hope to to see you there!

Tim O'Reilly just said in his web2 keynote that the next stage after Web 2 is Ambient Information. I feel all warm inside. :)

Innovation Economy's Cool Companies

As a writer for the Globe, Wired, Fast Company, etc, Scott Kirsner gets asked what the "cool" companies around these parts are quite often. It's a common question I get as well, and I'm glad he took the time to give his off the cuff list based on the simple criteria:

- Is the company working on something important, or at least fun?
- If you worked there, would you put people to sleep explaining what you do?

Tim Rowe notes that 16% of the companies have been located at CIC, five are game companies, at least five has strong ties to the MIT Media Lab, and probably a bunch are somehow linked to Lotus. I note a distinct lack of wireless companies.

See the list here.

Real life, what would Metacritic say?

Game design is being applied to all manner of online life these days, from former game designers Catarina Fake and Stewart Butterfield designing Flickr, to Amy Jo Kim's talk on bringing the mechanics to the web, to Eric Marcoullier's MyBlogLog, to Jane McGonigal's great keynote at SXSW this year about how games are better than real life.

So with that in mind, and tongue firmly in cheek, Boing Boing tagged a piece from Metafilter that reviewed real life as a MMORPG. Remember being told to put down mario bros and go play Outside?

In terms of the traditional target age content metrics, Outside is remarkably high in sex, violence and challenges to traditional values, despite the strong child-focussed marketing it receives. Many would go so far as to say that for a child to develop the ability to cope with Outside is essential, as long as the harm incurred is not too debilitating. Children injured playing Outside are usually comforted by parents, and soon encouraged to go Outside again; this leads to the conclusion that somehow Outside has escaped any and all of the usual moralizing that surrounds the videogaming industry. One might say that Outside gets a free pass from the Jack Thompsons of this world...

Other players choose to focus on accumulation of personal abilities, the variety of which greatly exceeds the capacity of any individual to accumulate; again, the game requires players to engage in years of grinding to achieve any notable standard with a skill or ability. Players are issued abilities and characteristics largely at random, and it is entirely possible for a player to be nerfed beyond any reasonable expectation of being able to play the game, or to be buffed to the point where anything he or she does is markedly easier. Unfortunately over time, player abilities tend to degrade, unless significant effort is made to keep skills up. This reviewer cannot emphasise this enough: Outside requires a huge time investment to build up player abilities, exceeding any other massively multiplayer game on the market by some three orders of magnitude.

Players are encouraged to focus on social interaction, which can be engaged in in a variety of ways. In fact it's extraordinarily difficult to solo anything whatsoever in Outside, apart from basic skill and knowledge accumulation quests. One of the major forms of social interaction in the game is based largely around the addition of new players to Outside, and is both complex and, in comparison to the storyline-driven romance quests of, say, Baldur's Gate or Mass Effect, they are immensely difficult. Dedicated players of Outside, however, report that the romance quests are among the most rewarding the game has to offer.

(from Boing Boing)

 

Rock Band music sales close to early iPod music sales

If you care about music, and therefore whether that business will survive, there was some pretty amazing news from Rock Band this week that didn't get the attention it deserved. MTV mentioned that Rock Band had sold 6 million downloadable tracks in its first four months of sales. And while that roughly $10-20m in additional revenue is nothing that will alter parent company Viacom's stock, the finer numbers compare favorably to the early days of iPod.

First, let's keep in mind the state of the music business. People are pirating music like crazy, and consumers that were screaming about .99 cent DRM'd tracks six months ago are screaming about the high price of .89 cent non-DRM'd tracks today. If you want evidence at how much the music industry has changed in the last 24 months, just look at Rcrd Lbl, or the deals that Last.Fm and iMeem struck with the labels. The labels expect most of their money from those deals to come from a split of ad revenue. Which is to say they expect the incremental revenue of each track to hit zero pretty soon.

So on that backdrop, Rock Band is selling totally DRM'd tracks, locked to a single platform, at between $.99 and $2.99 each. And their attach rate considering all that is amazing. For comparison:

Five years ago on April 23rd, 2003 the iTunes Music Store launched:

• 200,000 songs in catalog (source)
• 977,000 iPods in market (source)
• 3.5m songs/Mo avg sales in first year (source, etc)

Four months (or so) ago Rock Band was released:

• 70 songs in catalog
• 1.1m Rock Band games' in market (as of January) (source)
• 1.5m/Mo avg sales in first four months (source)

The data isn't perfect: the Rock Band sales numbers are not up to date, we're not even talking Guitar Hero DLC, and the iPod had been on sale for over a year before the Music Store came online, giving it a big advantage. However, even with those caveats it is clear that people are willing to pay for more depth in their music experience, the same way they have shown a willingness to still pay for concerts. No, Rock Band isn't likely to be the next iPod, the early numbers are still off substantially from the iPod (see below). But selling active music experiences shows signs of being the growth opportunity for the industry. Which led one industry analyst to say:

"In 10 years people are going to look at idly listening to music the same way as we look at watching a TV show in black and white," said Geoff Keighley, co-chair of the Game Critics Awards that named Rock Band the best game of the industry's annual trade show in July.

Notes from SXSW, and there's a spot here at Conduit for you.

Wrapped up a panel at SXSW, there are some liveblogged notes from Virtual World News, and Venturebeat did a good write-up here for those interested. I wish I could have stayed longer but we've got some deadlines coming up. Met some great people at SXSW and every keynote was wildly entertaining, but I must say the panels really left a lot to be desired. As Peter Rojas said, is it impossible to have a decent roundtable discsussion on the future of music? Either way, I fully expect us to throw a mighty fine party there next year.

I still can't find a photo of us rocking out at the NNN/Tumblr Rock Band party, but considering the number of photos taken they are bound to show up sooner or later. In the meantime, this is a shot from the dinner crew on Tuesday night.

Lastly, we've opened up to hiring again after keeping it tight the last few months. In the latest round of hiring we've already added a couple great engineers in Fareed and Adam, plus Rob our new animator, but are still looking for a Director of Marketing. If you know someone working in online marketing that could use being thrown into a fun, driven place to try something different, tell them to drop us a line. More information on hiring here.

Snapshots of GDC '08 & the presentation on social gaming

Facebook/Social gaming talk was packed.. bubbleicious.

After the jump is the presentation from the packed Social Gaming panel at the Game Developers Summit. It's full of good stats thanks to working with a great set of panelists. I also spoke on a panel on Friday, and Adam was nice enough to liveblog, Raising Venture Financing for your Startup.

And lastly, just as I've done previously, some of the memorably moments from the past week: 

Joking about their success in selling Reindeer poop last holiday season.

"If people say shit don't sell, then just make a virtual version." -- Sulka Haro (Sulake/Habbo)

On creating new MMOs.

"No IPs, they saddle a company down. We look at our company as being perfect for creating new products. We don't want to saddle ourselves with up to five+ years with someone else's ideas." -- Min Ho Kim (Nexon).

On why sharded communities may never get proper economies.

"Our free-market economy only worked when we went over approximately 50,000 players." -- Eyjolfur Gudmundsson (CCP/Eve Online)

On how to simultaneously reduce flaming and monetize it.

"We charge $1 for a shout that everyone, on every server, can see what you say. Then we charge $2 to reply back, and $4 to reply again. It becomes one big game of revenge." -- Alex Xu (Giant) for their Chinese MMO, ZT Online. Yeah.. the guys that are IPOing.

(Presentation from Monday's talk is after the jump.)

GDC: Facebook and the new web of Social Gaming

All the recent Techcrunch-infused battles between social gaming leaders Zynga and the Social Gaming Network (SGN) happened in realtime yesterday at the Worlds in Motion Summit at GDC. It was the first conference event on social gaming, and it showed, with a totally overflow crowd and a room that got fairly heated by the end of it. There is no doubt this a great new opportunity for game developers. It didn't hurt that in the past week both Zynga and SGN announced their platforms, EA announced they're entering the space, and MySpace is getting ready to open up as well.

Since so many people couldn't get in, we'll be posting up the slides soon, but in the meantime there is coverage of the panel at Sashinka, Virtual Worlds News, and Massively.

Catching up next week at the Game Developers Conference

Ahh, convention season. If you are going to GDC, SXSW, or Web 2.0 this year drop me a line if you'd like to grab a cup of coffee. I'm there all week since I have a talk on Monday as part of Worlds in Motion, and a talk on Friday that is part of GDC/CRV's Startup Launchpad event. We are hiring and partnering here at Conduit, and I'm interested in folks delving into: asynchronous game design, game design in non-game web applications, the synchronous internet, virtual goods, and of course social gaming.

As for actual talks, I'm keeping a low profile and just helping on a couple panels for right now. There will be enough of me yammering on about Conduit soon enough. I'll be speaking at:

Facebook and the new web of Social Gaming
with TJ (SGN) and Mark (Zynga). GDC/Worlds in Motion Summit. Mon Feb 18 at 4:30pm.

Raising Venture Financing for your Startup
with Susan (CRV), Jason (Areae), Emily (Kongregate), and Matt (Sparkplay). GDC. Fri Feb 22 at 9:00am.

and at SXSW this year,

Casual Multi-Player Online Games: Serious Revenues
with Michael (Mind Candy), Joe (GAIA), Jeremy (Lightspeed), and Adrian (FreetoPlay.biz). SXSW. Tue Mar 11 at 11:30am.

See you soon.

The red herring of experience

Experience doesn't matter. Sure, sometimes experience can help illuminate to us the good judgement and vision that we already suspected in someone else. Sometimes experience can provide hints at whether someone has the solid character we hoped we saw, but that's all it is. A resume is just a flag in the wind, an imprecise hint at the core of that person.

I've always believed this when hiring people and conducting myself as an entrepreneur. I also rant about it when I see investors or CEOs who rely too heavily on name brands on a resume instead strength of vision and ability to execute. And I think it is the same in politics. Experience is neither a good or bad thing, it is at best benign but often misleading indicator of a person.

Nicholas Negroponte once said to me that America's chief asset was its belief in its youth. That while Europe and Asia tried to innovate, their cultures simply would not allow them to put the reigns of a start-up, a company, or a country in the hands of the person who truly deserved it.

If you live in California, Massachusetts (which combine for 73% of my readership) or 22 other states then next Tuesday, February 5th will be one of those rare days when your vote will actually help pick a leader instead of getting stuck in typical electoral math. If you've never voted in a primary, this is the time to do it.

Whether you're thinking about McCain, Romney, Obama, Clinton, Paul, or someone else - just remember that there is absolutely no correlation between experience and success as a President. James Buchanan, a former Secretary of State with almost 30 years under his belt, is generally regarded as our worst President. Abraham Lincoln, one of our most inexperienced, is regarded as one of our very best. The resume doesn't matter, it's the person.

Doesn't everyone remember the 1992 Republican infiltration of the Democratic convention, where they were all wearing pins that lambasted Clinton as an inexperienced governor from a small state? Clinton was younger than Obama is now.

I'll be voting for Obama, but this isn't about that. This is about respecting those around us more for what we believe they can make happen than for what has happened to them. I leave it to JFK, who's daughter just endorsed Obama, to sum things up:   

"Well, I'll just say that the question is of experience and the question also is what our judgment is of the future and what our goals are for the United States and what ability we have to implement those goals. Abraham Lincoln came to the Presidency in 1860 after a rather little known session in the House of Representatives and after being defeated for the Senate in '58, and was a distinguished President. There is no certain road to the Presidency. There are no guarantees that if you take one road or another that you will be a successful President."

Senator John F. Kennedy, 1960 televised debate with Richard Nixon