Developers, Developers, Developers....

Remember this guy?

This is the guy who used to chant "Developers, Developers, Developers". We laugh/ed at Balmer because we game devs didn't want anything to do with those guys.They were nerdy in a crowd of nerds and always seemed to miss the point on what was cool. (Xbox excluded)

Microsoft has this funny way of playing Texas Holdem with you and their cards are face up. You might laugh when they shove all in with two aces showing while you fold, but you should actually be thankful.

Why? Well because companies like Microsoft play with their hands face up and perhaps not surprisingly, Silicon Valley companies (and others) are sharp enough to keep the cards a bit more hidden...for now.

Know these guys?

In the Valley, there are a great many students of Jobs. It's almost a plain fact that if Steve Jobs says that Apple isn't working on something, or that they have zero interest in a particular line of business, that it's down there in the pipe...no matter how many iterations are left in a product cycle.

 Where am I going with this?

I wanted to take a moment to call out the general populace of developers as blind fools! Each of the three previous Platform examples needed developers to come in and help prove their business model. Each platform promises: "Awesome Revenue Shares!" "Best APIs/Development Environments!" "Become part of the Disruption you're reading about on TechCrunch!"

Heard this story?

Quickly, some small developer is touted out as the norm when they made $25K in one day's sales of random content. OMG! That could have been me!! Where do I sign up?

Now, If you've spent any time in the game industry, you've seen countless fads come and go. Fortunes will definitely be made. The Game is certainly changed, but its almost NEVER changed by the run of the mill guy who's moonlighting on his IT day job because he didn't ever get a career in games.

Developers are literally SOLD the pot of gold awaiting us by platform companies.

Somehow we keep forgetting that these new platforms need developers to prove their business cases. They need us to help create these self fulfilling prophecies they have told investors and customers. They need US to make their fortunes..and when they have the lock in, the rules change. The power structure inverts and if you're not one of the lucky early adopters who built enough success to be important...it's over.

Here are the versions of this story that I can recall in my days in the industry. I'm sure I forgot some. Please post in the comments if you think of any I'm missing:

* The first Mobile Revolution (PocketPC/Palm) - Gonna be big!
* Casual Games! - Broke down to PopCap and then a bunch of content aggregators.
* Flash Advergames!/Flash Games curation in general.
* XBLA Indie slots. That sealed up pretty quick no? At least we got Geometry Wars
* Apple iPhone - We'll all be rich!
* Droid!
* Facebook! ZOMG!

 So when these fads come around, who really makes the money? Guys like Mark Pincus:***

Ask yourself why? Well guys like Mark come into games around a fad to PROVE a business can be built while everyone else is not paying attention. Mark isn't trying to change the world or leave his indelible mark on gaming, he's trying to make money... That's why he's doing just that while he helps redefine the rules that the rest of devs on Facebook have to play by right alongside Zuck.

By the time you've heard the Siren's Song, the game is almost over. The platform is just about mature. Developers pouring in on the Gold Rush...but there will be precious few to win the day.

The lesson here is about commitment. If you're not fully "I burned my boats" committed, you have as much chance of getting rich of these platforms as you do winning the lottery. Wake up. Have Fun. Most importantly, be realistic.

 ***Note: I am not a Pincus apologist. I'm strictly commenting on his business model, not the quality of his games or his company.

Divers, Swimmers and Waders! Oh My!

Back during college, I learned an interesting lesson about the varying perceptions of participants in an interactive environment. Everyone's got a preference for how "gung ho" they are in a given set of circumstances be it a baseball game, board game or just regular conversation. We can generalize these degrees of participation into three archetypes that we'll call Divers, Waders and Swimmers*

Divers represent your hardcore users who will jump right into the middle of any cool or fun opportunity. These would be Early Adopters of web tech or Hardcore game players. Swimmers are those want to be engaged, but don't want to look silly. Waders are those who are perfectly fine hanging back and observing others. You can map this to your own social group around a social instance of Rock Band. Some people just have to be singers (Divers), others want to be involved, but don't really want the added obligation of showmanship that comes with the mic (Swimmers) and then there are the fans who just love to watch the band play (Waders).

Everyone wants to be catered to in some level and nobody wants to feel like they made the wrong choice about how they're chosing to be involved. I should add that the application of these labels can easily change for people. One person might be a Diver in one situation and a Wader at the next.

I believe there might be an interesting intersection between these archetypal levels of interaction with and contributions to Social Networks. Take a quick look at this from last month's Forrester Reseach report:

Ok, so when we're thinking about Social Games, how do we map this activity graph to the categorization of participants? It seems like there are some pretty obvious parallels. Without delving too much more on this topic, I'm going to throw out the following categorization of these web activities and the archetypes they relate most directly to. Future posts will explore this relationship more as I figure it out.

I'm willing to entertain that there's a possibility of a stronger linkage/overlap between this group of Waders and Swimmers, but that too is a conversation for later.

Games and activities for each of these categories that are well represented in various Social Networks. Interestingly, the Forrester report notes the addition of a new activity category: Conversationalist. Key demographics on this group show that Conversationalists are 56% female and 70% of them are 30+. The first and most immediate thing that jumps to my mind is this is core justification for Twitter and why it's got staying power. Twitter has worked to create if not actually expand a new category of web interaction. Sweet!

So this brings me to my big question, is this relationship just a nice coincidental linkage or do these activities betray deeper use cases in Social Media that can be directly targetted by games and genres that are not presently represented?

Definitely seems to imply some intersting possibilities. What do you think?

 *One of the papers from my profs back in school citing Waders/Swimmers/Divers can be found here.