I love Disneyland and just took my kids there for the umpteenth time.  So we did the submarine ride and got in a line for the Matterhorn and I accidentally bumped my iPhone screen where the email button is and next thing I knew I’d downloaded 140 emails that I didn’t really feel like reading on vacation.  But I was stuck in a line so I thought maybe I would just clean up the mailbox by deleting things that didn’t require a lot of reading or replying.  I get pretty engrossed in this and have marked nearly 100 messages for deletion when I’m surprised that it is time to board the toboggan car.  I climb in with my five-year old and get our seatbelts sorted out but I don’t want to quit the email app until I’ve finished, so I’m holding the iPhone carefully as the ride begins and am feverishly trying to delete these 100 messages while we’re on the ramp up to the top.  But I don’t quite make it and off we go down the Matterhorn and I am desperately clutching the iPhone – this thing is my life and any moment my life could go flying into the abyss!  My kid is slamming into me and I’m being tossed left and right and I can’t use my arms to brace or hold on because I have to hold both my child and the iPhone.  I’m getting pounded around all the way down the mountain, scared I’m going to lose the dang phone; this is perhaps the most terrified I have been on a theme park ride.  However, it’s only the second-weirdest experience using a mobile app that I know about.  My favorite is still Jason Ford’s story about a Sprint customer putting their phone in a plastic baggie so they could keep playing a game in the shower.  I’m crazy but not that crazy.

Then we go to ride the carousel and we get very lucky – the live band from the Mary Poppins’ movie, the scene where the characters ride horses off a carousel into a horse race – actually gets on the carousel with us.  I’m really thrilled by this special moment because we find a horse on the outside that goes up and down that is immediately following the band – we are literally imitating in real life the scene from the film.  But my son is grumpy throughout the ride.  It later develops that he wanted a certain horse and a little girl had beaten him to it.  He was apoplectic and I could not talk him down from the ledge.  So we had to then wait one entire ride cycle to get to be first in line for yet another ride where I could then outrace the other parents to make sure he got the horse he wanted.  If I were to ask him in 20 years about the time we got to ride in the horserace from Mary Poppins, I am sure he’d only say, “All I remember is that girl stole my horse”.  Ah, parenting!

I then enjoyed the hilarious irony of the Pinocchio ride that features Pleasure Island – a place where self-indulgent adolescents go to overindulge and are turned into overstuffed herbivores.  I wonder if Disneyland realizes they are doing a parody of themselves?

Naturally I had to hit the new Walt Disney Family Museum on the first weekend it was open.  After Jesus Christ, Walt Disney is my favorite hero and I’ve studied his life and career quite a bit.  Needless to say I loved the museum which is really well done.  As always I was inspired by connection points that I found with Disney.  He struggled and had serious failures.  At the museum I learned that Snow White, the first full-length animated film, had been known as, “Walt’s Folly”.  It reminded me of the period at EA when Madden Football was being called, “Trip’s Folly”.  Disney was infatuated with The Matterhorn, making both a movie and a theme park attraction out of it.  At the museum there are photos of Walt and his wife hiking in Zermatt.  I’m equally in love with The Matterhorn, which I climbed back in 1991 when I was still doing technical rock climbing (before I had kids).  I also grew up with Disneyland, which opened not long after I was born and was near my home.  Seeing all the models and drawings at the museum took me back to my childhood when I had a strong interest in architecture and did layouts of theme parks and built hypothetical attractions.  But the best reminder for me was in remembering that Walt was about my current age when he launched Disneyland.  I like to pursue new ideas and Disney is such a great role model because he was always innovating and he kept on doing it until the day he died.

The museum reminded me of my days at Apple where we worked with a former Disney Imagineer named Mike Vance.  Vance had told us about Joe Fowler, the Navy Admiral who managed theme park construction for Disney for many years.  Fowler was famous for being able to do any hair-brained scheme that Walt could dare to come up with.  Walt went on the Pirates ride before its debut and felt there was something missing.  He decided that the bayou needed fireflies.  A lot of engineering managers would have blown a gasket at this point on a project and would have said it was too late, over budget, would kill the schedule and should have been specified earlier.  And would have been indignant.  Admiral Joe Fowler just said, “When do you want them, Walt?”  The fireflies are one of my favorite things at Disneyland and I still remember the first time I went on the ride and kept studying them until I figured out how they did it (same thing with the clouds that go past the moon; in both cases really simple and elegant design solutions).  Well, I remember at Apple that after hearing this story some of us gently suggested to our engineers that they should be more like Admiral Fowler.  They didn’t agree.  In fact one of them went and got buttons made with the slogan just to mock us.  Ironically that guy later got fired for complaining that I was insisting that they use a mouse for user input and refusing to cooperate about it.

Let’s talk about the Ten Rules of Omni Media Gaming and do some handicapping of platforms and game publishers, to see how well positioned they are for the emergence of OMG.

1.         Less is More.  Advantage goes to mobile and casual game publishers who grew up doing this.  Console, boxed PC and MMO publishers are at a big disadvantage because their brands stand for hardcore immersion.

2.         Socializing.  Current advantage goes to publishers and platforms that enable virality through virtual worlds, social networks and the iPhone.  Console and PC publishers are again behind the curve, and so are the casual game portals that are too much like retail stores.

3.         Convenience.  Big advantage to mobile publishers because mobile devices are the ultimate in convenience and “thin clients”.  Similarly, web services including social games and virtual worlds are capable of making the transition to mobile as the mobile web gets established.  Publishers of conventional web downloadable games, MMOs and boxed games are at a disadvantage because their game files are enormous and not portable.

4.         “Checking In”.  Even the consoles now have online communities but the long-term advantage will go to game publishers that are cross-platform and “in the cloud” rather than being platform-specific.  This is wide open because nobody is yet truly cross-platform or legitimately operating on the SaaS (Software as a Service) model.

5.         Ubiquity.  There is a short list of classic games that, like Tetris, add brand power on top of ubiquity.  But to grow the market it will take many original new games that have mass appeal and that are worth talking about with your friends.  Hence the long-term advantage will go to publishers of the best original casual games.  Again the console, PC and MMO publishers lose the edge because they stand for high performance, not ubiquity.

6.         Short Sessions.  Because they have been doing this for years, the big advantage goes to publishers of the best original mobile and casual games.  Social game companies have been doing this with the so-called “hamster games” but are trying to improve their game design skills.  Once again the console, PC and MMO companies are in the wrong position both in terms of brands and technology.

7.         Personalization.  The virtual worlds and social gaming companies have the lead, but every game company does this to some extent and understands the principles.

8.         Games as a service.  Companies that already operate client-server networked games should have the advantage here, but I don’t believe that brands, technology and skills from an MMO will translate into success with Omni Games as a Service.  Also, all of the network game companies are entirely too native and dug in on particular platforms, ranging from Xbox LIVE to Facebook or even the iPhone.  To succeed with Games as a Service a publisher has to be cross-platform, an area where some mobile publishers have the edge because they have already organized their technology to deal with device fragmentation.

9.         Cross-platform.  Today, nobody really has scaled a product line or a major service across all the relevant gaming platforms, so this concept is wide open.  But again the clear edge goes to companies that already have a development process that plans for all platforms in advance.

10.        Access points.  A big edge here for companies that are already accustomed to free games that are delivered from a server.  Many of the larger and more mature game companies don’t believe you can make money this way, so they are out of position.  This is true whether they are virtual worlds, MMOs, PC, console or even casual web game companies:  all of them want you to purchase and install a large client on one specific platform that will be your only access point.

We recently reached 40 million downloads on the Apple App Store and continue to be # 1 on that platform in total downloads, number of apps charting at # 1 (six), number of apps charting in the Top 5 (twelve) and total number of consumer reviews (closing in on 1,500,000).  That last figure blows me away; our App Store review forum community rivals the population of Barcelona, Vienna or Philadelphia!

Because of these leadership characteristics, we also look pretty good on another somewhat odd metric:  if a consumer enters a single digit into the App Store search feature there is about a 20% chance that Digital Chocolate will be one of the top “recommendations”.  This is not some SEO trick it is simply the result of being so dominant in downloads and the apparent fact that the search system proposes recommendations based on what other customers have been looking for and downloading.  When a whole lot of people are looking for Digital Chocolate, the search engine sees some of these letters or numerals and it thinks, “oh, you must be looking for Digital Chocolate, everyone else is”.  We’re the # 1 recommendation for the letters “D” and “H” and the numeral “3”; and the # 2 recommendation for the letter “C” and the numerals “3” and “9”.  For the numeral “3”, we comprise the top 3 recommendations (3D Brick Breaker Revolution, Haunted 3D Rollercoaster Rush and 3D Rollercoaster Rush).  We even show up in the top handful of recommendations for the letter “I” which is apparently because of the word, “Inc.” at the end of our company name.  No doubt tens of thousands of apps have the letter “I” in words like this but they’re not getting the download activity that we are.

Many of us have enjoyed the addictive fun of Tower Bloxx, which launches October 21 on Xbox LIVE.  This is quite a milestone for Digital Chocolate and again proves that great game mechanics and design from a small screen can play even better on a big screen.  The same is true for movies.  A paperback book with a great story can make a great movie, but $100 million in action scenes and special effects are boring without a good story driving them.  With a game it’s important to match up the audiovisuals to the fidelity of the platform, but in the end the key ingredient is the gameplay.

So indeed, Tower Bloxx on the Xbox has amazing graphics including nice touches like the enormous hand that you can use to straighten your tower to make perfect sets.  And the high-altitude 3D views from the airplane rides you can unlock.  But God is in the new details:  avatars in multiplayer modes and that spawn and control stuff like the crane; wacky power-ups like bombs and the Mayor’s Blessing that protects your tower; building a city with a population of 200,000 living in Mega Towers.  My favorite features are the Battle mode where 4 players compete on 2 teams and divide into offensive and defensive roles.  And the handicapping feature whereby the trailing tower gets more value from power-ups, so the trailing team can stay motivated and keep it exciting for everyone.  And of course there are other details like the Friends Ladder and the usual XBLA Dashboard features.  We’re very pleased with our first console game.  Check it out if you have an Xbox or look for the videos on YouTube.

Recently, there were some kids near my house running a lemonade stand, so of course I had to stop.  I always stop for lemonade stands.  Maybe it’s just that I always want to encourage entrepreneurs.  I got talking with the kids and they were all familiar with Digital Chocolate games.  I was asking them about their gaming platforms and none of them yet had an iPod touch.  I told them to ask for one for Christmas!  I honestly think the iPod touch is going to be the hottest Christmas gift for kids.  I don’t understand why there isn’t more buzz about it yet, but just wait and see.  Another trendy thing around here is Netflix, who is already the FedEx of movie rentals.  But lately many people have been talking about how they are now streaming the Netflix films over the Internet.  I’m still a Blockbuster regular but I did notice that their back catalog shrank when they shifted from VHS to DVD and unloaded all their tapes.  This lack of inventory at Blockbuster may cause me to switch to Netflix just to have the bigger catalog they are known for.  Oddly enough I forestalled that event recently.  I was putting up posters for an event at my church and found myself in a Goodwill store, where I noticed a woman buying a VHS tape at the counter.  Only at that point did I realize that they had inventory of old tapes and I went home with a “treasure” of 20 great tapes.  Okay, so I’m a Luddite; others are streaming Netflix over the Internet and I’m scrounging for VHS tapes at the Goodwill!

I keep hearing from people who have beaten my scores with 3D Rollercoaster Rush, 3D Tower Bloxx Deluxe and Jurassic 3D Rollercoaster Rush.  That’s really cool, congrats!  But let’s not get too cocky – let’s just say I didn’t want to set the bar too high… JK!  Seriously, I’m delighted that people are having fun with this feature.  Speaking of Tower Bloxx, we’re thrilled about the upcoming Microsoft Xbox LIVE Arcade debut on October 21.  Tower Bloxx is all grown up and lookin’ good!

We were recently honored to win the ME (Mobile Entertainment) Award for being the Best Mobile Game Developer of 2009.  This is a great tribute to the consistently outstanding work of our developers in Helsinki, Bangalore, Barcelona, Mexicali and San Mateo.  The awards ceremony was in London, sponsored by the leading mobile magazine and involved voting by hundreds of professionals in the industry.  Another hallmark of consistency is that we have now released 48 major new games in the last 19 months that have either won industry awards or ranked in the Top 10 in downloads in major channels.  Recent additions to this list include Haunted 3D Rollercoaster Rush (currently # 4 on the iPhone), Brick Breaker Revolution 2 (# 2 hit at Vodafone) and Snake Revolution (# 3 at Orange), Tower Bloxx New York (PocketGamer Silver Award) and Captain Galactic (PocketGamer Silver Award).

I just gave a keynote speech that introduced our online virtual goods platform, called the NanoVerse™.  This is something really new.  Our virtual items, called NanoStars, are actually virtual online characters with a lot of human foibles and personality.  And they are purchased in online “packs” in a fashion that mimics how trading cards have always been sold (but they are online, not actual paper).  And best of all, they work in more than one game and can transform into completely new and different items in different apps.  This is such a unique approach that we have patents for it.

I was always fascinated with trading card games like Magic: The Gathering but I thought the card games were too complicated.  And like many ordinary virtual items, often the cards are somewhat lifeless objects or functional descriptions.  So other than what we have seen with Pokemon characters, it is hard to get too excited or emotionally attached.  As a result not as many people discovered and adopted the charms of trading card games (TCGs) even though they’re really cool in many other ways.

Our goal with NanoStars is to bring the benefits of TCGs to a much larger audience that wants to play simpler online and mobile social games.  One key goal is to do something akin to, “Pokemon for Grownups” by having our virtual items be amusing characters rather than just objects, things, or functions.  We also are trying to properly adapt TCG principles to computer networks, which I don’t think the TCGs themselves have been able to do.  The TCGs all felt obligated to literally map their card games to the online world, which in my view makes for tediously slow play in which you are constantly waiting and not sure if your opponent is even there.

Another goal is to make the world’s simplest TCG so that we can all play it with our friends and family.  We want to make a TCG “for the rest of us”.  But of course since it is living in a computer network it can be much more than just a collection of paper trading cards playing a paper card game.

The biggest idea with NanoStars is that they transform into different things in different apps.  This is crucial for a gamer who is looking at an object or item like a sword and wondering how long he is going to play the one game where it can be used, and why should he care very much about it or even have to pay for it?  With NanoStars, you not only get a virtual character that feels like it is alive, you get the value of it in customized forms across a platform of games that we hope will be continuously expanding.

A player will discover NanoStars when he is playing a free game and is allowed to borrow some for that game.  But he’ll be playing against other people that have bought unlocked NanoStars that can do more.  Hopefully they’ll like the game enough to buy some NanoStars to enhance that game.  Later on they’ll try a different free game and will find out to their pleasant surprise that all the NanoStars they got for the other game do new and special things in this game, too!  I think that will be a great moment of delight for a lot of gamers.  And they should find it to be a better investment, knowing that there will always be many games in the expanding NanoVerse that they can enjoy with their growing collection of NanoStars.

I’ll borrow a well-known character to better illustrate this notion.  Suppose you bought a Batman virtual character in this kind of system.  Hypothetically your ownership of this “virtual genetic code” could unlock a limited edition ringtone or screensaver.  And a hooded black cape with pointy ears that your avatar could wear in a chat room.  And you could furnish a virtual home with your characters, where your Batman might turn into a stunning Batmobile that sits out in front of your house.  Then you could take Batman into various games.  Perhaps in a Batman adventure game he plays himself.  He turns into gorgeous virtual trading card that allows you to make a cool move in an online trading card game.  In a soccer game he could be a really quick goalie who plays better in night games, and has a black mask.  In a role-playing game he could be a magician that can turn into a bat.  And all the while you are using him you are developing a relational and gameplay history that is meaningful, earning the equivalent of frequent flyer miles, and on occasion earning an “unlock” of some cool new feature that makes the character even more valuable on our stock market where you can trade and buy NanoStars.

NANOVERSE CASTLES

We’re going to launch the NanoVerse with our own NanoStar characters, but you can see over time how this could become a platform for both third-party characters and third-party apps.  We hope we can earn such an opportunity, but first we have to make at least one successful game that uses NanoStars.  We expect that game to be NanoVerse Castles, an online virtual trading card game.

In NanoVerse Castles you and one opponent each have a castle and are trying to build up your royal family.  The game has an online deck of 52 conventional playing cards built in and each player draws 4 of these cards to start the game.  Then each turn you can draw and replace one card, with the hope of getting four kings or other face cards like the queen.  As you can see, anyone can learn to play this in less than a minute.

But then the NanoStars come in to make it much, much more interesting.  You get to bring a handful of your favorite NanoStars into the game and draw them from their own deck.  Each of them is like a video game power-up or what the TCGs would call a “modifier” because it is going to be played in order to modify the fundamental underlying game.  NanoStars could turn all your cards into kings or kill your opponent’s face cards or create a shield that protects you.  Initially we will have more than 100 NanoStars and the collection will grow over time – and yet every single NanoStar will do something completely unique in NanoVerse Castles.

For a beginner with a handful of simple NanoStars it will still be a very simple game.  But when two experienced players with powerful NanoStars collide, it will be something else entirely.  But even in the free version a beginner will see the power of NanoStars because we’ll lend players a NanoStar like Robin Hood.  In NanoVerse Castles, our version of Robin Hood will do something that we call, “Foreign Trade”, that fits his personality.  He’ll steal a great card from your opponent (the “rich”) and give it to you (the “poor”) in exchange for one of your lousy cards.

In other games he could be an archer, guerilla unit, or enhancement to the accuracy of another weapon.  As avatar clothing, perhaps Robin Hood becomes a sharp green hat with a feather.

We’ve been talking about how consumers began to reject more powerful technology in favor of simplicity and convenience, and how “less is more” is the first and primary rule of Omni Media Gaming.  This took a lot of people by surprise, beginning with Sony:  OMG, they didn’t buy the PS3!!  And, OMG, instead of another version of GTA they’re buying a simple thing called Guitar Hero!!  And now the NPD data says that overall console revenue is down 30%; OMG, the gamers have switched to Facebook and the iPhone!!  Here is a summary of the ten rules of OMG.

1. Less is more.  Because games are interactive, advanced immersive games intimidate the Omni Gamer.

2. Socializing is the key benefit, not entertainment or competition.

3. In addition to simplicity, convenience is also more important than high performance.

4. Instead of “checking out” via a form of escapism, the Omni Gamer wants to “check in” with friends.

5. Omni Game themes and genres are ubiquitous and appeal to everyone including hardcore gamers.

6. Play sessions are designed to be short but addictive.

7. Omni Media and OMG mean having a personalized identity and experience.  Old school media was, “one size fits all”.

8. Omni Gamers will drive the shift from games as products to games as a service.

9. The biggest Omni Games will be cross-platform because your friends are scattered across platforms.  Voice, email, SMS and IM all became huge businesses only after they became interoperable across platforms.

10. For maximum convenience, the biggest Omni Games will allow customers to have multiple access points in terms of networks, platforms and devices, including devices that a player may not even own.  Like web-based email today.

I’d be happy to entertain questions and debate about these rules. OMG, bring it on!