Here’s a shout out to Stuart Dredge and his new iPhone Games Bulletin. Besides his solid work for PocketGamer, he’s doing a great job of gathering a wide range of relevant news and editing it down to concise analysis. Check it out: iPhone Games Bulletin. Stuart also took note of this blog and suggested that, “more bosses should blog and flame each other”. This reminds me of the time years ago when Stuart Alsop held the most important PC conference and he invited me to debate a few times. One time I was up against Steve Ballmer on the question of why we needed dedicated consumer game devices when the PC could do everything. Ballmer had tremendous home court advantage because it was a PC crowd, all armed with electronic voting contraptions. But I clobbered him and got 75% of the vote. Maybe it was the paper airplanes I threw at him during his rebuttal… Another time my opponent dropped out at the last minute so I volunteered to cover both podiums and proceeded to debate against myself as I ran back and forth on the stage and channeled Dan Aykroyd and SNL: “Trip, you ignorant slut”.
Also worthy of note is how the iPhone and iPod touch have opened up a new market for games that can be played by children less than five years old. We have a fun toddler app called BabySitter2Go that was made for this market. A few years ago I used to jam my phone into a piece of bread at the dinner table to get it to sit upright and keep our then two-year old entertained while we ate. Now I see and hear stories all the time about how easily two and three year-olds can figure out how to use a wider range of apps. Our youngest child is four and he’ll chase adults around the house saying, “Can I play on your iPod touch?” Thanks to the user interface he’s as facile as an air traffic controller whether it’s launching Penguins, watching movies or playing his true “Jones”, Pocket God. He was hassling me recently because his buddy had the update with the bird and he didn’t, so I updated and we’re all good. He especially likes to get the ants to eat his tribesmen, or to toss them to the sharks or into the volcano. Thankfully our real God is not so young and “playful”!
Hello Trip. Or do you prefer Mr. Hawkins? I am a 35 year old woman. I actually lived the first 15 years of my life in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have lived the past 20 years on the east coast of the U.S. I grew up playing video games starting from the early 1980’s. A lot of that might be because I grew up the oldest child with three younger brothers. But nontheless I have always been and still are very much interested in video games. I don’t play as much or as well as I use to but I still play every now and then. I consider myself a video game enthusiast because even when I’m not playing video games myself I watch other people play and I collect video game memorabilia and I keep up with video game news.
It has only been in recent years that I have learned about the people behind video games. The way I learned about you was about 2 to 3 years ago. I was watching a program on tv about the history of video games and they showed footage of you past and present. You have to be in my opinion one of the best looking men I have ever seen in my life. You look just as good now as you did when you were younger. I was actually taken aback which takes a lot for me to feel that way. When they were showing you on the program younger I thought what a good looking man you were but when they showed you in the present I actually stopped hearing what the narrator of the program was saying because you looked that good. I have wanted to tell you that for 2 to 3 years.
I would love to see games for the smaller children based in didactical development… little children often play all kinds of games in the computer…even daycares have them now…they are avid online learners and they are getting phones by the time they are 5 or less..my niece got one for her 8th birthday but her sister got one for the 6th…and I must say that I was shocked at first but now they are really important because they understand how helpful of a tool can be when they need help or when parents forget to pick them up from school..