A few things have had me noodling on games of late:
- Yesterday morning, on my commute into work, there were at least three people playing games on a mobile device. Two were playing Sudoku and the third was playing some car game while listening to his ipod. We all know casual games are a great time-waster and that a lot of people play them - I was joking about Scrabulous with a friend of mine who mentioned that his wife plays online Scrabble with random people online (and quickly shuts her browser when he pokes in!) -- but I bet there's a lot more to this phenomenon in terms of demographics and types of games. (Incidentally, check out Lexulous - Scrabulous with another name).
- I have witnessed social games such as Singstar, Guitar Hero, Wii and now Rock Band be the life of a few parties. You might think it's because I have a lame social life but, hey, Viacom's paying a $300 Million bonus to the creators of Rock Band, so that has to tell you something!
- The New Yorker had a profile piece on Cliff Blezsinski of Epic Games who publish the super-popular Gears of War. I've never been a hard-core game but clearly this is a large market, in fact bigger than theatrical movie box office receipts.
- A friend recently emailed about the topic of Games & Music and noted "Games are to kids today what rock music was to the kids of the 60's. It isn't just a place for popular music to go, it IS the new rock music...". Games are now an established way to promote new music so he's definitely on to something there.
Of course lots of people and companies are working in this area but I still feel like there's a long way to go. In fact I was joking with a friend about how there are some jaded veterans of digital music who are fed up with that and going into games!
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