No Elder Game for Social Games?
Like millions of others, I’ve been playing a variety of “social games” online.  I’m struck by several aspects common to these games, including the overall poor gameplay.  I think that will change, slowly, as game developers figure out what works and what doesn’t. But what has also struck me is that these games have no “elder game.”  In terms of a linear, limited form of media (book, movie, single-player game) you might say they have no third act; there is no summation or reconcilation.  Of course, in an online game you don’t want a summation — you want people to keep playing!  And yet, each of these game

A Year Later and… Facebook it is!
I could have waited one more week and made this post officially on the one-year anniversary since my last post, but I hope to be posting more often, not less. It’s interesting to look back at your posts from a year or more ago that have been perfectly preserved by the Internet.  In this case it turns out that my thoughts on Facebook are being validated — and that MMOGs are indeed evolving fast. Last year at this time, I was musing on whether Facebook might actually become the new technology platform for MMOGs.  As I noted at the time, Mob Wars was steaming along with up to 500,000 daily active users and an estimated $7-15M in a