I thought I’d start off 2007 with something fun. That said, check out my recent interview with Trip Hawkins, the Chairman and CEO of Digital Chocolate. Prior to founding Digital Chocolate, Trip also just happened to found Electronic Arts and 3DO. Interest piqued? Let’s get on to the Q&A.  :-)

You’re best-known for your central role in the founding of Electronic Arts. Would you mind sharing a few little-known stories about the birth of EA? How did decisions made in the early days set the stage for what EA would become?

I came up with the idea for EA when I was a teenager and saw my first computer in 1971. I had already started designing simulation games but they were complicated to play. The instant I saw that computer I realized I could put the complicated stuff inside the computer and create “real life in a box.” I then laid the groundwork by studying computer science and other relevant topics in college. It was during a summer computer programming job in 1975 that I thought it out and decided to start my computer game company in 1982. I really did plan it that far in advance. Again, I continued from 1975 to shape my experience to support EA’s eventual birth, including getting an MBA to learn more about business and going to work for Apple to help build the market for computers in the home so that I could then sell games to play on them.

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First day of GDC down, four to go. I was bouncing like a pinball between the workshops, Serious Games Summit, GDC mobile, and meet-ups with friends. What a great conference.  :-)

The session that most caught my attention today was the “Mobile Operator Spotlight Panel”, moderated by Seamus McAteer of M:Metrics and packed with executives from Sprint, Orange, Virgin, Cingular, Vodafone, and Verizon.

First, some interesting facts revealed during the panel:

• Orange is currently reaping the highest average price for games ($7.32, as opposed to $5.62 for Sprint and $6.27 for Verizon). No word on volume.
• M:Metrics research shows a huge disconnect between mobile game offerings and projected consumer demand. Current supply of sports and action titles exceed projected demand by a factor of two. On the other hand, the supply of games in most other genres meets half (or less than half) of projected near-term demand. That includes: arcade puzzle, board, card, casino, FPS, quiz, word, and retro arcade games. Quite a list! And this isn’t a “low demand / even lower supply” thing — the arcade puzzle, card, and casino game categories had the highest projected demand of all categories on the list. That’s 150-200 games worth of demand for each category, as opposed to just 75 games worth for the saturated action category.
• In 1/06, Jamdat controlled ~25.4% of all US mobile game download volume. No real news here other than “Jamdat is still the gorilla.”

Second — I was struck by the universal agreement among the operators that brand / franchise power was all that mattered in the mobile games space. Along these lines, Jason Ford (from Sprint) claimed that if he cut his offerings from 435 games to 50, sales would probably remain the same. Tim Harrison (Vodafone) spoke passionately about bringing major game brands into the European market. Ken Ruck (Virgin Mobile) quipped: “Pitfall came out before my kids were born; it isn’t relevant to them.” It went on and on like this.

Ironically, in a previous session, Mitch Lasky of Jamdat/EA said “It’s crazy that games like Tetris and Madden are getting the same attention from carriers as some Chinese whack-a-mole game.” You’d think that the across-the-board operator fascination with franchises would be enough for Jamdat. (One also wonders if Mitch registered the irony of comparing Tetris to some “crazy Chinese whack-a-mole game” — after all, Tetris was a crazy Russian block game not too long ago.)

To me, this all seems like a pretty serious failure of imagination. Recognizeable brands are powerful, yes, but they blow everything else away in part because, quite frankly, purchashing systems for mobile games are terrible! It’s difficult to find anything worthwhile outside of the top games displayed by a carrier. Users are given almost no ability to quickly and conveniently demo and rate games (which would permit obscure but enjoyable titles to bubble up and get noticed by other users, creating a virtuous cycle). And mechanisms for viral marketing are still in their infancy; most games / platforms don’t make it terribly easy for a consumer to quickly share a game with many other consumers.

Part of the problem has to do with the many different handsets on the market, of course. When it takes 700 versions of a game to cover the majority of the phones out there, everthing becomes dramatically more complicated than it should be. But you can only blame so much on the handsets. Bad shopping / rating interfaces can’t be blamed on handsets. Lack of cooperation between operators (to better enable viral marketing across the population) can’t be blamed on handsets. “Long tail economics” is not a pointless cliche. When you facilitate it, it works. When you bury content underneath a mountain of bad UI, it doesn’t.

(BTW, sorry if this reads a bit rough. I need sleep badly.)

Via Gamasutra, news that a significant number of handset and mobile gaming companies have finally decided to establish an open architecture standard for cell phone games. The initiative’s participants include: Activision, Digital Chocolate, Electronic Arts, Konami, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, SK Telecom, Square Enix, Symbian, and Texas Instruments (among others).

Assuming that the aforementioned companies don’t get into a terminal squabble, this initiative represents a major milestone for the mobile game industry, which has been held back by the complexity of developing even simple games for a very wide variety of platforms, carriers, and operating systems. In today’s environment, it takes ~250 builds to publish just a single game in five languages, worldwide. (I’ve heard numbers as high as 450.) Each build may only cost ~$2,500, but that doesn’t include the costly logistical headaches associated with having so many SKUs.

There are 200M cell phones in the US — over twice the number of PCs, but still just a small fraction of the global cell phone total (China alone boasts 300M mobile subscribers). Global cell phone game revenue predictions vary widely, but many settle in at around $8.5B in 2010. A truly successful open standard could raise that number substantially.

Hamid Akhavan, Global CTO of T-Mobile, spoke at MIT yesterday. His presentation was very general, but I thought it relevant to those interested in mobile gaming:

• Most successful mobile applications have landline replicas (email, voice services, short messaging), and mobile always commands a price premium. The number of successful mobile-only applications is very small (GPS navigation systems, etc).
• There may be no “killer app” that is unique to mobile. Instead of focusing on new mobile applications, developers should strive to port popular landline applications to the mobile environment.
• Prediction: before the end of this decade, all consumer internet access will take place via wireless networks, not landlines.
• Characteristics of a good mobile application:
1. Automatically knows what device a customer is currently using
2. Automatically knows a device’s bandwidth capabilities
3. Includes location-based services when worthwhile
4. Offers protection from unauthorized use, access, and copying
5. Ensures that content is presented in the best way on any device and channel
6. Synchs with all other relevant devices automatically.

Akhavan’s prediction caught my attention. If all consumer broadband will soon be delivered wirelessly, a mobile gaming revolution is just around the corner. Right now, only consumers in hotspot-saturated major metropolitan areas can really enjoy pipe-rich mobile gaming (and even then, not constantly/consistently.) The end of the decade isn’t far off… time to start thinking seriously about the possibilities! Akhavan’s “good application characteristics” seem relatively applicable to games, too.

EA is acquiring Jamdat, a top publisher of mobile games, in a deal worth about $680M. In tangenially-related news, EA also announced an exclusive partnerships with Indian wireless publisher Indiagames. Nothing like scale, clout, and a fat wallet to help make up for lost time.

Nokia has announced that “Space Alliance,” an MMOG for Java-ready phones, will be released in Q1 2006. Game players work together to fight enemies, build starbases, and develop / coordinate defenses. A live moderator will coordinate the actions of the enemy alien fleet over time.

The game is designed to be purely cooperative. While this might alienate some people, I think it’s a great attempt to make the game more accessible. With no fear of being PK’d by merciless 12-year olds, you might just see players of all types getting into the game.

Equally interesting is Nokia’s decision to avoid restricting gameplay to Nokia-only handsets. Any phone with a recent version of Java can support the game, apparently. Really good call, IMO — reaching critical mass is crucial for an MMOG. I’m sure Nokia can find ways to encourage players on other handsets to eventually migrate.