LinkedIn had their IPO and more than doubled their share value in a day. Of course, the whole world is now wondering if there’s another tech bubble brewing. The tech bubble in 2000 wasn’t that long ago so we haven’t yet forgotten about it. But, is this just a case of being wary of getting burned twice or is there really a bubble in our midst?

I don’t work directly in the technology industry that’s booming. I work in the games industry and we’ve received an echo effect from the tech boom–specifically social games and apps. Some can say that social games and game apps for mobile devices have driven the boom but, that’s an entirely different discussion. For the record: I think games are an innovative driving force everywhere but, that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

It’s safe to say that I’m not an outside Wall St analyst looking in. I’m not saying that makes my opinion anymore valid or correct but, I think I understand what’s happening better than a talking head. Or it makes me completely blind to what’s going on. Either way, it’s always good to get different perspectives.

It’s a Bubble Isn’t It?

The analysts are generally espousing doom and gloom. Jim Cramer says it’s ridiculous, outrages, and preposterous. Okay, Cramer was talking about the way Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and others priced the LinkedIn stock initially. The story goes that the stock was priced too low initially and that’s why we had this ridiculous one day rocket launch that more than doubled the stock price.

Maybe so. Maybe not. I don’t think LinkedIn is worth $8 billion dollars. LinkedIn raked in under $250 million dollars in gross revenue between 2009 – 2010. Net income? Just above $15 million dollars. This means we’re saying LinkedIn is worth about 35x it’s annual revenue.

35x? Really?

That’s pretty ridiculous but, I don’t think that LinkedIn alone designates a bubble. LinkedIn’s stock is a bubble. If they can prove that they can grow revenues exponentially then perhaps this valuation would make more sense but, I don’t think it is currently justified. It’s likely that the stock price will hang around here and LinkedIn’s revenues will have to play catch up or the stock price will fall to a more reasonable level.

For LinkedIn, I think this summarizes the tale nicely:

“We think it’s a very good financial model and a good business, but at these valuations, it’s potentially, ‘Watch out below.’ ” – Rick Summers, Senior Equity Analyst, Morningstar

A Boom Then?

If I’m saying LinkedIn doesn’t designate a bubble then is this just a boom? Real, legitimate growth?

Generally speaking: yes. I think there is real growth happening in technology. Other industries will probably suffer from the growth in tech if those industries don’t get their act together and get with the times–the times that technology is making–but, I think most of the boom is legitimate. Some of these valuations are pretty ridiculous but, a bubble in the stock market is not necessarily a bubble in the economy.

I have little doubt that when Facebook, Twitter, et al. do their IPO dance that they will also become highly overvalued. Some folks will probably lose their shirts in the stock market and others will make a killing but, that’s the way of the stock market. It isn’t that far removed from gambling. It’s not about pure chance but, people go into it on hype and little research so there’s almost no difference if you’re that investor–watching Mad Money does not count as research.

Technology is creating real jobs that produces real things people want. This isn’t about eyeballs or page views or something else that has unpredictable and unreliable monetization options. Okay, SOME of it is but, the successful companies aren’t relying on those things. We’ve moved away from an internet where no one knows anything about making money to an internet where we do know a thing or two about making money.

Services come with a fee. Not everything is free–shocking! Some things are free. Then we have in-App purchases or what are known as micro-transactions. There’s also the freemium. No matter how we slice the cake this time around, these companies are thinking about–and actually are–making money.

Even LinkedIn. I don’t think they’re worth $8 billion but, they are making money. $15 million is nothing to scoff at. That’s real money and it buys quite a bit. LinkedIn isn’t going to fall to $0 anytime soon. They are worth something. Just not $8 billion.

So bubble? No. We aren’t in BubbleVille yet.

But when it comes to strength of influence on my life, Super Mario wins hands down. I fell in love with video games the first time I played Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I can’t tell you how old I was with any confidence but, I was young. Single digits young.

Unfortunately for the houses that Mario did not build, my love for video games doesn’t translate into any inkling of fanaticism for them. There are no other video game company or any other type of company that I would be a first adopter of and even wait in line–sometimes overnight–for the privilege. This is the kind of fanaticism that every company wishes they had more of.

I wait with bated breath every year during game industry conferences and expositions for new and exciting announcements from Nintendo and secretly hope that they’ll oust their competitors. None of this is rational. I don’t own stocks in Nintendo and their success or failure is of no direct consequence to me.

Party With Mario

Nintendo made the announcement of a celebratory event at their flagship store in New York City with little fuss. It was presented as a low key and relatively small event with cake, Mario games, and a chance to take pictures with a guy in a giant Mario costume.

This might have been amazingly intriguing if I was 12 but, being twice that old makes it a lot less appealing. I went to check it out anyway. There was little to lose although a great deal of events in the realm of video games, comics, and anime are oft filled with some fairly ill-adjusted folks and in the case of video games: large dudes who reek of BO. I’m just saying it as I see–or smell–it.

While the majority of the convention going crowd will likely burn me at the stake or at the very least shun me for making such comments, I love them all the same. It’s not necessarily my world but, I enjoy visiting from time to time. It’s not that I’m too good for it. It’s just not where I’m most comfortable.

So braving potentially crazy folks, interesting smells, and possibility that I might say something offensive, I went to the Nintendo World Store to check out what Nintendo had planned for the celebration of their biggest, most iconic, and highest grossing franchise.

Lines and Surprises

Only Nintendo can send out an inconspicuous party invitation detailing some of the most mundane of activities and still end up with a line that goes around the block. The Nintendo World Store is fairly small so I’m sure Nintendo had to juggle safety and buzz.

None of that deterred Mario’s fans who came out dressed up, lined up, and patiently waited until 12PM–by which time the line had already snaked around a Manhattan block–to be allowed into the store to celebrate. I got there around 11:30 and was half way down the block on the line. Half an hour early to an inconspicuous Nintendo event is not early enough.

Upon entering the store, there was already a mass of people around playing Mario games, checking out the redesigned Nintendo showcase, browsing products, and getting in another line to take a picture.

I eventually got on this line after walking around, playing some Mario, and checking out what was around. I could have just left after seeing how mundane the activities really were but, I decided to give it a chance.

While waiting on an incredibly slow moving line due to printer problems, a live speed run through Super Mario Bros. that took around 5 minutes and 20 seconds was conducted. I didn’t actually see it because there were so many people but, it was still cool to be in the area while such a feat was accomplished considering–I’m about to unveil another sin–I have never actually finished the original Super Mario Bros.

After taking a remarkably silly picture with an 8-bit Super Mario backdrop, it was time for the cake cutting ceremony. Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo of America, was introduced. He is a celebrity amongst gamers. Since there was no mention of his presence in the invite, Nintendo clearly had little intention of drawing too large a crowd.

Reggie’s appearance wasn’t that surprising. There was rumblings that he was on the first floor of the store and it doesn’t take that much to fly from Redmond, WA to New York–I’m sure he does it all time. Reggie did the customary thanking of fans and then gave every Nintendo fan in the relatively tiny upstairs area of the Nintendo World Store a moment of sheer excitement as he motioned to introduce the creator of Mario: Shigeru Miyamoto.

To say the crowd erupted in a fervor would be an understatement. I’m not sure how the roof stayed on. The noise level to crowd size was something to behold.

I was mostly in a state of shocked awe.

Almost all of us in the video game world will concede that this tiny yet brilliant Japanese man is the god of video games. So being in the presence of this man is akin to being in the presence of a god.

As the crowd erupted at the sight of Miyamoto a few might have fainted like 13 year old girls at a Justin Bieber concert. This man may be the only rock star of the video game world who needs the protection of security guards when he makes appearances. Miyamoto said a few words in Japanese accompanied by a prerecorded video with subtitles that nobody watched because the man was right in front of us: live!

He then proceeded to cut the cake and stay for photo ops for the press. I sneaked in behind the TV Miyamoto was standing in front of and with the help of a very large yet nice security guard, snapped a blurry photo and then a non-blurry photo of the greatest man in video games.

That made all the waiting in line and unappealing body odor worth it.

When You Love It, Stick With It

While this was mainly a media event for Nintendo to generate some buzz for themselves and Mario’s 25 years as well as a thank you to the fans who made Mario the success it is, I came away with something slightly different.

It isn’t news to me that I love everything about the game industry from all its glories to all its quirks and negative stereotypes. This form of media, art, and entertainment is a passion for me. There are other things that I love as well but, not in the same way.

Like most people, I wonder if my career choice is the best I’ve made and in my case: if games is the best. I will probably never know if its the best since that’s open to interpretation. But I know for sure that there is no feeling like seeing other people play and enjoy a game you’ve made. Reaching the amount of people that Miyamoto has will probably not be in my cards but, changing, inspiring, or enriching just one person’s life is well worth it.

And while that can be done through books, film, music, and other media. My media of choice is video games because I love it.

There were also a lot of pretty pictures–I’m going to get stoned by hardcore comic fans.

While the comics didn’t do much for me, I still appreciate the culture that Comic Con represents. I proceeded to the other section of Comic Con with game companies. Aha! I know these. Much more at home here.

There was also an anime convention going on in the same place but, it was a bit hidden and half-assed. I generally like to look at cosplay photos because they are so elaborate sometimes. I appreciate the effort that goes into creating these costumes–kinda like Halloween. Maybe I should do some cosplay? Or I should get my lazy ass to actually have a costume on Halloween. One step at a time.

There were plenty of cosplayers at Comic Con and quite a few of them were very impressive. Loved it.

IGN and Sprint

While I don’t really read anything at IGN anymore and I’m an AT&T customer, I spent most of the last couple hours at their booth. They had a Kinect demo there but, that wasn’t why I was there.

My brother’s girlfriend was working the booth as a model–she might kill me for linking the picture from IGN but, I don’t think she reads my blog; she’s in the middle. She was X-23 from the new Marvel vs Capcom 3 game. I had no idea who X-23 was–see, my comic knowledge is crap. So I met up with my brother and he played a demo of Dance Central on Kinect.

That’s the one game I’d like to play on Kinect. Nothing else really interests me. My brother looked a little foolish playing that game for the first time. I assume we all would but, it looked fun. Dancing in front of a bunch of strangers is never easy so I guess my brother has some balls–so to speak.

We hung around the IGN/Sprint booth until Comic Con ended. I had already walked around and saw about as much as I could see. I played a demo of Donkey Kong Country Returns for Wii at Nintendo’s booth. Coincidentally, I had a dream that I played that game and it sucked. Luckily for Nintendo, it didn’t completely suck but, it didn’t live up to my nostalgia for the original Donkey Kong Country. I’m going to have to see what the game media has to say about this game before I get it.

SuperTommy VS Chun-Li

Capcom should put me–SuperTommy–in the next Street Fighter. I’ll take Street Fighter V or the next incarnation of Street Fighter IV. Do it Capcom!

While this picture on the right isn’t a versus as much as a tag team, my digital fighter self can totally take Chun-Li. On a personal note, Chun-Li is my second go to character after Guile in the games. I would also note that I’m not that good at Street Fighter. I get my ass handed to me easily online in Street Fighter 2.

I shared this photo on Facebook and a friend of mine said I looked lean. I totally agree. So this is where I will pimp the diet that I think everyone should go on. It’s good for you! Go do it.

Being that I knew one of the models at the booth, I ended up mingling with some of the other booth staff. I almost always think of Zoolander–one of my favorite movies of all time–when I talk about models. Anyway, their model for Captain America was physically impressive. I always appreciate someone who clearly has similar training ideals as I do–I discovered later that we shared the same beliefs on chronic cardio. I also found out later that he was in The Real World: Brookyn.

All in all, it was a pretty entertaining Sunday activity to head down to the Jacob Javits Center and geek out a little. I tried pretty hard not to be a game developer and marketer dissecting why they were doing this at this booth and all of that. It’s how my brain naturally operates.

Just to continue my newly started tradition of announcing some of my public appearances. I will very likely be at Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity in DC October 30th. Maybe I’ll unlock some more Foursquare badges like I did today!

I have very little interest in celebrity gossip. I’ll watch and love their movies, TV shows, and listen to their music but, their gossip and drama is not for me. How companies go from almost bankrupt to becoming a major success interests me. How a few people can create a breakthrough game in their basement and go on to change the world interests me.

Games as a Kid

I grew up in the 90′s. Being born in the mid 80′s means that I really remember nothing about that time. It was 1990 by the time I was four. It’s really only from the early 90′s and on that I have any recollection of life–everything before that is quite hazy.

The first video game experience I had was with the Nintendo Entertainment System at my grandmother’s house. The first games I played were Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. Those games are still entertaining today–a testament to their designs’ lasting appeal.

I can’t say video games played a bigger role in my life than anything else specifically but, it is one of my favorite forms of entertainment. I may have very well watched just as much TV, listened to just as much music, and even read just as many books–granted, I don’t read much fiction.

How major a role video games played in my life is irrelevant. I don’t love TV like I do video games. The business and development of games interest me a lot more than that of TV. I like to watch TV shows but, I don’t really care how it’s made–I care more about its part in marketing.

From Hobbyist to Professional

The amount of time I spend playing games–and playing in general–has decreased as I’ve gotten older. My consumption of all entertainment has probably decreased as well. It’s pretty hard to be consuming and producing at the same time.

These days, I spend a lot of time working. Not just at work but, also all the work I do for me. Apparently, life doesn’t really progress if  I just sit still. I need to be constantly learning and doing work so that I have things to show for. What a drag!

And, there’s quite a few people with my name–I have a common first name and my last name isn’t that unique in the country of 1.5 billion people. My Google rank is always in flux so I have to stay on my toes. If I want to stay up there in the rankings and continue gaining relevancy, I need to keep producing. Keep thinking. Keep learning.

I chose to be part of the video game industry. One of those technology industries where the technology part is always changing! And to make things worse, video games are purely entertainment. One amongst a sea of many others that are much easier to come by and more established. What we do is not a necessity so we have to constantly innovate and push the envelope just to stay relevant!

The video game industry is not for the faint of heart when it comes to doing work. Mix that with my drive to be more than just another anonymous face and there’s little time left for all those cherished childhood activities.

Everyone Needs Play

But, we all need a break sometimes that doesn’t include bars and alcohol–for the sake of one’s liver. I end up playing a handful of games over the course of the year. Usually they are the big releases or the releases from franchises I’ve come to know and love. I don’t often try new games. It’s sad. As a game developer: almost sinful!

When I do sit down to play a game, it’s usually over a weekend. I just disappear. I’m busy to everyone. I set aside a block of time and play the whole thing through and move on. I prefer the 15 to 20 hour games. I can mow through those in a weekend.

If I don’t finish a game in one set block of time, I don’t quite know when I’ll have that time again. When I do, I may have forgotten where I was in the game and what I was supposed to do next. All of which makes me not want to continue and I eventually forget about it.

This is a poor strategy for playing any large volume of games. In fact, in 2010 I have only completed Mass Effect 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I expect to play Metroid: Other M. I started Uncharted but, have yet to finish it–I probably won’t. I’m playing StarCraft 2 in super small bursts. I bought Suikoden on the PlayStation Network Store and I’m playing that right now–kicking it back to the mid-1990′s.

Game Experiences and Game Development

In all likelihood, I will end up having completed 5 or so games this year. Many times more games were released this year along with all the games I’ve not played from years past.

Which means I would have experienced a small percentage of all games released in 2010 and that percentage gets smaller and smaller as we add on the years. This appears to be a problem amongst most gaming professionals outside of game journalists–their job is to play every game that comes out.

I don’t foresee there being a way to increase the amount of games I experience in a year. I also think that’s perfectly fine. As long as I’m experiencing enough–from every medium–to be able to produce good games, there’s no problem.

There’s so much to do in life that getting any of this done is an amazement.

There is one other book that talks about the business and history of Nintendo: Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World by David Scheff. That book is no longer in print. It hasn’t been in print for a long time. I have the 1999 paperback edition. I bought it used many years go. The cover is worn. It’s an old book and it shows.

I have several books on the history of video games. I love the industry. I don’t play nearly as much as I used to but, I grew up wanting to make video games. Video games had me at Mario.

When Nintendo Magic showed up as a recommendation for me on Amazon, I was intrigued. There are few books about the business side of video games and even fewer about specific companies and their successes. I was waiting for someone to write a book about the amazing success of the Nintendo DS and the Wii.

I have closely followed Nintendo ever since I was able to figure out how to use the internet to find information. So when Nintendo was warning of troubling times for the video game industry, I was listening. I was captivated by what Nintendo was publicly saying about the video game industry long before the success of the Nintendo DS and the Wii.

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Not long ago, Roger Ebert wrote a blog post titled, Video games can never be art. I was actually busy making a game so I never got around to responding to it. I just rolled my eyes and went back to work. Someone has to make these things that can never be art.

Roger Ebert and I sit on opposite ends of the ‘video games as art’ debate. He adamantly believes that video games are not art and cannot be art. I don’t just think video games can be art, I believe they are art. I’ve long believed that video games are art and have even put it into writing. My favorite example for making the case being the Mass Effect series.

I am biased. I grew up with games. I love games; all of it, from the actual games to the industry of games. I make games for a living. There’s no denying it, I am biased.

That doesn’t mean Ebert is objective. We all know who he is. He is biased in the opposite direction. He is biased to film.

Whenever Ebert claims that video games cannot be or are not an art form, a fire spreads through the games industry. For one reason or another, we really want Ebert to tell us that video games are an art form. As if Ebert is the gatekeeper to what is art.

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At the IGDA NYC Demo Night, we shared our development experience working on the iPhone and making an independently funded title. I’m not sure if it was recorded but, I have written a blog post at SMASHWORX detailing much of the same things we shared in our presentation.

So here it is:

We made our Propaganda Lander presentation at the IGDA NYC Demo Night on March 29th. Jess and I had a great time doing it and thoroughly enjoyed the conversations we had with other developers afterwards. So, for anyone who missed it or fell asleep during our presentation–I’m sure at least parts were boring–we are going to recap it here. In fact, we might offer a little more information than we were able to present in 15 minutes.

We kicked off the presentation with this trailer and then went into a little Propaganda Lander history.

Continued at SMASHWORX

GDC is the annual Game Developers Conference that usually takes place in San Fransisco. Each year, thousands of game developers–large and small–attend the show to learn, see new things, and network. Some companies

take this time to make big announcements and show off new games. Rarely does a GDC come and go without notable announcements that will shape the rest of the year for games and this was not a rare year.

As a fan of games and a game developer, here are the announcements that were most notable at GDC 2010.

Playstation Move

Sony had originally shown off their answer to Nintendo’s Wii at E3 2009. At GDC 2010, they announced an official name, relative price point, and a release window. Sony’s motion controller has been named the Playstation Move. It will be under $100 and scheduled for release this Fall. Microsoft’s answer to motion gaming–Project Natal–is also scheduled to be released during the same window.

In all of this, Nintendo of America’s President and Chief Operating Officier, Reggie Fils-Aime, used the word “embarrassed” to describe what Sony and Microsoft are doing. Competition in the games industry is as tough as ever.

The Playstation Move uses the existing Playstation Eye camera with a wand-like controller–similar to the Wii–to detect and translate a player’s motion into a game. The Playstation Move is much more accurate than the Wii remote and should allow for interesting new game play mechanics originally dreamed up by the Wii like 1 to 1 sword control–or light sabers, whichever.

Continued at Associated Content

This might make sense for music where a CD traditionally cost $15 – $20 so the average price per song is about $.99. Take away the cost of producing CD’s, cases, and the label’s cut and the artist is probably better off. Games have traditionally had double digit prices depending on it’s platform and scale. PopCap sells Plants vs Zombies as a PC downloadable for $19.95. The same game on the App Store is $2.99.

When Super Monkey Ball was released on the iPhone, it came with a $9.99 price tag. It is now $3.99 and the price range for high quality premium games have settled to around $6.

While the low expected price of games on the App Store is a problem for game developers, there is little good in complaining about it. The initial rush to iPhone game development was spearheaded by hobbyists and small game companies that had low costs and seemingly infinite upside. Almost any game could have succeeded by just being available on the App Store. Times have changed and the pricing strategies have to change with it.

The $.99 price point is not going to work for 99% of game developers. The quality bar has been raised so high that it is impossible to break even at $.99. Losing money on every game you make is the fastest way to no longer be in the business of making games. The App Store is not exempt from traditional pricing strategies.

Virtually every pricing strategy that has ever been developed in marketing apply to the App Store as they do to the sale of all products and services.

Competitive Pricing

The simplest and most logical pricing strategy is competitive pricing. This means you are going to set a price similar to or exactly the same as competitors in the market. This has been the predominant strategy applied across the board in the App Store.

Smart marketers who use this strategy don’t apply it across the industry. You will notice that not every beer is priced the same or every shampoo, detergent, orange juice, deodorant, etc. This is because each product is not the same. There are some products that are virtually identical and in those cases, you either need to differentiate or you match prices. Generally speaking, when a customer has to choose from two identical products, price is going to be the determining factor.

Cost/Economy Pricing

Cost pricing is coming up with a price based on your cost to produce plus a suitable mark up. This is a strategy that generally ignores the prices set by competitors in the market and is derived solely based on the company’s cost structure and goals. If each product costs $5 to make and you want a $2 profit on each sale, you would set a price of $7.

Loss Leader

A loss leader is a product that sells at a loss to spur customers to buy other higher priced items. This is usually done to bring customers to a store hoping they will also buy other things. Big chain stores do this often in their circulars and usually only have a limited amount of the advertised product.

Penetration Pricing

Penetration pricing is usually used to break into a new market or gain market share. Prices are set lower to attract customers and then raised later once significant market share has been gained. This happens a lot in cable TV where companies offer a low price for 6 months and then changes to the regular price thereafter.

Premium Pricing

This is the general pricing strategy for high end luxury items. This is also the most desirable pricing strategy as it has the highest profit potential. It is also the hardest to achieve because the product needs to be seen as highly unique in the eyes of the consumers. This also happens to be the traditional pricing strategy for Apple. Their products are built with a unique design and experience that can command generally higher prices.

Price Skimming

Price skimming is the act of releasing a product at a relatively high price where only a small percent of the market is willing to afford it. This is usually because it is the only product of its kind at the time and competitors have not yet entered the market. Once more competitors offer the same or similar product, prices start to come down. This is the general pricing strategy in technology and electronic products like flat screen televisions.

Determining Price

There are literally tons of other pricing strategies and hybrids of each other. These are the basics for a general understanding of pricing. The best pricing strategy for the App Store is going to depend on the company and the products. EA’s pricing strategy is not going to be the same as a five man game company.

It would be safe to say that you do not want to price at $.99 as there is no where left to go after that and as more premium titles are released, $.99 is going to come to mean low quality. When you don’t know much about two similar products, the higher priced one is assumed to be the better one.

A pricing strategy should fit within an overall marketing strategy. It is impossible to come up with a good pricing strategy without knowing what the marketing goals are. Prices that are too high or too low can derail an entire marketing plan from achieving business objectives. Poor pricing can also make or break a business.

Luckily, in the App Store, prices can be easily and quickly changed. A poor price may not be terminal but, there are still lost profits at stake.

Know your product, marketing objectives, and then determine a price.

Online social networks changed the world. King of thee networks is Facebook. Facebook’s user base is greater than the population of the United States and they have overtaken MySpace in popularity. Entire companies have been built on top of Facebook’s platform. Facebook changed the world in the last decade.

The popularity of Facebook Applications has spawned a ton of games that currently flood our Live Feeds. Few days pass without a mention of a quiz result or a lost brown cow. The early days of Facebook Applications allowed for successes like Vampires and Werewolves. Those were Neanderthal apps. Apps can no longer become successful by being incredibly annoying.

The Facebook audience has evolved.

Facebook Applications are only going to get more complex as features become standard. People expect to see their friend’s high scores and how they rank. They expect to be able to interact with their friends. Zynga’s model has become the standard for what a Facebook game can do.

This makes success for new apps more difficult. A couple of guys in their spare time can’t make a game on the scale of FarmVille. Zynga and other large social network game giants can only be defeated at their own game by each other. The little guys trying to break in will need to find a road less traveled.

Continued at Associated Content

You name it, there’s an app for that. A year from now, you name it, and there will be apps for that and the ten other things you didn’t think of.

These are all conveniences iPhones owners have enjoyed. I have taken these services for granted. I don’t worry about where anything is anymore, I can find it on Google Maps. All of this convenience is fantastic for the consumer, while those trying to sell apps on the iPhone are finding it harder to stand out.

The most competitive category is Games. There are few categories as popular as the Games section of the App Store. There are more Games than any other category. At over 20,000 strong, avoiding obscurity will be a challenge.

But not only that, you need to have a lasting impression. You may have created the hottest iPhone game to date but, what is going to stop someone from releasing a $.99 clone? How do you ensure a cheaper clone isn’t going to eat away at your sales and market share?

Take the once popular iShoot. It made $800,000 in five months and prompted its creator, Ethan Nicholas, to leave his job at Sun Microsystems. iShoot has since been buried by competitors and copycats. Nicholas says it’s “terrifying” and that iShoot’s success was “pure luck”.

Pure luck is not going to work for a business selling games on the App Store. Relying on luck to run a business is the surest way to the land of businesses-that-were. And I’m not sure all businesses go to heaven.

Luckily, the solution is as old as time: marketing. Why do you buy Tide instead of Acme Brand? They may have exactly the same quality and stain fighting power but, Acme Brand isn’t going to hold a candle to the power of Tide.

There was a time when only a handful of games were on the App Store. The best games sold well in those prehistoric times. Those days are long gone. You can release a game on the App Store tomorrow and it’ll be in the company of a hundred other games. Only a small fraction of all iPhone users are going to know your game came out. People can’t buy what they don’t know about!

This is logical reasoning but, not everyone is on board. In an interview with Wired, Austin Sarner, CEO of Design by a Knife, said this:

“Basically everybody’s on the same level once they submit an iPhone app. Unlike traditional marketing, there’s no ad campaign: A user just sees what he sees in the iPhone store, and the applications kind of have to sell themselves to some extent.”

Sarner’s philosophy is that great content drives App Store success and not “marketing”. Sarner is a developer by profession so this an understandable point of view. Sarner confuses advertising with marketing and doesn’t realize that developing a great product is a fundamental function of marketing.

It is inaccurate that there is no advertising behind iPhone games. EA didn’t come to the party without their advertising muscle. And with hundreds of games being added to the App Store every week, the clutter alone will make you invisible no matter how good your game is.

It is suicide to release an app and hope it will be magically discovered. Only 7% of iPhone users download through iTunes, 62% knew what they wanted, 60% browsed the top lists, and 46% were from word of mouth according to AdMob. The 62% who knew what they wanted heard it somewhere first. It didn’t come to them in a dream.

If you are convinced that making the greatest iPhone game in the world, releasing it to the App Store, and then praying it will sell is a viable strategy, I have two words for you: good luck. You are going to need it.

However, if you want a viable business, there is a better way.

Game developers worldwide will disagree and hate this but, marketing has to be part of the development process from day one. You can’t create a game and then sprinkle some marketing pixie dust as an after thought. That’s the equivalent of wearing a blindfold, spinning around a few times, and then trying to hit a pinata. You have no idea where the target is. You are going to miss.

The development process starts with an audience. You need to target someone. You don’t need to go after the same audience as everyone else, but you need an audience. Who is going to buy your game? You need to make a game for them. You can make a game for yourself, but that’s not a business–it’s a hobby. Doing things in that fashion means it’ll always be a hobby.

Your game needs to be characteristic of your company brand–your company does have a brand right? There is a reason EA has multiple brands. Each brand has its own image and their games reflect that. EA Games caters to a more traditional audience, EA Sports develops games for the sports audience, and EA Play is solely focused on the casual market.

Engage with the community. If your audience is there, you need to be there engaging them: blogs, forums, YouTube videos, LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, etc. If your audience is there, you need to be there. Being engaged does not mean spamming. Join the conversations and use your company as the name of contact or end each comment noting your company. Don’t be obnoxious. Be informative, helpful, and provide useful discourse.

Marketing your game is a full-time job. People who solely work on the development side find this difficult to swallow. In their world, they are doing the hard work. Their point of view isn’t without merit. Without them, there would be no product at all.

To make things worse, it is difficult to accurately measure the impact marketing has on your business. You may never know how or if someone who interacts with your marketing ends up buying your product. In fact, they might not buy your product at all. They might talk to ten other people about their experience with your company and then one or more within those ten may end up buying. We cannot accurately measure this.

For people who are used to concrete and visible patterns, marketing may as well be voodoo. However, this doesn’t make marketing less important. It does mean marketing requires a different mindset than that of development.

Social medias has allowed us to monitor our audience’s thoughts, concerns, and feelings in real time. This lets us adjust our marketing efforts on the fly if it isn’t working or is having a negative effect. You need to be constantly monitoring your audience. It isn’t just a matter of marketing during a release–you will end up like iShoot. Cultivate your audience and develop a community.

Infinity Ward, the makers of Call of Duty, understands the importance of a strong community. They have a community manager, Robert Bowling, whose sole job is to monitor the Call of Duty audience. Without him, Modern Warfare 2 may not have become the highest grossing entertainment release of all time. The game would have done well no matter what. Call of Duty has a history, the first Modern Warfare was excellent, the hype surrounding Modern Warfare 2 was spectacular, it was a high quality product, and Call of Duty is a known entity–a brand. But, would it have done as well without marketing? Of course, we can never actually measure it but, I’m willing to bet marketing made the difference between one of the highest grossing and the highest grossing.

I don’t normally do games for such a young audience so it was interesting. The game mechanics were quite dumbed down. The games themselves were pretty simple: counting, pattern matching, etc. There should be a desktop game coming out for PC and Mac–that is where the bulk of the work is.

I think the game turned out pretty good. It was games like this one that has had me so busy the past several months.

Check the game out, there are no codes. The power-ups are pretty cool. The Queen and King jellyfish as also interesting. Shooting hordes of jellyfish is entertaining in its own right.

Christmas was always an exciting time because we would get new games. Then, we would then have winter break to play them to death. The weather would be cold outside. We had no money to go anywhere. Life was simple and the only thing we cared about was beating the next level. Eventually, I got older and had a social life. My brother also got much better than me at playing games so, time to retire!

Being a person who likes to make things, playing all these video games only made me want to make them. I also made comic books, websites, and cartoons–well, I tried to make them. If I find it interesting, I’m going to want to make my own.

When it came time think about college and–if you believe your high school adviser–your future, I was convinced that I wanted to make video games. I love the industry so, why not? To make a long story short, I did end up in the video game industry. I had written about that story before–feel free to read it.

Before I went to college, I spent a great deal of time looking into how I could break into the industry. I bought books on the subject and looked in every online crevice for information. Now that I’ve spent over a year and a half making games professionally, I think I can offer some advice.

What College?

The usual suspects looking for advice on breaking into the game industry are high school students. I was one of them. I think a college education is nice to have. However, I don’t think college teaches you much of what you need to perform any job in the real world.

I still think one should go to college for the experience. At the very least, you’ll meet useful people. I don’t believe one needs to go to a college that specializes in producing students with video game degrees. I went to the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, Arizona for one year. I was pursuing a degree in Game Design.

UAT is a pretty small school. They have great contacts and all the students are after similar things. Like-minded people were there in abundance. I place more importance in being able to understand a wide range of subjects. While one would be able to develop a really focused skill set for making video games, they would be lacking in everything else.

I didn’t really want to become a monkey or a small cog in a big machine.

It is also important to remember that the college experience is a one-time deal. I wouldn’t look so far ahead into the future and forget about that. It doesn’t even matter what degree you are pursuing–although a degree in sociology is likely going to be difficult to apply to games.

I have a BA in Marketing from Pace University. If you want to make games, you are likely going to also be interested in graphic design, programming, or some technology field. A business degree will also work since all game companies are still a business. Communication degrees tend to have a lot of overlap with marketing–especially in the PR department.

Your best bet is to study what you really want to study. Chances are, you won’t know what it is and you’ll change your mind during your college career. Getting into the game industry has very little to do with what college you went to. It has a lot to do with how knowledgeable you are of the industry and how much you participate in the community.

How do I get Experience?

Getting experience is the problem for everyone trying to get a job. There is no way to get real experience without doing it for real. Finding internships at game companies would be the surest way to get a feel for how things work.

Internships

I’m not a big fan of interning but, it is a proven method. I interned for a game company once before I went to college. All I did was test a game.

In my experience, if there is work to be done, we are usually too busy to figure out what to give to an intern who might not know anything. That is why I don’t find much real value from interning. It is still a good experience and you get something to put on your resume. The most important benefit are the contacts you’ll make.

I found my internship by using Gamasutra’s list of game companies. You can sort the list by City or State so I looked for all the game companies in New York and sent them internship requests. Most companies didn’t respond to me but, one of them did. And one was all I needed.

Learning on Your Own

My preferred way of getting experience is to actually make a game. There is an abundance of resources online for making games. Learn how to use the tools and create your own game. That is a learning experience unlike any other. You’ll never know how it feels to make a game from beginning to end without doing it.

Doing is the best simulation for the real thing. It will be more complicated on the job because there are other people in charge of quality and creative. Where you might let some defect slide, the client will not. There is also money on the line–that always changes things.

If you are someone who is just incapable of understanding all this technology mumbo jumbo, you can still get experience by doing. You just need to do something different. I made websites about the video game industry. I tried to compete with GameSpot or IGN–it didn’t work. It was still a good experience. I got to understand the industry very well by reading and reporting the news on a daily basis.

I also got to understand some of the business workings of the industry as I made contacts with the PR departments of companies like Eidos, Ubi Soft, and Midway for review copies of games. It was a fun time and I figured out that being a game journalist was not for me.

All you need to figure out is what you want to do in the game industry and do something that relates. If you can’t do the technical, work on the non-technical.

Useful Resources

Since I never got any formal schooling in making games, I had to find a lot of resources to learn on my own. Most of it had to do with passion. If you really want to do it, there are few things that can stop you. Since I spent time learning how to make games and being a part–a very small part–of the industry media, I can share resources on both.

The Technical

On the technical side, GameDev.net is a great site. I spent most of my time looking through their resources for programming. They also have information about art, sound, design, etc. It is a huge treasure trove of information.

Many tutorial sites that I used have since disappeared. However, Flash was not a big player for games back then. The explosion of Flash games have really changed the landscape. Making games and allowing other people to instantly play them is now easier than ever. All you need is a web browser.

I recommend Kongregate‘s set of tutorials for making Flash games. I am working on a series of tutorials myself but, they aren’t ready yet. You can also put your game on Kongregate and have people play and rate it. If you don’t know about Kongregate, look at them as the YouTube of games.

There is also Microsoft’s XNA platform. They have a huge amount of information about making games for XNA that will play on both the XBOX 360 and Windows. I never had that opportunity to put games on an actual console. I think XNA is great way to learn.

Games built in XNA for the XBOX 360 can also be put on the XBOX Live Marketplace if the community deems it worthy.

The Not So Technical

I consider the not so technical side to be the business side. So that could be a journalist, a writer, an analyst, a PR person, etc. Everything that doesn’t need advanced technical know-how. There are very few to zero resources for telling you how to be a game journalist.

You would go through the same steps as any journalist, except you need to be knowledgeable in games. That is the same for all other non-technical positions. There aren’t any real resources for becoming a game analyst, journalist, or PR person. Those are all disciplines that are not unique to games.

I would keep abreast of the industry news and be active in the community. Reading Gamasutra and being a member of the IGDA would be a good start. The IGDA has chapters all over the country that meet regularly; join one of them and get to know the professionals in your area.

You will want to make a name for yourself as someone who understands your field as it relates to video games. A great way to do that is to blog. Blog about game journalism. Write editorial pieces and publish them yourself. Write about marketing in the game industry.

The prerequisite to writing is that you need to know about your topic. So a marketer is going to have to understand marketing and a journalist about journalism.

Resources for Everyone

The IGDA has a special Breaking In section. It looks about the same as when I was looking for information so I don’t know how updated it is. Their Web Links in the Resources section has information for everything you can imagine.

Ernest Adams is a well known industry veteran who speaks about breaking into the industry. He has a book titled Break Into The Game Industry–I bought and read that book. He would be the de facto expert on the subject as he has probably written the most about it.

Industry Expos

I always wanted to go to E3–Electronic Entertainment Exposition. It was my dream as self-proclaimed game journalist. I never did get to go and it is now a shell of its former self. E3 is no longer the extravagant spectacle that it used to be.

E3 isn’t open to the public and only people who are affiliated to the industry are allowed to get in. I don’t know exactly what qualifies and what doesn’t. Working in the industry would certainly qualify–I would hope.

The other big industry gathering is GDC–Game Developers Conference. GDC is really where business gets done. A lot of industry players attend. Where E3 is more of a show for big game companies to demonstrate their new titles to the press, GDC is where the attention is on the game developers.

It is always good to experience an industry event for yourself. Those who love games will always find it incredibly pleasant to be in such an environment. There are other small conventions and shows that take place as well.

One in New York annually–didn’t happen last year due to some economic issue–is Digital Life. I was there every year since I found about it. You almost always end up leaving the show with some free stuff–shirts and other promotional materials. Who doesn’t like free stuff?

On the west coast there is the E for All Expo. Like Digital Life, E for All is really for the fans. You mainly go there to try out the new things that companies are offering. Doesn’t hurt to stay up to date on the new happenings in the industry!

Last Words of Inspiration

There is no road map for getting into the industry. Unlike other professions like lawyers and doctors where you know you need to go to law school or medical school, no such sure-fire route exists in the games industry. I think that it is one of the great advantages to the industry.

At heart, we are still a bunch of kids playing with toys. We make things that are fun. We entertain. We are open. We don’t have massive barriers to entry. It is the diversity of the people that has led to our growth and innovations.

No one can come up with a set of steps that you need to take to end up at an EA or Activision. All you really need is a love of games and persistence.

The game is basically a set of four mini-games where your knowledge of world geography is tested. I am generally not very good with geography and have learned quite a bit from this game already. The four mini-games is matching flag with country, matching land mass to country, locating cities, and locating landmarks. I do best in landmarks and worst in flags.

If you haven’t tried this game already, I think you should. You’ll at least learn a something from it and it is fun. As of this writing, I have a score in the 18,000′s–some people have scores in the hundreds of thousands.

UPDATE: A few hours after I posted this, my high score is in the 22,000′s. This game is addictive.

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