A Tree Falling in the Forest

Nothing is more humbling than receiving credit for someone else's great work - not that it stops me.  Ralph Osterhout is a close friend of twenty years and four years ago he invited me to start working with him and the amazing team at Osterhout Design Group.   To say Ralph is legendary for his work and presence is a disservice to reality.   A short list of his inventions includes PVS 7 night vision goggles, Navy Seal Rebreathers, the Shark Dart (look it up), Dry Suits for swimming under the polar ice caps to blow up bad guys' submarines, the Yack Back player from Home Alone, high intensity water pistols, the weapons "Q" presents as his own in The Spy Who Loved me and the magic trick where Teller drowns on stage in Penn and Teller's act and these are just a few.   So when he asked me to stand in for him at Augmented World Expo and present the teams work I accepted only with tremendous humility and apprehension.  Here it is. 

Pioneers 2016 Vienna The team at Pioneers are doing a stunningly amazing job of building an innovation community in Europe. In the summer of 2016 they gave me the opportunity to stand in one of the most awe inspiring venues in Europe to talk about VR and AR.   The most amazing part is at the end where I can barely control the excitement of the live demo working.

Ken Rutkowski started a casual group for a bunch of friends to get together on Saturday for breakfast and collaboration.  It was never only about business help and support were offered and provided in all aspects of the life and work.   The group grew in connection and size and now Ken hosts MeTAL in a theater in Los Angeles.    He asked me many times to come to talk about games and the game industry, but this time he asked me to talk on a day he was not around.  I went somewhere else completely.   Before mainstream discussions of fake news, filter bubbles and the Russians, I got myself worked about what was going on with social media and search.   This is probably the only talk you will ever see that quotes Ghandi, Tolstoy, Karl Popper, Margaret Mead and Stuart Smally all in the same discussion. 

In my never-ending quest to prove to my parents - and myself - that my career in games is more than personal indulgence I spend a lot of time thinking about how many things are driven by the technological advances and understanding of human behavior derived from the work of so many creative geniuses. In this talk from Ken Rutkowski's MeTAL in Los Angeles I flap my arms and articulate why everything from the Ford Factory to Uber to a job at IBM is really game and how the game industry learnings can save the world - or at least make it more efficient.

When asked, I told people I started this blog as a cathartic outlet.  I didn't really care if any one read it, and I wrote when I had something to say.  People started to read.  I mean, who doesn't like to watch a good train wreck. There was a period of time I had a lot to say, and after a while the compulsion was gone.  I guess it worked.  I  catharted .   Or so I thought. This morning I saw this quote from Mike - boy do I miss Doug Lowenstien - Gallagher:  "The video game industry's explosive growth and technological innovation were front and centre at E3 2014," said owner and manager of E3 Michael D. Gallagher. "Video games are the most innovative and engaging force driving our culture and entertainment experiences the world over. Congratulations to our incredibly creative members, partners, exhibitors, and the hundreds of millions of gamers who engaged with the show online and through social media." He was trying to say this E3 ...

Maybe cliche' by now, but still creepy . . .   Quote from 1984 About Telescreens "The telescreen recieved and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever the wanted to. You had to live- did live, from habit that became instinct- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. -1984, Book 1, Chapter One, George Orwell Quote from Katherine Boehret Allthingsd review about Xbox One with Kinect: A Skyp...

Both of my regular blog readers keep asking why I do not write more.  It is easy enough to tell my mom to stop nagging, but I still answer to the other one - even though his English is not so good.  That dear reader, is customer service - something GameStop sadly lacks.   I realize the global nature of the statement and should explain it is not entirely true.  I never met anyone at the top of the company who is not gracious, a pleasure to deal with and painfully conscious of the customer relationship.  Unfortunately, those are not the people we deal with when we buy a game.  The stores are run by managers drawn from the mold of The Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons and choose to operate on an entirely different level.  Sure, they serve a customer, just not  the ones who want to buy a game. It is very hard to find stores carrying a wide selection of games any more.  This creates a wonderful opportunity for a store brand itself...

I saw a good friend of mine who is very smart and I respect very much - he still finds the time to talk with me though.   He told me he likes my blog, but asked a question he said he hoped would not offend me. "Do you write your blog for yourself on in the hopes of gaining an audience?  Because if you write them for an audience, you really should have a point."   I may be paraphrasing a bit, but it came out like that in my mind.  It was kind of a funny question because I never really thought about writing for anyone else.  My blog is completely self indulgent and admittedly, often only finds entertainment or genius at the point of creation.   The blog is actually a permanent record of the thoughts I find fascinating, and often the expression is only intelligible to me. Along the same lines, when Ken Rutkowski asked me to speak to his METal Internationa l group, I was honored, and excited by the opportunity to entertain - myself.   Because ...

Last week I read an article  about the US Department of Agriculture's decision to parachute poison mice into treetops to kill tree snakes in Guam.  The tree snakes killed all of the birds on the island and the USDA is concerned the snakes may be able to migrate to Hawaii.   This reminiscent of all of the times a species was introduced to wipe out another, and it went terribly wrong.  The article moved through a series of curiously inappropriate connections in my mind and got me thinking about digital object sales. I cannot tell you why, but I a promise you it is much more of a curse than a blessing.   Our perception of digital objects and willingness to pay for them is evolving much more quickly than our understanding of the impact of the market and I am afraid they will get a foothold in our world before we know how to control them.   Oh yeah, don't worry about the poison, it is Tylenol which is just as useful for killing black tree snakes as it is for ...

S SH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . h ! ! ! "All ye, The People of the United States: his Excellency, the PRESIDENT!" This greeting may be heard all over the country, in the not-far-distant future, and not on a phonograph either, if Mr. Paul Calhoun's dream comes true. His idea is to link up all the larger cities and towns by radio with the powerful transcontinental government wireless station at Arlington, near Washington, so that when the President makes a speech before Congress or even his inaugural address, all the people can hear it, instead of a select few gathered within ordinary hearing distance of the speaker as has been the case in the past. UPDATE 03/01/13 Two very important updates this week and I am too lazy to integrate them and rewrite.  I don't think anyone wants to see a redline version of my blog either. First, it appears Google may be thinking the same wa...

It is encouraging to know the likelihood of breakout success in the app store is over 100 times better than the likelihood of winning the Powerball lottery. Unfortunately based on the sheer volume of apps in the store, it is still in the million to one range. Fortunately, unlike Powerball, we can increase the likelihood of success by charting. The top ten apps are easy to find and can build enough momentum to get millions of downloads. In this freemium world of ours, millions of free downloads means tens, maybe hundreds of thousand paying players. Most developers cross promote to their base, or use services like Appoday or Freeappaday to achieve the necessary velocity to crack the charts. But apparently, it is not the only path to success. Maura Thompson used a different method. She targeted a market with a large pent up demand and built an app for them - wanna be dentists. You want to be a dentist? Ok, here is your chance! Dozens of Dental Surgery are waiting for you! ...