Ok that was just some gratuitous sensationalism to get your attention and well because I am a visual guy and I tend to think in pictures. I really had no choice, but to make the above image, if for no other reason than it makes me chuckle a little on the inside every time I look at it.

Truth be told, I like Nokia, I worked there over 5 years, and I like Microsoft, I own an X-Box and play the hell out of it any chance I get, so the recently announced deal between the two should be music to my ears, but sadly it is not.

It is not that I don t want both companies to succeed, indeed I do, I believe that the mobile market and markets in general, are better when more companies compete to earn my consumer dollars, but Nokia has not been able to design and release a truly iconic, ground breaking piece of hardware in years and though they can ship boxes like nobody's business, their margins are getting thinner and thinner

So can they now, with the help of Windows Phone 7, release a great, incredible, amazing product? A product that might actually see the light of day in North America?

Personally I am skeptical. Window Mobile Phones have not taken off and Android continues to chug along like a giant snowball rolling down hill. Not to pour salt in the wound, but this was one of the comments I read today about the announcement;

Bing? What's that?
Let me Google it.

 
Even though I am skeptical, I have to say I am honestly hopeful that I am wrong and Nokia+Microsoft (Microkia?, NokiSoft?) snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Highly interesting read over here at the Harvard Business Review - The Awesomeness Manifesto.

Not sure how much I agree with Mr. Haque about the end of innovation, but I totally agree with his notion of designing and building products/services you love, that add real value to people's lives. Summarized in the article:

Let's summarize. What is awesomeness? Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. That's a better kind of innovation, built for 21st century economics.

Well said sir, well said.

As videogames move out of the basement and into mainstream culture, I am sometime astounded where they end up. Being fortunate enough to live in the Bay Area I have the luxury of seeing such innovation as multiplayer videogames as part of our local bus system.

To confess, I have not actually had the chance to play any of these games, but I applaud the effort of Yahoo, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agent and Clear Channel in coming up with this concept. 

UPDATE

Looks like you can check out more details here at www.busstopderby.com tons of shots from various bus stops and the latest news on how North Beach and the Tenderloin are still neck and neck. 

Now I think I need to go ride the bus to help the North Beach team out ...

What I don't understand is why this is not a mobile game yet? Seriously, this type of physic based game with simple controls, solid visuals and accessible game play is what mobile is all about. That and don't get me started on all the social/network features someone could jam into this guy. Leader boards, goblin auction house with player gear trading, integrate Facebook and Twitter to change the names of the people you are steamrolling over, sending your friend's facebook notifications when they are crushed, player created levels, etc.

Come on Big Block Games, make it happen! If you need a producer to help you get started drop me a line. 

This article over at gamesindustry.biz - Zynga: "The game industry is not art, it's a craft", really got me thinking about the whole debate on games as art that was the topic du jour awhile back when Roger Ebert was saying games can never be art.

Without really opening up the whole dialog again, since I don't want to rehash the old debate, (though if you want to know my opinion on games as art scroll to the bottom), I would instead like to point out the difference between game mechanics and games. The real problem with the statement from Andy Tian is that he conflates games with game mechanics. What Zynga has done, very successfully, is optimize a game mechanic, specifically a reward payout scheme. This mechanic is nothing new and games have been utilizing it for eons, the quintessential example being your classic Las Vegas slot machine. These machines are indeed games, but only utilize and optimize for a single game mechanic, to pay out just enough to keep the player playing, but not too much to make the casino lose money. This mechanic is crafted to a fine edge, to cut away the purse strings of the person playing it, but perfecting a single game mechanic, on a single platform, is not art. Though games like Farm Ville, Mafia Wars, City Ville, Cafe World, etc use more than a single game mechanic, they still use very simple mechanics optimized for their specific users on one specific platform.

Unlike games (in the most general sense), which can use a limitless number of tools in their preverbal tool chest (game mechanics) to create all kinds of different emotions from their players. See Nicole Lizzaro's work on emotions in games for really in-depth look at this. To put it game example, it is like chess and poker. You can design a computer to beat world champions at chess because the game is rather simple, though deep with permutations in move making vs. poker where the game is complex, not just in basic choices the player can make (check, raise, fold, etc), but variable in why they would make those choices (bluffing, trapping, protecting, etc), coupled with how well they convinced their opponent(s) the reasons for their individual actions. This makes is very hard to "craft" a perfect poker player, but who knows in time, perhaps there will be a "Deep Purple" to rival the great Deep Blue.

To further punctuation my point, take an example from game designer Brenda Brathwaite over a LOLApps and her book - Challenges for Game Designers.

You find yourself at the very edges of a criminal empire. On the one hand, you are tasked with infiltrating it and bringing it to its knees. On the other hand, you have to work with the others already in the empire to build a case against them. Doing so requires you walk a delicate line, simultaneously working with criminals and against them all the while hoping they will implicate one another (and seeding opportunities for them to do so). Craft a set of rules which would allow for such a game. 

Could you simply craft the one perfect design for this? Doubtful. So as to my own opinions about games as art? I only have this enigmatic response - How can large groups of people, called "artists" work on something for years and not have the final piece of work called art?