The Return of the Space Cowboy

Absolutely it was. Let me ask you this: Do you play any games on the iPhone yet?

And what fraction of your gaming time do you spend on iPhone games?

Okay - for me, I'm now 100 per cent on the iPhone, other than when I'm playing our own games or developing. Literally, this year, I've probably played more games than I have in a decade and it happens to have all been on the iPhone. I've only played, like, ten games to completion on the PC, but most of the games on iPhone I've played to completion - okay, they're easier to play to completion, but I've downloaded expansion packs and added in other things... I've never done that on a PC game.

As I'm doing interviews I'm always asking this question, and I'm finding that it's a pretty even mix - a third of people aren't playing any social media or iPhone games yet, a third - like yourself - are picking it up as an addition, and a third for whom it's blending out existing gaming in spite of the negatives of the currently-existing social and casual games.

I think that casual and social media is a coming juggernaut - but the question is, where is the opportunity? As I look at social media games, one of the things that really helped them get started quickly was the fact that you could find it in a web browser, it runs in Java and Flash, it's a fairly ubiquitous platform, easily transportable and it has enough graphical quality in it to be able to create some great games.

As a developer, that's a great head start, but as a consumer it means the highest quality you can get is whatever you can squeeze out of Java and Flash - which is not the same quality that we're accustomed to with all of our custom tools.

Even those casual players... if you've played a Facebook game, the thing that stops me is that on average the user interface is not nearly as slick and obvious as a regular PC store-bought game. The frame rates are not nearly as good as a custom engine, and the overall quality of feel on a moment-to-moment basis is a big step down compared to what we're used to.

But that's by no means needed - it just happens to be where they've gone because it was the easiest way. Our first game out is a poker game - creatively not the most astounding, earth-shattering game design by any stretch, since it's not even at all a new game design, fundamentally.

But unlike all of the top games out there (that are making more money than almost anybody in this building is with their games), this poker game... those top games have all of the issues I've just described in terms of the quality of experience. Their social tools are very strong - their gaming UI and presentation is relatively weak.

We've created a player, called the Portalarium Player, which - instead of running under Java and Flash - installs frankly any graphic engine, but will still run inside that window, inside Facebook or any other social media network that you wish. And it's engine-agnostic, so you can plug anybody's graphic suite behind it - it's like OpenSteam in a web browser.

So if you look at our game, play ours for five minutes, then play any of the others you wish for five minutes and I'm confident that the parallel will be very clear - that while all of them play poker well, and most all of them have the same social features, ours looks better, feels better, plays faster, has actual sound effects... it just has a quality and production value that we're more accustomed to.

I'm a believer that what's important about reaching these customers is that you go to where they are (on the social networks), you allow them to discover and interact with the game very easy (no downloads, no installs, no pain), when they start play it has to be very obvious what to do (with no instruction manual) and then they can play.

But at that point I think a wide variety of types of games are and will be interesting, and once they're there, whether they're playing poker, or farming, or fishing games, I believe that not only can we enhance the quality of those games radically - we can also introduce them to other forms of gaming, as long as you don't violate those early promises.