more.. » or read it here »

So what is keeping this from happening? Hubris for one. Every Value Added Services executive in the industry thinks they know best. And they will keep thinking this as ARPU declines quarter over quarter while the sub-category of smartphones and data ready phones actually posts better year on year sales numbers then the rest of the cell phone market. Do I have the perfect answer? No. But would I localize industry best practices on value added services and give it a shot. Absolutely. Unfortunately a portal based and game download approach is the most you will find. “Come to us” the SP’s seem to be saying. While they should be figuring out ways to go to the customer virally.

Cost is an issue. Not the cost of the network which would be a deal breaker if you tried this as a model for PC gamers to log onto your server farm. The SP’s have the network. But the cost to the end user. Data is getting cheaper but is still not cheap enough. Someone addicted will spend five hundred to a thousand hours online a year on the mobile web. A typical user maybe a hundred to a hundred fifty hours. Someone needs to figure out a way to bring the cost down. Either by providing it nearly at cost and using an advertising model to supplement income or by using a casual gaming model in which you log in a few times a day for five to fifteen minutes and do what you gotta do. Casual gaming giants like Zynga and Playfish use this approach successfully in franchises like Farmville, Mafia wars etc. Mobile gaming will not bring someone on for hours at a time. It’s just not hardwired that way from an experience perspective. And won’t be till everyone has an Apple internet tablet. My opinion has always been that you need at least ten inches of screen to spend a lot of time plugged in. What can work is level based play. You download a level and when you finish it you must login to download the next level free. Or you can only defeat the boss monster while logged in.

Do not worry about the graphics. Ask any gamer and they will tell you they will take game play over looks any day. Game play needs to have a social element that keeps players hooked. Either by using player created content or by creating a competitive ladder. Location based gaming is definitely something that plays to the SP networks’ strength.

Here is what I recommend:

1. Create a startup for this gaming initiative within a service provider whose head is at most two levels below the CEO. This is important as this will need to cut across billing, Values Added Services, Strategy, Finance and IT. And these are silos which require on boarding. Not getting this collaboration is often the reason why Managed Services fail but that’s a story for another day.

2. Use an alliance model to bring the right partner or franchisee on board. Make sure they will allow you to localize content or do not bother with them. Have you heard of gbanga? I thought not. Lots of options out there. Half of them probably in Korea that leads mobile and broadband innovation in entertainment.

3. Make it simple. Game play, logging in should be simple and quick. If you need someone to register you have lost them.

4. Be bold. Do not be afraid to look at the massive potential of this market and the talent available. License the Exit Games platform and use local gaming development and talent to create something yourself if needed. I know five people who can do this in a room.

A road as virgin is bound to be riddled with adversity. But a fight for survival demands that Service Provider’s wake up and be bold. The cycle that follows telecom de-regulation is fairly predictable. New players emerge with a go-to market based around coverage. Once teledensity plateaus a bloody price war emerges. Value Added Services are deemed a savior and almost inevitably fail to deliver on the massive expectation placed upon them. Providers get acquired or go bankrupt. There are two or three left standing who try to rebuild in a market they themselves have spoiled on price and margins. My fear is that the networks will look at 3G as the ARPU savior while the answer is reinventing 2.5G.

Buck the trend. Go gaming.

- Habib “Noori Nath” Khan

« hide it

more.. » or read it here »

But it is not going to happen when men are making the games for women. The empathy, the secret sauce of greatness…. It just won’t happen. And this is now a pressing concern. Women gamers are coming out in greater numbers then ever before as the casual game market led by the iPhone and facebook applications explodes. Yet more women are not making the games that women want to play. This is not a normal evolution of things in my opinion. All hardcore gamers end up becoming loosely affiliated or actively governed by a sort of tribal community mechanism either via gaming forums dynamics or the institution that is a gamers guild. These are male dominated entities and act as a deterrent to the recruitment of women. Initiatives like Women In Games International http://www.womeningamesinternational.org/ and G.I.R.L Gamers In Real Life that seek to place women in game development positions are welcome initiatives but without the ability to scale to critical mass.

What is needed is for the Video Gaming industry and groups that formally represent it to embrace this as a key initiative and enforce it via collaboration of relevant academic institutes so that the percentage of women making games increases dramatically. Gaming studios can chip in by making sure female characters in games are not overly curvaceous scantily clad women who talk with bedroom eyes and husky voices. Making them believable and full of character will get women wanting to play them. In the long term studios need to make sure that the narrative that unfolds in a game - whether it be an RTS, FPS or and RPG - makes an emotional connection with female who may want to play a game. I have always thought of the best video games as movies in which we ourselves star. The games industry could take some lessons from Hollywood in creating empathy with a female audience.

At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars in potential revenue that are already being leaked to the emerging causal games juggernaut. This is not an academic argument. - Habib “Noori Nath” Khan

« hide it

more.. » or read it here »

“Because I finished all of the games I had!”

Huh?! A smiley has not been invented that would describe the expression my face had then.

It was somewhere between spluttering and incredulity. It turns out this is how he played video games:

1. Buy video game.

2. Go online to get the cheats and hacks. Esp God mode.

3. Go through the game like Aunties go through a buffet in Ramadan. Strong. Hard. Fast. No survivors.

4. Rinse and repeat.

Four games in two days. Four games that took thousands of hours to make cast aside in less then two days. I wanted to tell him how it took me two years to finish Mass effect - a few delicious hours every other weekend. How Dragon Age would give me solace through calorie laden nights till 2011. How games needed to be enjoyed like…. Well a good game! I wanted to grab him from the shoulders and shake him and tell him every game has a soul. It wants to be played, not consumed and disposed like a condom at a Cancun Spring Break party.

But in the end I did what every person confronted with injustice in this country does. I did nothing. I did not even lament the fact that we are fostering a culture of instant gratification, of quantity over quality, of a lack of appreciation of those intangibles that define the substance of worthy lives.

I went and googled “Megan Fox’ after turning Safe Search off. That always makes me feel better!

- Habib “Noori Nath” Khan

« hide it

more.. » or read it here »

You see I beg to disagree with the typical Pakistani gamer who struts around thinking he is the luckier then Brad Pitt (Yes this site has an Angelina Jolie fetish…. Bite us) to be born into one of the top piracy nations where he can get any game for USD 1. There has been only one time when due to a rush of adrenalin my hands shook so hard I couldn’t type on the keyboard. It was my first Player vs Player encounter. I was an Archer in an MMORPG game I was beta testing with my Guild. Three of us a Pk-Lander, an Ozzie and a Kiwi ran across two much stronger Koreans. I barely survived with 6 HP. It was and is the highlight of my gaming life in pure joy. Broadband makes massively multiplayer games with a satisfying gameplay experience possible. And once you play against humans normal AI just doesn’t cut it. The difference is as stark as playing a game in 32 bit pixels and playing one in 1080p resolution.

God also bless our Arab brothers from Abudhabi who decided to launch a company called Wateen (Full disclaimer: The company I work for sold them some stuff) which will be bringing the joy of the largest global Wimax installation to us. Imagine wireless high data access for the internet and online gaming. No more cable and more competition to bring the broadband price even further down. Oh yummy!I keep remembering the example of Thailand where lower internet costs caused the launch of Ragnarok Online to become a phenomenon. It gathered 500,000 users with three months! When I look at over a million urban children with access to internet in Pk-Land – Even a little speed will go a long way for them. Online gaming will change the way we play and pay for our games and it will give our rudderless youth under sensationalist bombardment from shallow news channels and exposed to increasing social dysfunction a true center of gravity that has strong social elements. Lets face it. Gaming’s the only education we got and thanks to PTCL’s first unlawful monopolistic step that education is within our grasp. Go PTCL Go!Oh by the way R.E.S.P.E.C.T to Maxcom’s Customer Service. When their guy figured out that broadband was not working because my line was dead and there was a “pairing” problem in the telephone exchange he fixed everything just so the broadband could work. I love you guys man.

- Habib “Noori Nath” Khan

« hide it

more.. » or read it here »

Habib “Noori Nath” Khan

« hide it

more.. » or read it here »

What really will make a difference is the upcoming Halo movie with Peter Jackson producing. We’d all love it if he was directing ofcourse. But even getting him onboard as Producer is a big deal. He has the access in Hollywood to do this right and has the special effects team in New Zealand which is as good as the Pixar and Lucasfilms/ILM duoopoly that reigns supreme in the US.Halo broke through not only with unlocking the FPS genre for consoles but by creating an incredible lore and universe with great races and characters that truly stand out. The germs are there for a legendary franchise to be created. It is the execution that will decide whether Halo is the next Star Wars or the next Nightmare on Elm Street.

Habib “Noori Nath” Khan

« hide it