Open thy mental sphincter!

First of all, we're all officially old. I figured that at my first discussion when one of the panelists sniffed that his company had succeeded so quickly largely because "the oldest person working there was 24 years old." I figured I'd begin with my personal neurosis. It's always the best place to start. 

You might not give a fuck who else is here from ad world. But for those interested, I've counted people from Goodby, Wieden, BBH, Saatchi, McCann, Fallon and HP. 

I'm going to try and distill this down to the really potent stuff. I could go on for days. Those of you who have listened to me pontificate on any subject know this all too well. So let me (try) and be brief.

The iphone. This is a monster creation by Apple. And the implications of it stretch far beyond the ipod. There are 17 million iphones out there. With 9 million estimated ipod touches. 70% of all mobile web traffic is by iphone even though (by volume) they have a much smaller percentage of the market. It's a silver bullet for three main reasons. 1) It's always on 2) it's always with you (i.e. people don't forget phones vs. say Nintendo DS, PSP's) and 3) it's location aware. Gaming outperforms other iphone apps exponentially. Particularly puzzle games (cross-gender appeal.) Games that were intented for only "snack size" play (thing 3 or 4 minutes) are actually averaging 15 - 20 minutes and beyond. 

The profitability of developing an iphone app can be huge. Developers who already have mac platform games can spend two hours converting the code for iphone use. Then it's a lottery ticket. If you crack the top 100 games, it's pretty much self sustaining. But there are over 25K titles so that can be tough. The guy I listened to had a game sell 810k copies netting him 1.5 million and that's after Apple takes their obligatory 30% cut. This, for two hours work.

There are mmorpg's being developed in for iphone as well (check out "Aurora Feint"). Something seemingly impossible, given the fact that people with iphones aren't seldom playing in realtime together. This game has developed a way to "summon ghosts" that play for you when you are not online. So you're playing even when you're not playing. Note: I think I need a bong hit to understand this. But it sounds cool.

So what's the secret to becoming an app developer bazilionaire?? One clue is to make the iphone's interface operations essential to game play (i.e. the accelerometer which knows how your holding it and the multi touch screen.) Apart from that it's Youtube video demos, twitter, pushing press releases through every conceivable channel and prayer. 

One interesting thing came up that's pretty relevant is our business is the interaction between designer and programmer. Typically designers have an artful vision. Programmers go to work. The the designer has a coronary when they see how the programmer has butchered their art direction. The suggestion on solving this was for designers to create a moving version (no matter how rough) early on. And for designer and programmer to live in the same space. 

Exhausted from nerding out. Time to go twitter my blog post, poke somebody on facebook i hardly know and put on my Battlestar Galactica pajamas.