In other words, problem gamers tend to have pre-existing issues. This is true of many other addictions and compulsions;  people are often described as having ‘addictive personalities’. It is also said that when one addiction is overcome, another is found to replace it. The activity that they become addicted to isn’t the source of their behaviour it is the vehicle that carries it.

But what is significantly different about an addiction to games is that it can be tracked and monitored and even rationed (especially so if, as the report also claimed, online games tend to be the ones that cause the most cases of game addiction).

If games are considered to be an activity that attracts compulsives then perhaps this is an opportunity for games to help people. Pattern recognition could be used to find people with addictions.

Mechanisms could be built in to spot problems. Mechanisms could be built in to limit play. People with a propensity for addiction could be warned. They could seek help. They could ask the game to help them with their addiction. Compulsive behaviour could be tracked and studied like never before, and behaviour-management techniques could be evaluated and applied.

If it’s true that addicts will latch onto another activity when they abandon their current compulsion, maybe a managed addiction to games is better than an unmanaged addiction to drinking, gambling or drugs? No other compulsive activity is better structured to observe, and understand the behaviours of its victims.

Obviously this opens up a lot of ethical questions (not least about privacy and medical insurance), but remember the original quote, “Problem gamers have underlying emotional issues”. Games don’t cause these issues, they expose them. If you take kneejerk actions to prevent games from being attractive to compulsives their issues simply move elsewhere, to activities that are harder to track, and that are potentially more damaging than playing games.

In other words, use games to help people with underlying issues. Those victims’ families in the show would readily ban games deemed to be addictive – perhaps this would be like  Edward Jenner’s lab assistant throwing out his ‘dirty’ petri dish. Maybe within games lies the cure and not the cause of addiction…

How would such addiction-management work? That’s another question. I’m not sure someone like Blizzard would ever want to help an addiction-management initiative, not least becasue to do so would be to acknowledge an issue might exist, which would be a legal hot potato.

The important thing is that games, if they are shown to be addictive, have qualities that might just allow us to help people with any kind of addiction.

The rise of the iPhone (iPod Touch) has taken both Sony and Nintendo by surprise, and while the aggressive price of the games is one factor, I think one of its more subtle advantages is in the flexibility of its form. You see, the iPhone is as capable of hosting games in portrait format as it is landscape.

Early arcade machines experimented with using both formats, and landscape eventually became the norm. It’s hard to say whether the designers of the time felt that the upright format didn’t offer the enough options? Or if the landscape format made it easier for more people to gather around, see the action, and pump coins in to play for themselves. More than likely it was the potential to sell arcade games to the masses, via TV based consoles, that directed developers to adopt the TV / landscape format. [1] [2]

TVs screens copied the shape of cinema screens, just as they had previously copied theatre stage layouts, which were wider than they are tall because you can sit more people in front of them (not to mention it’s easier for actors to stand next to each, than on top of each other…). In other words, the screen evolved into its recognised shape without having to consider the requirements of the solitary user.

In any case, home consoles took the landscape route, and when handheld consoles took off they followed. Again, the ability to port from one device to another would have been one reason for this decision, but I find it hard to understand why a portrait format, handheld, gaming device has never really been tried. [3]

It wasn’t until the Nintendo DS came along that designers had any chance to try portrait designs. However, the button configurations meant that this could only be employed sensibly with stylus controlled games, and as such it always felt like an ‘alternative’ rather than an option on equal footing with landscape.

The iPhone – a device that wasn’t designed with games at the top of its functionality checklist – has such a simple form that it doesn’t discriminate between landscape and portrait orientation, and designers haven’t held back from using both.

We’ve been presented with TV-shaped screens for so long that we’ve never really questioned it, or had the opportunity to break the format, until now. But look around – most people using an iPhone or an iPad tend to adopt the portrait view, despite the years of ‘training’. It shouldn’t surprise us; it’s the way that we interact with other human beings. There’s an intimacy to it. Take more established media that we hold and look at; books and newspapers have shown us what humans prefer. Mirrors, especially in the home, tend to be taller than they are wide…Despite the layout of our eyes, when it comes to close up viewing, landscape isn’t our preferred choice.

Given what “iDevices” have taught us about the orientation of screens, why is the next wave of handheld devices opting for portrait-only screens?

The Nintendo 3DS could, in theory [4], be held in a ‘book’ format, but as well as the button layout still hampering the use of portrait mode, they have pretty much dictated how you will hold the device by making the screens unequal. It doesn’t make it impossible to design games to be played on a book-oriented 3DS, but it certainly cuts down the options.

And the PSPhone? Well, the leaked images might not show the final form but if they do, Sony has also opted, via the layout of the buttons, to dictate the orientation of the screen. It is possible that when the unit is closed, the player might be able to play using a touch screen, in which case any-way-up gaming might still be possible. The inclusion of a touchpad leads me to think that even if the unit has a touch screen for phone operations, Sony will expect the pad to be used instead to keep games unique to their system. (If you haven’t seen the alleged PSPhone design, I’ve added it, along with the 3DS, to my collection of designers’ templates – link).

The iPhone has been ‘hijacked’ as a gaming device, rather than being designed as one. Portrait layout games have flourished because the hardware can handle them without prejudice, but more importantly, because the audience embraces them. It seems short-sighted of Sony and Nintendo not to have noticed this.

[1] I’m sure I remember an old console game that had a vertical mode in it, and the player had to turn their incredibly heavy CRT TV on its side to play it.
[2] The Vectrex had an upright, built-in screen, but it was so different to its contemporaries that it’s hard to know if the portrait screen was a factor in its failure to really take off.
[3] The were several portrait-screened LED and LCD games in the late 70s / early 80s, but these were single-game, bespoke products. They weren’t able to host more than one game.
[4] It is also possible that the 3D effect only works when the screen is viewed from the prescribed orientation.

Awards, badges and other acknowledgements of achievements are the low hanging fruit of game design and therefore an easy target for other industries to ape. After all, it’s easy to dish out goodies at pre-set trigger points, such as scoring >90% in an exam, or buying a latte every day for a month. But that’s not the most intelligent use of game mechanics.
Earlier this year Jessie Schell presented his vision of the gamification of the future. I still haven’t figured out if Jesse was trying to show us a terrible future, or laying his stall out as a consultant in how to use games to sell brands. It certainly grabbed a lot people’s attention, but for me, the points=prizes mechanic isn’t (usually) the most sophisticated part of a game’s design. There are more interesting things to take out of our industry.

Let’s take the first example that Jesse gives; ‘a future toothbrush that checks that you brush your teeth regularly and issues points that reward you with money off your toothpaste’.

Will it encourage kids to brush regularly? Well, if kids paid for their own toothpaste, maybe.

And adults? Well the money off toothpaste is only a real incentive if dental hygiene is important to them. In which case, wouldn’t they already be brushing their teeth just the right amount anyway? If you consider that over-brushing is a problem, and dental care companies would damage their reputation by encouraging overuse of their products, there’s no opportunity to up sell here. All these companies can do is discount their products to the people that would already be buying them.

‘How about badges? People love badges. Let’s give people badges for everything!’ is the cry from a new wave of designers trying to apply the stickiness of games to their otherwise dull products. They’re just forgetting one thing…

People were playing games before badges became common features. In fact they were playing punishing games, without built-in save features, often for little reward other than…the joy of playing. You see, badges aren’t the reason that people play games, they’re just a method of measuring, indicating, and acknowledging skill and perseverance. They’re like wedding cake, nice to have – almost obligatory – but not the real reason anyone is there. Basically, if badges are your only motivator, you’re screwed.

Having said that, I think that game mechanics, when applied intelligently, CAN help people make the most of life, and one of the game mechanics I’d like to see explored more outside of games is GHOST CARS (see, they even sound like a more awesome feature than badges).

For the uninitiated, ghost cars often appear in racing games. Your best lap time is saved as a semi-transparent car, and as you try to better that time you essentially race against your ghost car’s performance. It’s like a running mate that helps you see where to cut corners, and how to find a better driving line.

Typically ghost cars only show you your own previous efforts, but something very powerful happens if they are shared. Suddenly the seemingly impossible becomes very possible. Not only can you see what can be achieved, you also see how to achieve it.

So, how could adding ghost cars change your gamification plans? How might that make for a better experience? Well here are some quick and dirty ideas for “ghostcarification“:

Kate is 14 and she wants to be a nuclear physicist. Right now her grades aren’t great, and her dream seems out of reach. You could offer her badges to reward her for improving her grades, but if a life-long ambition isn’t motivation enough, is a badge seriously going to change things?

What if -using data collected from previous students – she could see how an actual nuclear physicist was doing when they were just a year older than she is now? It would give her a year to try and meet their standards, and then she could use their journeys\stories as her ghost car. She could plot her career path based on those that have previously taken that journey. She might even be able to find a journey that starts at exactly the same point that she is at now – maybe a current scientist previously had exactly the same grades as her. How motivating is that? Knowing that it IS possible to get to your goal from where you are now, because someone has done it, and left a trail of digital breadcrumbs for you to track your own progress turns the seemingly impossible into the possible.

Pete has really struggled to lose weight. He goes onto a new dieting site and discovers that one of their members, Steven, was in almost exactly the same situation as him six months ago. He’s the same height and weight, he even had the same waist size. They share pretty much the same culinary likes and dislikes, and even the types of exercises and activities they like are the same.

It took Steven a while to find a regime that helped him to lose weight, but now that he has, all that info is stored so that people like Pete can use his journey as a ghost car. No doubt Pete’s journey won’t be exactly the same. Maybe he’ll exercise a little harder and lose more weight, leaving behind another, alternative ghost car for a future dieter.

Wouldn’t knowing that something can be done, by someone very much like you, help to conquer the doubt that tends to de-motivate people? People already have goals in life, and pinning a badge on it isn’t going to make that goal any more attractive or achievable.

While we’re all different, perhaps in a (future) sea of data, we’ll all find someone to act as our ghost car to help us reach our goals, and at the same time, maybe our own journeys will become ghost cars that inspire others.

I recently left Tuna and I’m planning to launch my own company in the very near future. Ill be spending the rest of the year getting some exciting projects off the ground, and hopefully blogging a bit more than I did last year.

I’ve also upload copies of the pdfs that I used to create my game design sketchbooks here: http://www.andrewcrawshaw.co.uk/sketch/templates.html Go and help yourself – they’re free! (And as much as I like Lulu.com, I’m not sure that their products are the best format for my sketchbooks. SO save yourself a few pennies, download the pdfs, and print as you need. It’s cheaper and greener).

I love technology. I love the way that it is democratising the creation of media. And especially I love the way that anyone can become a musician, film-maker, or author, and get their (admittedly, not always good) creations in front of people.

In short; I love that there are tools that enable someone like me to become a publisher, manufacturer and a retailer.

In my day job as a game designer I frequently have to visualise what a game is going to look like. For handheld devices like Nintendo DSi, Sony PSP and iPhone there is the added design bonus of being able to know exactly what size the player is going to be viewing your game – as all screen sizes are identical. So whenever I’m creating anything that’s destined for a handheld device I’ll create a template and print it out, and then start adding sketches and notes to help me develop my idea.

I’ve done this for years; worked on odd sheets of paper that eventually end up in random folders on random shelves, usually after the humiliation of having a phone message scribbled on them, or a coffee ring stained on them.

And so one day I came across Lulu and decided that what I really wanted was a sketchbook just for my game ideas. I wanted all my visual ideas and notes in one place, kept apart from my other notebooks that were full of to do lists and meeting notes. And so I set about making one.

Lulu.com is a site that lets anyone self-publish books. You upload all the necessary files, and then you can purchase a copy of your own book. If you think other people might like your creation, you can make it available for sale to the public. And because Lulu publish to order, you don’t have to commit (and pay for) a full print run. In other words, I can sell The Game Developers’ Sketchbooks to other people without any risk – so it seems silly not to.

I don’t expect to make anything, and I’d be surprised if I sell more than a few dozen copies, but it doesn’t matter because I created the book to solve a problem that I had.

This is happening in numerous industries, and it’s exciting that we’re escaping the restrictions of being passive consumers that can only have what is made available. More and more often we can make what we want or need, and then share it with others.

So (sales pitch time…just in time for Christmas)if you’re in the games industry, or have ambitions to be; maybe you’ll find these sketchbooks as useful as I have. There are editions for DSi, PSPgo and iPhone. (And if everyone that has ever told me about their ‘great idea for a game’ went out and bought one to sketch out their idea – I’d be” richer than a butcher’s turd”).

You can find out more about The Game Developer’s Sketchbooks here: http://thunkd.com/

So why does this interest me, a game developer? Well I think the signs are that we might well be exiting the last generation of customers that are willing to pay, en masse, for their media content, whether that is newspapers, music, films, or videogames. Soon we won’t be able to sell videogames.

To understand why games might stop being sold, we need to look at the decline of the newspaper industry. The problems facing Fleet Street are primarily:
• Free newspapers
• Online news sites
• Disappearing Revenue

Free Newspapers
I’ve commuted for several years. When I first started making the journey from home to work I’d catch the bus to the train station, buy a newspaper (or two) and then spend the rest of the journey catching up on (yesterday’s!) news.

Today, when I make that same journey; I board the bus and immediately pick up a copy of Metro. It’s not an editorially heavy paper, and I’ve usually got the gist of the news and sport by the time I’ve reached the train station (where I am, coincidentally, greeted by multiple people handing out copies of Metro). So before I’ve even got anywhere near a newsagents, I’ve had several opportunities to obtain a free newspaper.

The aforementioned Evening Standard has had competition from two other free evening papers that are being dished out by armies of modern newsagents; they don’t have bricks and mortar premises, or even a shack to pay for; just a bag over their shoulder. They move to where the consumer is -the consumer no longer has to find them, and then pay for the pleasure. This brings me on to…

Ubiquitous News
My train journey of yesteryear was a time to sit and read my newspapers. But today, thanks to my 3G dongle, I’ve got broadband access. There’s a likelihood that I’ve already had a browse of key news sites while eating my breakfast, but that just means I can catch up on an even wider range of news – mostly specialist articles and blogs – that would only ever get marginal coverage in print. I don’t have to read just what a single editor has prescribed – I can choose and tailor the news I read.

So, I now get more news, more specialists news, more convenient news, and best of all, free news. I don’t pay a penny for the specific privilege of reading all of this free news.

Disappearing Revenue
Although the recession has had a huge effect on advertising spend, all indications are that it was going to drop anyway as advertisers reassess the effectiveness of online ads. Newspapers had expected ad revenue on their websites would counter balance any drop in physical sales, but with this pot of gold fast becoming a myth, newspapers finding themselves trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and contemplating asking their readers to travel back in time to an age where news had to be paid for.

(News Corporation has announced that free online news is not a sustainable business. Micropayments have been touted as the industry’s last chance, but as of today, that solution has yet to be fully tested. )

We’ve reached a time where the consumer is starting to become accustomed to receiving their media for free; Spotify feeds us free music, websites feed us free news, YouTube delivers free video, Wikipedia delivers free encyclopaedias. The list is endless. Can we return to asking people to pay for what they have freely enjoyed? Can there be a multilateral adoption of a paid content model when so many companies have managed to flourish under a ‘free’ model? It’s unlikely.

So, let’s summarise the newspaper industry’s problems:
• Free newspapers [= convenient news, free news]
• Online news sites [= convenient news, free news, specialist news, tailored news]
• Disappearing revenue streams [= zero price-point, modern consumer expectations]

In the games world we’re starting to see our own manifestation of these issues.

Free Games
Flash games have been around for years, and they’re becoming more refined and sophisticated. Many can now boast production levels that had previously been seen only in paid-for games. Flash is now just one of numerous platforms that allow games to be played in the browser – usually for free.

To the mainstream games industry these have always been regarded as something of a niche market – possibly because they eschewed the traditional ways of generating revenue – and therefore not been a direct threat . But, whether they have become a viable business model or not is inconsequential…they’re providing a distraction to gamers that might otherwise have been buying and playing mainstream videogames.

http://jayisgames.com/ - links to more free games than you've got time to play!

Continuing the comparison to free newspapers; these free-to-play games are utilising another feature that has been instrumental in the rise of papers like Metro – they’re becoming convenient.

No doubt some game developers will try and point to the difference in production values between free games and retail products. On the one hand I’d argue that some free games are as polished as retail offerings, but on the other hand – it doesn’t matter. The modern customer values convenience over quality. For many young people their mobile phone is their one and only music system. Witness also the slow uptake of HD video formats.

Ubiquitous Games
Just as newspapers are being given away in exactly the places that the customers pass through, games are appearing in places that are convenient for players. It’s no longer the case that you have to go and look for something to play – they’re appearing in front of your nose as you browse.

Facebook games are the perfect example of this. My friend list is home to a mix of friends, family and colleagues, and I’ve noticed an increasing amount of my feed being populated with news of my friends’ achievements in games. Funnily enough, most of these are from non-industry people. In other words, those people without an in-depth knowledge of ‘mainstream’ games are now playing more and more frequently. The mixture of free and convenient is enticing more people to play games.

FarmVille - free, convenient, and surprise, surprise, incredibly popular

As much as game developers like to think that they are the life and blood of the industry, we’re still beholden to our markets’ preferences. It’s easy for games industry professionals to sneer at the games that appear on Facebook, but the ramifications are significant – they’re teaching people that games can be played and enjoyed for free, they’re filling the leisure time that ‘mainstream’ games are just one of the contenders for, and because they’re a shared experience (I can see what friends and family are enjoying) they’re almost viral in nature.

Disappearing Revenue
A quick glance at Apple’s App Store reveals another significant trend – even for those games that are not being given away, there is a race to deliver content at lower and lower price points. At launch, games were selling for £10, today a significant number of new releases can be found for 99p or less. Nintendo has recently launched DSiWare – an online only ‘platform’ for games with a sub-£5 price tag. Sony has followed suit; PSP Minis are small, but very cheap games.

We’re teaching gamers that they can be entertained for pennies rather than pounds.

As the newspaper industry has found out, once that battle begins, there’s only going to be one outcome.

This was supposed to be the generation of consoles that cemented the games machine as an integral part of the living room. All of the family was going to claim ownership of the machine, whether for purely gaming purposes, or as part of a more general access to entertainment. Instead, the ‘non-gaming’ members of our families are being drawn in by other gaming diversions; free games, in the (online) places that they already frequent, and with people that they already know. A growing army of gamers that will never encounter another console or buy another game.

I expect many developers and publishers will simply brush off any changes in the marketplace as an effect of the recession, and try to emulate King Kanute’s approach to the changing tide. Meanwhile, I’ll be setting sail for the new frontiers that free games will undoubtedly create.

As the minibus rolled up to the gateway of the complex, pilgrims to this digital Mecca were taking snapshots of the public face of our hosts – the iron lettered Pixar logo. Those five letters were the boundary between the fanboy tourists (which I would normally have been very happy to be one of) and the very lucky buggers like us that were going to be allowed to enter…

I don’t try to hide the fact that I’m still a big kid at heart; I felt just like Charlie with his golden ticket, I was about to enter my equivalent of the Chocolate Factory. As we approached the main building I found it impossible not to giddily point at the 20ft tall angle poise lamp and ball – the famous mascots of Pixar – that stands welcoming visitors.

We had to wait a few minutes for our host to cycle over from one of the other buildings, but it turned out that this gave us just enough opportunity to acclimatise ourselves to our new surroundings. As you’d expect, recreations of some of the most famous characters in animation proudly graced the expansive main foyer. Scully and Mike were stood a few feet away, and in the other direction, the cast of Cars, looking uncannily roadworthy, were patiently waiting for their photos to be taken. Everywhere you looked there were reminders of Pixar’s relatively short but monumental contribution to animation.

Our host for the day was Michael ‘Wave’ Johnson. He was clearly enormously proud of being part of this company, and managed the seemingly impossible task of making me envy anyone that worked here even more than I had before. This wasn’t a corporate ‘tour guide’, it was someone that had been living and breathing Pixar for years. Our questions weren’t answered with board-approved, verbatim responses, but with the insight that only someone working on the ‘shop floor’ could provide.We began with a lap of the main building. We went inside some small, and some not-so-small screening rooms – their viewing timetables giving mouth-watering hints at what might be being played to privileged eyes later. Then we ventured outside, past the staff playing volley ball on the sand court during their lunch break, around the sun basked swimming pool with people doing lengths, and over to the building site that will see Pixar doubling its capacity in the coming years. (BTW It was good to hear that Pixar set designers are designing the new building – if they devise something as playful as their films, then it’s going to be an amazing place to work).

We headed back inside and upstairs. The landing area and adjoining corridors functioned as a gallery; the walls covered with concept artwork from the new film ‘Up’.  It seemed like every inch was covered in amazing sketches, paintings, and handmade models. I own every ‘Art of’ book that has accompanied their movies and so I was always aware of the importance that Pixar place on traditional art, but seeing it in the flesh was an absolute treat.

The thing that always impresses me about the preproduction artwork that this company produces is that it never seems to be created with a ’3d CGI animation’ in mind; it always seems to investigate a wider range of creative possibilities, all of which may inform the final movie, but without ever trying to pre-empt the end result.

Occasionally we wandered past an open door, and caught a brief glimpse of people beavering away inside, but we weren’t invited to enter any of the production areas. I know when people want to come and look around a game development studio I’m always a bit unsure of the value of it; the reality is that a bunch of people hunched over their keyboards doesn’t really give you an impression of the creativity that’s simmering away. Maybe Michael was doing the right thing? – allowing us to keep thinking that something more magical than “guys + computers” was delivering their movies.

Unlike every other meeting we’d had, this was most definitely a passive experience. It was never really an option for any of us to use this visit as a business opportunity, and so we were able to enjoy what was, essentially, a museum tour. Given my very high expectations, it would have been easy for this visit to have been an anticlimax – but it most definitely wasn’t. It was the perfect end to our tour.

Even though we had overrun by some time, Michael still joined us for lunch and continued to talk about how things work at Pixar. I guess if there was one overriding piece of information that he wanted to make sure we were aware of was that everything that Pixar produces is part of a team effort – the end results happen because there is a culture of team work.

We ended with a visit to the gift shop and filled up on goodies before bidding Michael and Pixar farewell. The buzz would take a long time to subside…

This meeting had been on, and then off, then rescheduled, then redefined…you get the picture? But after all the uncertainty, we were finally here, and as ever our hosts had laid on some much appreciated breakfast nibbles (mmm, pumpkin bread).

There were lots of facts and figures flying around, and lots of live demonstrations of the technology in action. The general theme of the meeting was to introduce us to the power of advertising within Facebook. Now this isn’t something that would usually interest me, but the guys had obviously considered how they could make their tools as accessible and as scalable as possible – and from the demo I could imagine it being used by both SME’s and mega corps.

What could have been a very dry meeting turned out to contain a number of useful gems that I’ve since fed back to the guys at Tuna.

The way that our meetings had been reshuffled and rearranged meant that there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, and while some of our group might have felt like this was a pain in the arse, I was really enjoying the scenery, and getting to see a bit of suburban California. Palo Alto was a particularly appealing mix of attractive houses, sedate streets, but well served by cafes and boutiques. I’ve never had much desire to leave Britain, but if I was pushed, then I’d say this would be a great place to end up.

And so it was that we left Palo Alto for the last time; navigating first the residential streets, then the freeway, and then over the Golden Gate Bridge as we had back to the now familiar territory of the Embarcadero area of San Francisco, and to the offices of Revision 3.

Revision 3 is an internet only TV broadcaster (IPTV), and is responsible for a bunch of shows aimed primarily at 18-30 year old males. Technology and games are their prime territory.
What I loved about Revision 3 was their approach to technology. Although they seem to be having plenty of success, the golden rule here seemed to spend only as much as was required to get the show made. Overheads were kept low by an inventive, almost DIY approach to hardware. As Jim Louderback showed us around their studios and mixing rooms, he proudly explained how they’d created near-network quality facilities at the fraction of the price by building components themselves.

In some ways their approach to programme making was analogous to the way that many of the businesses we saw had been built up; they did just enough to make it work. They didn’t worry about producing the most polished thing, they just made sure that they got it out there as quickly as possible, and then proceeded to fine tune their product.

As media companies grow increasingly worried about the future of their revenue streams in the digital age, Revision 3 are devising ways to work with the changing market, rather than wasting their energy trying to fight it. For example, their business model encourages them not to worry about DRMs or piracy, it encourages them to deliver content to where people are. Their shows are delivered in formats to suit any device (from HDTV to mobile phone) and to be watched at the viewers’ convenience. The make up of their current audience might make Revision 3 look like they’re just interested in servicing a niche, but I suspect that they’re blueprinting the way that content is going to be delivered to a mass audience in the very near future.

It had been a great morning. Two companies that – on the face of it – were of only minor prior interest had managed to get me buzzing with ideas. That’s the beauty of a scheme like Cross Creative; they deliver a smorgasbord of digital creative companies, and from seemingly nowhere a bunch of ideas, possibilities and enlightenment appear.

Our dwindling group – one excused for a private meeting, another feeling unwell – jumped back into the bus, and we were on the road once again. Next stop…Pixar!

Today we were going to meet with some of Lucas’ key staff…

Lucas Films now share a campus with ILM (the special effects studio) and Lucas Arts (the games division of Lucas), although it was incredibly hard to grasp how big the overall complex was as it was situated among several other buildings.

As we approached the main reception we were greeted by a fountain and a bronze statue of Yoda, glistening in the Californian sun. The reception area itself was a mini archive of all things Lucas; there were life sized models of major characters from both Star Wars and Indiana Jones, as well as numerous bits of artwork. The lengthy sign in procedure meant that we had plenty of time to look around and take snapshots.

Before we could proceed beyond the reception area we all had to sign NDAs – so unfortunately I can’t give you the full lowdown on what I experienced. We were then taken to a boardroom and the ten (yes, ten) Lucas personnel entered the room. We did the customary lap of the table, allowing everyone present to introduce themselves, and it was apparent that Lucas had given us access to a very broad range of people, covering all three core businesses.

By the time we’d finished I felt like I’d had a personal audience with the Lucas guys. For one reason or another, none of the others had asked any questions – this despite the fact that Lucas’ enormous business spreads across every media that was represented by our group.

While there were some interesting conversations about creative processes, and the interaction between the different arms of the Lucas empire, it was the talk of games that really caught my attention. All I can say is keep an eye on LucasArts – I’m not sure if their planned projects will see the light of day, but they’re a tantalising prospect. I left with some kind words and a vague invite to return from the LucasArts guys.

Our final meeting of a very packed day was back over towards the waterfront, and to an office block opposite the AT&T stadium. NGMoco: ) (yes the smiley is part of their name) are a newcomer that means business. Formed just 6 months ago, they have already established themselves as one of the major publishers of iPhone games. These were the guys that brought ‘Rolando‘ to the App Store.

The rapid expansion of the company embodies so much of the VC ethos that swirls around Silicon Valley; once an idea, or a team, attract the attention of funding, they’re given the financial backing to make their business work. So often ideas are ‘of the moment’, and VC funding allows those ideas to be exploited at the time that they need to be exploited.

Back here in the UK, if I have an awesome idea, I might have to build up a company for a number of years to get to the size where I can make that idea work. In the intervening years my company might have folded, or the idea may no longer have the potential it once had. While I wouldn’t advocate throwing money at every idea, I find the prospect of funding to make something work within a potentially critical timeframe extremely enticing.

Ngmoco: ) started with just four people, but their backgrounds suggested that they were a ‘dream team’ from day one; they had former EA executives, and people that had helped to develop the iPhone, and knew how both the device, and Apple as an organisation worked. With this pedigree they were able to attract funding, and grow their business to take advantage of the explosive iPhone game market. In 6 months they’ve gone from nothing, to being a major player – that’s what can happen when you have a great business opportunity, the people that can deliver it, and the financial backing to make it a reality.

By the end of Thursday we had seen four very different companies, but each of them had left me inspired.

After a modest supper of Mexican and Margaritas I headed back to the hotel and prepared for our final day.

We had an earlier than usual start to the day so that we could squeeze in a hastily rearranged meeting over in Palo Alto.

When the coffee shop we had arranged to meet in turned out to be full, we took the British option and headed for the tea shop next door. Our genial hosts served us several pots of assorted brews, and a cake stand full of treats, and while this might sound like a scene from a costume drama, it was actually the setting for a meeting with Smule – a trailblazing iPhone developer.

Smule have released some playful toys / apps / games, such as Ocarina and Lighter. While it would be easy to shrug and dismiss these as trivial, Smule have worked hard to create real communities around each of their releases, and have an obvious belief and enthusiasm for everything they do. I was fairly blasé towards Smule before the meeting, but by the time we shook hands and parted ways, I was most definitely a fan. I’ve got a feeling that they’re going to go from strength to strength.

The guys from Smule - jamming at the tea shop

After Smule we were back aboard the bus and headed towards the quaint seaside town of Sausalito. Although we barely had time to take it in, there was definitely a Mediterranean feel to the place. We were here to meet Millions of Us – another relatively young but successful company. Since their birth in 2007 they’ve shot to fame as Second Life developers and then providers of content for PlayStation Home, and now in 2009 they’re spending more of their time toying with “telling stories using game like mechanics”. I guess most people would call this ‘ARG’, but that term is so fuzzy nowadays that their description is probably the safest description to use.

We were welcomed by a half dozen or so of the team; each showing real enthusiasm for their work, especially Reuben, their charismatic founder.

The guys all boarded the bus with a spring in their step, pleasantly surprised and entertained at what we had just seen. A quick pit stop at a roadside 7-11 served as our lunch break – we were heading back towards San Francisco, and a date with Lucas. You know, those guys that made those films…erm…oh yeah…Star chuffin Wars!