Can I get a w00t? How many studies have you read about gaming addiction, antisocial behavior, or other evidence of how “gamers” are overall social misfits. But a new study from Victoria University in Australia investigating aspects of gaming (mostly addiction) as it relates to physical health and other vices like alcohol and gambling finds that only about 15% of gamers should be categorized as “problem gamers”. Unfortunately, “we found that those who played Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), such as World of Warcraft, were more likely to exhibit problematic game play”. Damn, pwned after all. I know to me, Starcraft/Warcraft 3 is like heroin, and World of Warcraft like crack, but now I’ve got it down to the management level of Vicodin. But the psych grad student who conducted the experiment added, “I think it’s an evolution of social and cultural stereotypes that suggest only nerds and geeks play computer games,” he added. “The reality is that nowadays everyone is playing video games.”

Doubly unfortunate is that it was games like World of Warcraft that was a MAJOR agent in increasing playership and of MMOs, and MMOs are a huge catalyst in changing the stereotype of who a “typical” gamer is. So if the “typical gamer” is also the “problem gamer”, and there are more atypical gamers than ever (due to MMOs) - such as women and older people, then why are the problem gamers coming mostly from MMOs? What gives? lol.

Just saw the cutest thing on the net - Of course, I say this at least 3x a day…because as you know, the internets is chock full of interesting things. And maybe I just happen to look for cute + geeky things. That’s a really really awesome combo, not every product can pull that off. It’s totally not the same as cool + geeky, because let’s face it, that’s just too easy. Almost everything that’s geeky is considered cool nowadays, right? Right?

Anyway, this made it to digg front page few days ago. Since it’s wedding season and all, I figured it was worth a blog post.

Here’s the link for more info.

There was a major conference in Carlsbad, Calif. on all things digital and the internet social space. From that conference, I read a really interesting interview with Rubert Murdoch.
For those who don’t know, Murdoch is the chairman and chief executive of News Corp., which oversees a global media empire that includes such properties as Fox Broadcasting, HarperCollins book publishers, MySpace and newspapers in Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. — including Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

Here’s a remarkable stat from Rupert Murdoch from the D conference, as quoted in the WSJ:

MR. MOSSBERG: Does [MySpace] skew younger?

MR. MURDOCH: No. That is a very old-fashioned view. Forty-five percent of all the people who use MySpace are over 35. We have 40% of all the mothers in America on MySpace.

40%?! If you figure that ALL of the underage moms in America are on Myspace and some MILFs, I still would have guessed the percentage to be half that. So you’ve got a lot of “regular” mommies on there too, I guess. I’d like to know what mothers are doing on Myspace? Not sharing recipes I don’t think. There are so many new mom-centric sites that do a better job of sharing photos and stories of the family so this statistic really amazes me. Anyway, I thought that was worth blogging about! Now go hit on some mothers on Myspace!

It’s 80 degrees regularly now. Wii Fit is sold out everywhere. Maybe one has something to do with the other, heh. Microsoft and Yahoo are still two separate entities. We still don’t know have a Democratic nominee (although that might change tonight).
Me, I’m just working on a Blood Elf rogue on Cho’gall at the moment. But shouldn’t you be building the website?! Why are you keeping us waiting? you may ask. Well friends, it’s not just me here at mmochi.
Here is the rest of the team, who’s going to create the awesomest gaming social network you ever did see.

I’m Tony and have been a gamer for over 20 years, mostly on the console side. (My PC gaming experience is mostly C64, Oregon Trail and older stuff like Doom, Duke Nukem, and Starcraft).

It’s tough building something like this from the ground up but we knew there was an unfulfilled need in the community. Here are some of the things I think about during the day:

Information gathering because knowing is half the battle
Blogs are quickly becoming the fastest and easiest way to keep up with news.
Thanks to Google reader, we can easily RSS the relevant info out there on the blogosphere. Some favorites include: Mashable, TechCrunch, Signals vs Noise and of course, all of my videogame feeds.
A great book we read when getting started is, The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to create a startup and pursue their dreams.

Content and Design
This is by far the toughest aspect of starting a web site. How do we get started? Should we start with designs and build features from there or vice versa? What technology should be used? Should we tighten up the graphics on level 3? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ-QSJmEgHU” lol but seriously, we have gone through more redesigns (and dunkin donuts coffee) than you can imagine. We figure some of our pages may have been redone 4-5 times by now. Feature creep also comes into play when designing a site of such scale and we’ve had to axe many features or save them for later revisions. We may scan a few early designs later so we can see the evolution. A great resource we found for designing for the web is Getting Real by 37 Signals. A quick read that’s sure to get you started on the right track.

Well, i’m off but will post some random updates from time to time.

-Tony

And this is Adam, our graphic designer, who hails from Maryland. And although his academic background is in something that rhymes with Memistry, you’d never know it by his wicked designs.

Hey guys,
My name is Adam and I¹m the designer here at mmochi. I am primarily responsible for the little happy faces smiling back at you from the front-page and the general look and feel of the site. Although always a gamer, I never thought that this would be a marketable skill until I saw a craigslist posting with the phrase “must be able to make graphics consistent with video game aesthetics.” This certainly peaked my interest, I applied with all the assurances of my geekyness I could provide and I¹ve been working with Tilo and Tony ever since! The cute little guys of course are meant to be animated mochis which are those awesome Japanese rice treats that often come filled with ice cream or red bean paste (or salt, if you have an abusive older sister.) It was just too good a name to pass up.
So that¹s it for now, anyone have a favorite mmochi?

-Adam

PS - I will also be posting pics of these guys on our mmochi flickr pic roll! (lower left hand corner). Don’t forget to RSS the blog posts so you don’t miss anything!

I remember talking to my friends about mmochi (seems like a lifetime ago), and they would say…”Yea, sounds like you wanna build a startup”. Startup? Did you just take 2 verbs and make it into a noun? What is that, another word for “business”? No, I quickly learned (but not quickly enough…never quickly enough!), that building a startup, which evidently enough, IS another word for a business, condensed under 5 words is kind of like: having a baby. Minus the fluids. But omg, that process is for another post.

ps - Run on sentences ftw.

So one of the first steps to building that startup? Find a partner. How? What can I offer? How do I explain how not fun it’s going to be and at the same time, get really motivated and smart people to join me in this struggle? Then I ran across this article all full of truths AND roflcopters and had to share. I couldn’t get permalinks and trackbacks to work so here’s the entire article (where you can read the comments too), QFT.

“Welcome to the first day of your new startup job! We’re so excited that you’ve decided to be part of our venture. You’re going to find that compared to your old job at a big, stodgy corporation, a startup is a totally different world.

To get you acclimated to the change, let me walk you through the perks and benefits of your new job while you settle in.

We have a Premium Coffee Service

Oh, you want to know where the coffee is?

We have an amazing service that offers premium coffees and a full assortment of cakes and snacks. It’s called Starbucks, and it’s conveniently located two blocks down the street. They aren’t around as early or late as we are, but if you can use the service, I would highly recommend it.

Your New Computer is Already Configured

No need to worry about setting up your new computer – you already own it. It’s the laptop you brought from home. The great news is that you won’t need to waste any time configuring your email client or figuring out your new bookmarks.

What’s even better is you are free to take it home with you and work throughout the entire weekend like the rest of us are going to.

Your Phone Number is Easy to Remember

In addition to your computer, your direct phone line is already set up. As it happens, you already know the number because it’s the same as your cell phone number. Why bother adding additional lines with money we don’t have when you have a perfectly good phone on you at all times?

You Now have Three Assistants

Maybe your last company thought you only needed one full-time assistant to handle your inbound calls, your calendar and your entire travel schedule. At our startup, we’ve got three. Their names are Outlook, iPhone, and Expedia.

Between the three of them they will handle all of the work that you thought only one full-time person could handle before. They will always be available to you and will never complain. Feel free to use them as much as you see fit.

You Set Your Own Travel Budget

No need to fill out any requisitions for travel or any expense reports. We’re too innovative to worry about all that paperwork. In fact, you can pretty much tell us what your travel budget is going to be. After all, it’s dictated by how much cash you have in your wallet and how much gas you have in your car. Assuming those two are full, you can go as far as they will take you.

Take as much Vacation as You Want

Not only do we not worry about travel budgets, we don’t even budget for vacation. Sure, your last company made you count the number of sick days you had available and kept you from taking as much time as you really needed. We’re the exact opposite – you can take off as much time as you need and never worry about it.

While you’re planning that vacation, remember that we’re working Monday through Sunday from sunrise to sundown. None of us have taken time off in the last three years, but we’d be thrilled to see you take a two-week siesta to relax after you’ve been hard at work for three months in a row.

Our Hours are Super Flexible

Aside from not tracking vacation, we don’t even track when you come or go. Maybe your last boss was looking at his watch when you showed up fifteen minutes late. Not us! We don’t care what time you show up or what time you leave. So long as you’re working every waking moment of every day of the week, the hours are totally up to you.

We don’t care if you come in on Sunday at 8:00 AM or 1:00 PM. We’re just so focused on getting this startup off the ground we can’t worry about things like normal business hours. Some of us haven’t slept in the last day and a half so we’ve lost track of time altogether.

You Call the Shots

We’re not about telling you what to do. That’s why we hired you, because we knew you were tired of having your boss lead you around like a puppy. At our new startup, you get to make your own schedule and call all of the shots. We hired you because we knew you wanted this type of responsibility, and now you’ve got it!

I’m sure by now you’re thinking this is simply nirvana. Not only do you get to run your own show, set your own schedule and enjoy all of the perks of a startup, you also get the opportunity to strike it rich with your new stock options.

Just don’t forget that you really aren’t going to get paid in cash this week. Or next week. Or next month. Isn’t a startup great?”

I’m not going to be able to say it better so I’m just going to quote from the source itself and pepper the blog with my own thoughts. The topic is leadership, management and MMOs. Holy extrapolation?! What does one have to do with the other, you wonder? My friend, you have never been part of a raiding guild if you have to ask!

Although this line of thinking has been bandied about and postulated for a few years, a recent article sent to me by way of my friend Nesto, from Harvard Business Review titled, “Leadership Online Labs” seeks to dispel the notion that online games are merely simple play, describing them as “enterprises [are actually] where sprawling online communities in which thousands of players collaborate with and compete against one another in real time within a visually three-dimensional virtual world—one that persists and evolves even while a player is away.” Which makes a lot of sense, as these persistent worlds consists of real-time interaction between avatars controlled by humans, not AI. It’s always been worth it to examine the leadership and group dynamics in these games, but few people took it seriously. They don’t know that completing a mission or defeating a new boss often requires myriad levels of collaboration, on-the-spot decision making, morale building, and all sorts of problem solving. Not a task for the feeble-minded or faint of heart!

What follows (in the article) is a discussion of what leadership means in-game, and how that can be different or similar to management in organizations. But this was not an article about how you can learn leadership techniques from awesome WoW raid leaders. What’s mentioned is “the tools and techniques they’re using will change how leaders function tomorrow—and could make them more effective today”. “Tools” being a state-of-the-art headset and “techniques” like withholding DKP points for latecomers. Just kidding!

What they imagine is: current virtual worlds like World of Warcraft and Everquest may lend insight into the future of real-life organizational leadership. Imagine, we may one day face fire-breathing chimera in the elevator. Just kidding! But perhaps companies willing to adopt characteristics of game environments could exact some kind of leadership change. I think it’s very radical that an organization may consider changing their environment in order to support their leadership instead of finding the right people to lead in their current environment. It certainly would be in line with other progressive HR startup strategies that seek to retain human capital. Not the HR strategy of having a company sushi chef, although I heard that really helps with productivity too. And by “productivity”, I mean “getting fat”. What I mean is, we should all be so lucky.

“Yea, but what do you do all day?”, I get asked all the time.

When what you’re doing consists of working on the web, and you’re not actually coding anything…I can understand how ‘web working’ sounds like not working at all. Or maybe it just sounds like it’s all fun. But really, it’s a humongous exercise in self-management. And I have terrible impulse control. AND the web is chock full of enticing distracters. Examples: the siren’s call of celebrity “news” blogs gets particularly tantalizing around 6PM. Friend sends funny Youtube link or LOLcatz image. You do your part digging it or passing it along. Spam from shopping site tells you that they have new items for the season. Hmm…wouldn’t help to look. It’s Wednesday, time to stream new subbed anime episodes! Limiting playing time on WoW or Audition? Near impossible. “But it’s research!” the id cries, as you’re queuing for the 30^th Arena battle of the day.

So when do you start, and when do you stop? Should all your time on the web be devoted to ‘work’? Should you feel terrible for browsing Perez Hilton when you can be taking a walk outside? Is that really considered taking a ‘break’? How much guilt is motivational and how much guilt is paralyzing?

Anyway, no matter how you look at it, I spend too much time sitting in front of the PC and not much time doing anything else…My challenge is finding ways to amuse myself, de-stress, and keep (or get) healthy while staying true to my calling as Internet Wizard. Willing to take any suggestions seriously, just don’t tell me to start doing desk exercises! (I think people will look at me funny.)

I realized that I didn’t answer the question, but I’m hoping you didn’t notice. Besides, shouldn’t you go out and do something?

Just kidding! Go play some games.

I was playing WoW the other day - and felt a rumbling…

So I picked up a bag of potato chips, none other than the delicious Cheetos. I was hungrier than usual, so I attacked the bag with a fervor normally reserved for the newest OK! magazine and expensive Apple products. Usually with messy (and smelly) snacks, I like to eat them with chopsticks to preserve the pristine-ness of my hands. But that was not to happen this day…Probably because if you’ve ever gamed (PC or console), you know you need to use BOTH hands. What a mess I made! Had to wipe down and blow compressed air through the keyboard. I thought it was fortunate that I had a black keyboard (and therefore the orange mess would not be easily seen) but instead, it just looked like my gaming setup was attacked by an angry Halloween ghost. Oh well!

Tilo’s tip for successful gaming# 1: Try not to eat something that will undermine the integrity of your keyboard/mouse/controller, anything hot that you can drop on your lap, anything that requires two hands, and anything that may make you run to the bathroom without sufficiently being able to warn your raid-mates. Remember, there are few greater crimes than passing along a greasy controller.

Some of you know that I organize the NYC World of Warcraft Meetup Group http://warcraft.meetup.com/118/

This grew out of a need to find other like-minded individuals (to geek out with) and to further understand the gaming mind (besides my own). Well, now we are over 175 members strong and have two meetup guilds, one on Undermine (PVE) and one on Ursin (PVP) server. Maybe now we can finally put some old stereotypes to rest!

I think the prevailing one has been that “gamers” are by nature, loners, or definitely lacking in typical social skills. I always knew this to be false, because I played a lot of video games and I had many friends who did too. We were all surprisingly normal, and really adept at other (some would say higher) forms of communication. How gamers express themselves can be different, choosing conventions, LAN parties, forums, Ventrilo/Teamspeak, IM, etc. And if you ever saw what goes on in the WoW Meetup group, you’d know that it’s sometimes just hanging out over a pizza and beer too. It’s just that we usually talk about the games we play!

I’m not saying that all gamer stereotypes are false, but that’s another blog post.

Online games are a catalyst for a monumental change in how people identify themselves, and how they want to be perceived. It’s all about the avatar, be it your Second Life character, World of Warcraft shaman, or Nintendo Mii. It’s been over 20 years since I started gaming, and the industry is undergoing tremendous changes. I am not speaking exclusively about console or PC gaming; both have changed dramatically and the faces of “typical” gamers have changed dramatically.

And we want those faces on mmochi!