At least once a month, I get an email or feed about the growth potential of the gaming market.  Sometimes the market might be casual and other times it might be discussing the resurgence of PC games.  What I can’t stand however, is when these articles profess by example.

“Look at WoW, and how many users they have!”
“Look at Farmville!  They are swimming in hundred dollar bills!”
“Look at that 1 guy that made $1M from an iPhone Tetris clone!”

I can’t stand it when we just stare at the #1 spot like it is any kind of reflection on the genre, as a whole.  Okay, look at those successes; celebrate them, but don’t bet the farm on the fact that these companies happen to strike a lucky break or hit the market at a perfect time.  Once the momentum is in their favor, reaching #1 seems almost inevitable.  But what about the rest of the industry?  Take a peek at the #2 MMO on the market and you will see a stark difference in active users.  The same goes for casual developers other than Zynga; have a gander at those mildly impressive numbers.

I don’t mean to sound like a Debbie Downer here, but I think that it is important to look at the entire upper bracket, and not just the #1 success.  Obtaining a statistical Median is a better estimate of what to expect than a Max function.  When we look at the Median MMO only sustaining a hundred thousand users or so, it puts your success rate into more perspective.

I don’t follow soccer, but I did.  I used to love soccer as a child, and even as far as my high school days.  I never played it for my school, being too busy with work and football season, but I still had a love for the sport.  Somewhere along the way, I noticed something; had it been there all along?

I started seeing an inexcusable number of guys taking dives, crying on the floor over their bruised vagina; something didn’t add up.  Excuse my language, but nothing bothers me more in sports than watching grown men roll around, grabbing their leg like it must have been torn off 3 yard back, then standing and running after their opponent receives a yellow/red card.  I honestly don’t know how any player who takes a dive can call himself an athlete, and that is why soccer is not a sport.  Sports require athletes; individuals with the drive to be faster, strong, and more agile than their rival; not take acting lessons between their nail appointments.

I personally would like to see the addition of instant replay for referees and a transfer of penalty to the Hollywood hero on the ground.  I might start to care again.  Heck, I might even call soccer a sport when the players on the field focus more on scoring points, and less on driving their face into someones elbow for a quick yellow card.