Well, in honesty, it’s not all that new. We publicly announced our new brand and positioning a few months back at the grand opening of our new studio, and really, we’ve been operating under the ideals of the brand for even longer.
On the surface, our the Fuel brand doesn’t look much different. We’ve [...]

So, a while back, I likened the change in website to a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. Turns out, it’s more like a line-dancing alien bursting out of your chest in an interstellar diner. Frankly, things like that take care.
Truth is, we were ready to launch the site a few times, and each [...]

The schedule for Casual Connect Seattle 2007 were just posted, and I’m going to be giving a talk as part of the Casual Games Academy on Day 0 of the conference (don’t ask me, how they came up with that). Anyway the talk is titled Casual Games are not Just Downloads and I’m going to [...]

I promise, this will be the last time I post about OGDC It was a great conference. About 350 people attended, and I enjoyed all the sessions that I was able to go to. As always it was great getting to meet up with old friends that I hadn’t seen in a while too.
My [...]

The interview I gave a couple weeks ago for the OGDC conference discussing the Appealing to the MMOB session I’ll be giving next week.
While the purpose of it is obviously to promote the upcoming session, I think it does a pretty good job of giving an overview of the current landscape surrounding advertiser involvement in [...]

…but first a history lesson.
I’ve always said that the music industry got what it deserved when they ignored the consumer behavior shift created with by original Napster. We (the people who buy stuff) wanted easier access to content. The record industry ignored this seachange and have been whining about revenues ever since. The only people [...]

One important topic we should explain in some more detail is what “online branded entertainment” means. I’m not going to try and give it a dictionary definition, but as money shifts more and more towards online advertising, it’s important to look at the structural foundations of the entertainment industry and understand the implications for web.
Much [...]

A couple of weeks ago I hit the 2 year mark at Fuel. No one brought me a cake, dancing leprechauns in bikini’s - not even a “hey, good job not getting fired” card. But then I saw the new Fuel trailer and knew what my gift was… Wow. We’ve been pretty busy over the [...]

I’m running for the IGDA Board of Directors this year. I’ve always been really involved with the organization having helped coordinate both the Colorado and Ottawa chapters while I lived there, as well as being a chair of the Online and Casual Games SIGs.
My goal if elected is to help ensure the IGDA retains its [...]

I’ll be speaking next month at OGDC 2007. My session is titled Appealing to the MMOB and should give a good overview of what it takes to build large-scale branded games. I plan to discuss some of the challenges in working in this space, as well as how rewarding it can be when done right. [...]