The Richter Scale^®

A few weeks ago, Barry Moltz dropped me a note asking if I would mind looking at his book You Need To Be A Little Crazy, which he has subtitled “The Truth About Starting and Growing Your Own Business”.

I presume Barry found me via the web and the Garage Entrepreneur columns I wrote some time back.

In any event, I agreed, and finally made it to the book in my reading pile.

Barry’s approach is certainly different from most other entrepreneurial texts. Whereas most books on the subject give you an action list of things that are surefire to work but rarely do in real life, You Need To Be A Little Crazy explains that failure is a natural, and expected part of being an entrepreneur, and that typically there’s not much you can do to prevent failure.

External events, like market conditions, world happenings, key client failures, and partners with different agendas, among others, impact one’s business in uncontrollable and unforeseeable ways.

Barry has filled his book with examples from his own personal experiences as an entrepreneur, along with snippets and anecdotes from other successful and failed entrepreneurs he has encountered along the way, organized into topical sections.

I found a lot of parallels in places between his tellings and my own entrepreneurial background, but there were small differences too (like never having gone bankrupt, for example).

One topic that Barry addresses as pivotal in entrepreneurialism is the concept of luck, and I agree with that wholeheartedly. While it is said that one makes his own luck, that only goes so far - things like being in the right place at the right time are too much a matter of happenstance to be able to be planned. However, there are other factors you can control when you run your own business, and Barry touches on those too, including the benefits that networking and maintaining contact with friends and past co-workers can provide.

You Need To Be A Little Crazy provides a healthy dose of reality, and is a great book to temper the feel-good but unrealistic advice most entrepreneurial books dole out.

I give You Need To Be A Little Crazy a 9.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

The second day of the E3 Expo exhibits was a bit disappointing. All I had left to cover was Kentia hall, which, as I discovered was basically the basement of the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC).

And it was to there that lesser known companies were relegated.

The companies in the LACC Dungeon seemed to be a blend of foreign software developers (Asian and Russian for the most part), smaller distributors of video game software and hardware, companies which specialized in DVD and CD media repair (I never realized there were so many of them!), alternative game controller makers, and a few random entities thrown in between.

Among the alternative game controllers was a mouse replacement which looks like a handgun - once I figured out where all the mouse button equivalents were in the demo FPS they had set up, it was pretty easy to use, and certainly more intuitive than a mouse. Company is MonsterGecko and the product is known by the innovative name of “PistolMouse”. Just make sure you don’t pack it in your carry on if you’re planning on flying.

Speaking of fake weapons resulting in one’s arrest at TSA airport check points, THQ was giving out toy hand grenades in support of their forthcoming title, Company of Heroes.

If you pull the tab on the top it causes the hand grenade to rumble. I asked the booth staff about the wisdom of handing out toy weapons in this age of excess paranoia at airports, and they just laughed it off. In face, I was told that the THQ media rep had one in his carry on and the TSA staff, once they realized it was a toy, let him keep it. The TSA folks I’ve dealt with in the past haven’t seemed quite as lenient. So, erring in favor of safety and wanting to avoid potential incarceration, I think I’ll be leaving this little baby for the maid at the hotel to clean up.

I’ll be adding more E3 and video game related commentary here in the coming days as I work my way through my notes from the show. Of course, some of my more in depth work will show up as articles in Monday’s TechWatch.

The industry sure has gotten bigger in the nine years since my last E3 conference, or at least the show floor has gotten bigger - now in three halls, with many thousands of attendees.

While this is supposed to be a show for the “trade”, a whole lot of pure fans with no obvious trade affiliation managed to get in. And some looked a lot younger than the required 18 year minimum age posted at the entrance.

In any event, after getting through the ESA presentation in the morning, and discovering the power outage, I hit the West Hall exhibits area. The lighting was subdued due to the power outage, which did not affect power to the booths, but did affect ceiling lights. The power finally returned at 1:21pm PDT, and there was much rejoicing, as the power outage had prevented the concessions from opening, many of the upstairs meeting rooms from being usable, and impacted the press room and press registration pretty badly.

The West Hall’s star attractions were Nintendo and Sony, each featuring huge tracts of booth space, many dozens (if not hundreds) of game demo stations showing the latest titles in development. Folks got to hold the new Nintendo Gameboy Micro, as well as scope out a variety of single and multi-player game titles.

I will skip over the various Nth generation franchise game titles, the “new” war gaming titles, and all the other standard genres, as you’ll undoubtedly be able to read about them elsewhere.

The most interesting non-standard things I found were a VoIP program on the Nintendo DS, the Video Chat on the Sony PS2 using EyeToy, and a preview of EyeToy Kinetics. The latter was something I think I could finally get my wife to use as an entry to possibly finding game consoles useful for more than playing DVDs or distracting her three children (my two kids and myself). EyeToy Kinetics let’s one use the PS2 with an attached EyeToy camera as an interactive exercise device, with exercises ranging from a sedate but rewarding Tai-Chi-like session, to a heart pounding aerobic kick boxing work out. Can’t wait until it ships.

There was no sign of the PS3 or the Revolution in action anywhere, however.

In the South Hall were Microsoft, Ubisoft, THQ, EA, and another half dozen major game publishers, also with huge booth space. Microsoft even had a bridge/walkway one could use to by pass the crowds checking out upcoming Xbox titles. And, tucked away in the back of the booth were a handful of Xbox 360 demos, running on development systems. Shown were Activision’s Call of Duty 2, 2K Sport’s Top Spin 2, and Full Auto and Condemned from Sega of America. The visual quality was definitely closer to that of a higher end PC, and better than that of a current model Xbox, but it was tough to tell more than that.

I had my own chance at using the Xbox 360 development platform at the Electronic Arts booth, where I played a short segment of Need for Speed: Most Wanted (and inadvertently hung the system when I press the Xbox 360 button on the controller (if you’ve seen pictures, it’s the silver button in the middle). This button will be used for pulling up the Xbox Live! and related menus, but apparently that wasn’t implemented on the demo system I played with.

I know I saw many more interesting and cool things, but my brain and body are a bit toasty from walking around all day with far too little food and water for sustenance. Once I revisit my notes I will post more.

Until Day 2....

It’s a bright and sunny day in Los Angeles today, but a serious power outage in the West Hall of the L.A. Convention Center is causing consternation. The show floor opens at 10am.

A free breakfast for media attending an opening presentation by Entertainment Software Association president Doug Lowenstein resulted in over a thousand “media” waiting in line for a long time for not much more than a bagel. Apparently their publications don’t pay them very
much, or perhaps the emotional response to ‘free’ overwhelms reason.

Nintendo’s president just announced a whole new dimension to ‘backward compatibility’.

He says the Revolution will pretty much run ALL Nintendo content for the last 20 years, meaning NES, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Gameboy, and Game Cube.

Smart move.

Finally, we see the Revolution, but it’s being said that the internals
should be left as an item of ‘mystery’.

So far nothing much said about the Revolution. But, they did just
announce the Gamyboy Micro for a Fall release. Plays all Gameboy Advance
games in a tiny package with a great screen.

The briefing started with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata telling us he
was playing Super Smash Brothers. It ended with him asking “Who’s Your
Daddy?”

I estimate that there are about 2500 people in attendance, with almost a
third of these standing.

Nintendo seems to tug at emotional heart strings more than Sony or
Microsoft, perhaps because for many a Super NES or Gameboy were their
first game devices. And gosh those characters from Super Mario are just
so cute!

In any event, a noticable part of the audience are looking toward the
stage with a blend of adulation and awe, although nothin much is
happening yet.

The Nintendo DS is out in force as well (I didn’t bring mine ). Not
sure what’s showing on the DSes.

The big news this morning, while waiting to enter the Kodak Theatre at
Hollywood & Highland for the media briefing on the forthcoming third
entry in the next generation video game consoles - the Nintendo
Revolution - was that USA Today got the scoop.

There on page 1D (the Life section), above the fold, was a picture of
the Revolution (confirmed as authentic by the Nintendo staff when I
checked in this morning for the briefing).

http://www.usatoday.com