The unveiling this week at Mobile World Congress from Dell about their Ophelia project (thank you Jon Downey for bringing it to my attention) may have a profound impact on the game industry as early as Q3 of this year. Ophelia is a stick that turns a TV or monitor into your computer (through the HDMI port initially but there will be a USB version in the future), powered by Android. It is effectively your computer on a stick, which then integrates with Dell’s cloud services and allows you to use your apps or play your games. You can even upload and download files as if you were at your PC (or Mac).
Think about pulling out your Ophelia stick, plugging it into your TV and you can just start playing Bejeweled or Slotmania. Later, you plug it into your monitor at work. When you’re traveling, just plug it into the TV in your hotel room. You can play all your games, edit your documents, view your pictures, and anything you would do with a laptop or tablet. Continue reading “Dell’s Ophelia can be the biggest thing to rock gaming since the iPhone”
The big buzz phrase in the Bay Area the last year or so has been “growth hacking,” and the ideas behind it can help significantly game companies. The underlying principle in the phrase is that modern start-ups should be focused on using the new tools available via technology to grow rapidly their user base rather than relying on older, sometimes outdated, marketing techniques. Growth—unlike marketing—usually encompasses multiple aspects of an organization, with the growth team not only bringing in users but also working with the product team to optimize the product for growth. It stresses the importance of product to growth and how the two should work together rather than having marketing set aside in a corner. The phrase itself was coined by 
The Business of Social Games and Casino 