Me showing off my Nintendo Controller skirt made by Go Chase Rabbits!

I often come home to find my boyfriend with 10 tabs open on his browser filled with various treasures he’d found on the Internet throughout the day that he thought I would enjoy.

I cringe at the fail compilations and laugh at the cute animal videos, but one day he showed me the absolute gem I’d been waiting for:

The skirt that looked like a Nintendo controller made by Go Chase Rabbits. Not N64, not SNES, but the original NES controller.

It was the perfect thing I could wear to silently shout my nerdiness, and yet not look like a weirdo while doing so (although, it’s tough to out-do the weirdos here in San Francisco).

The skirt was only available on Etsy, something despite being very aware of I’d never actually purchased anything from before. I was planning on buying the size small, shipping it overnight and wearing it to work on Monday.

But something this awesome can’t be that simple.

I was thrilled to find that Go Chase Rabbits designer Ashley Mertz made the skirt to my exact measurements, and that wasn’t the end of her great customer service.

She asked her fans on the Go Chase Rabbits Facebook page what skirts they’d like to see in the future. I, of course, had to respond requesting a Skyrim skirt. She promptly responded in the thread to message her on Etsy and provided me with two versions of a skirt she could do AND said she could do a Minecraft Creeper one.

Wow!

And, needless to say, the fact that I’m wearing a skirt made for me by someone whose created others for nerdy idols such as Felicia Day and featured in New York Fashion Week is pretty awesome!

TL;DR: Go Chase Rabbits skirts are a must for any true gamer girl!!

Photo from www.meedioscn.com

A few years ago casual online gaming exploded with Zynga’s Farmville and similar social network games, but within the last two years America has become fixated on their mobile devices and the games on them.

During that same time, San Francisco’s social gaming industry has been morphing to accommodate the new portable pastimes.

Many factors played a part in this, one being the bar has become so high for social network games to have better interactions and graphics that development cycles which usually lasted three or four months and cost $100,000 increased to over a year and a million dollars to create newer games.

“[Facebook] is still a hit industry,” Jenn Garcia, CEO of Metamoki, said. “So you can make a game and invest a million dollars and it can be a total flop. And that happens, even in mobile, but in mobile it’s cheaper, it’s $80k or so.”

Metamoki established in San Francisco two years ago developing Facebook games before gaining notoriety with their iOS and Android release Mob Wars. Since January of this year they are only pursuing mobile game development on iOS, expanding the company, and are releasing three iOS titles within as many months.

San Francisco's Financial and SoMa districts have many mobile gaming companies popping up. Click to view larger image.

Many other mobile game development companies are popping up all over The City and in the app stores every day.

Jason S. Burch, Vice President of Cassidy Turley BT Commercial, a commercial real estate firm, said he has personally represented over 100,000 rentable square feet of deals in San Francisco for gaming companies in the last 12 months.

“It’s only a small fraction of this industries growth,” Burch said. “Growth is so rapid, we are seeing a lack of inventory in SoMa to accommodate the needs of many companies, whereby we are seeing creative companies like Kixeye move into Class A traditional towers like 333 Bush.”

With its roots in the tech, marketing and the PC gaming industry it’s no surprise mobile gaming is finding a comfortable fit here.

“San Francisco is the perfect place for the creative and innovative industry of mobile gaming with both the technological talent and the artistic talent of our local residents,” Mayor Ed Lee said. “I am extremely supportive of the growing representation of the gaming industry locally.”

Game Insight, whose offices are based in Moscow, Russia, recently opened a satellite office on Market Street.  Although their business is in mobile games, it wasn’t tech that brought them across the Atlantic.

Information about San Francisco game companies that develop mobile games. Click to view larger image.

“It’s easy to find talented engineers and designers in Moscow and in Russia,” Darya Trushkina, Vice President of Business Development for Russian developer Game Insight said. “But to find actually business development people, PR people, marketing people in Russia is very difficult.”

Game Insight, who is an Android rated top developer, will keep their development team in Russia because of cheaper costs on that end. However, Trushkina travels to San Francisco from Moscow monthly to oversee the new office and attend crucial mobile gaming industry events.

“San Francisco is a mecca for [mobile game] companies like ours.” Trushkina said. “Everything is in San Francisco. The biggest events are in San Francisco, the biggest mixers, the expertise and professionals we need to hire, they are San Francisco. So it’s simple that we need to come to San Francisco.”

Double Fine Adventure logo used on their Kickstarter Donation page

UPDATE: The donation page is still up with 28 days left and the money keeps coming! Double Fine, as of 2:30 on Valentines Day, was up to $1,765,932 from 51,185 different donators! WOW! So far, there hasn’t been any word as to whether the fund raiser will continue for the remaining 28 days. Regardless, they better be making the greatest adventure game ever!

Double Fine’s Tim Shafer has been in the news lately when earlier this week Notch tweeted he would provide funding for the game Psychonauts 2.

Using the viral buzz as leverage, Schafer yesterday tweeted that his chat with Notch probably wouldn’t bring any big news related to Psychonauts yet (or PsychoNotch, as the Swedish Meatball is insisting it be called), but that he’d be announcing something big shortly. About an hour later he tweeted:

Announcement! Double Fine and 2 Player Productions will use Kickstarter to fund an Adventure Game + documentary! Whoa.

Schafer decided to go with Kickstarter to solicit donations for his newest, secret adventure game that Double Fine is working on. He gave himself a measly goal of $400,000 within 30 days.

Boy, was he surprised when just after eight hours the goal had been made and by this morning at 11:15am PST, the project was up to $795,104 from over 19,000 donators and still going! That is amazing!

For all the heat video games get for ruining the brains of the world’s youth, I think this goes to show that this is not the case at all. There are 19,000 people out there who think what Double Fine is doing is an important thing that they want to be a part of. The company’s games aren’t only beautiful, but they are fun and challenging at the same time. Psychonauts is unlike any game I’ve ever played. It deletes the “tutorial” beginning of the game and introduces you to challenges that increase in difficulty in order to up your skill to advance.

I am very excited for this hush-hush game because I have no doubt that they are going to go above and beyond to make it awesome for the supporters. Would you expect anything less from them?

One particular co-worker has had to stay up late on multiple, consecutive nights, ignoring the wonderful nightlife in Madrid, to program some landing page or extra parameter needed for a project I’m working on. It’s always something unexpected and needed in a hurry. I always feel so bad that he has to work for what I feel is at my fault. It’s not like when he’s done I can go buy him a beer, he’s halfway across the world! But regardless, I always ask him if there’s anything I can do to help (not like I can magically learn JAVA and PHP, but I do what I can!)

Turns out although we are thousands of miles apart, we are both Minecraft fans. So he said I could give him diamonds and he’d be happy.

Well, I went above and beyond a few diamonds and built him this on Treepunch:

The Diamond House on the Lake...don't worry, it's protected from griefers

The beginning of Niblebit's letter to Zynga

We’ve all seen Disney’s version of Robin Hood and how annoying King John was sucking his thumb while rationalizing that stealing everything from his citizens was okay.

That bratty lion would take his citizen’s life savings for his own use, such as stuffing his mattress and pillows with bags of gold coins before bed. Robin Hood had to swoop in and put a stop to King John taking advantage of the innocent victims in Nottingham.

How does this have anything to do with Zynga?

Enter Nimblebit, the three guys who developed the game Tiny Tower. The internet has exploded since Nimblebit released this illustration and it made it’s way to Reddit a few nights ago detailing how Zynga’s new game, Dream Heights, was copied after their game, Tiny Tower.

How could this be? Zynga, the King of the current social game scene, stole an idea from someone else? The internet, of course, went crazy with multiple news sites covering the unheard of crime that has taken place.

The end to Niblebit's letter to Zynga

But what caught my eye was the top Reddit comment posted by redditor fallen77 in the Nimblebit response thread:

So from the screen shots I don’t see anything special that wasn’t in Maxis’s SimTower a dozen years ago.

Hmmm, the accuser is a copycat too? Possibly, but that one I can rationalize. Sim Tower and Tiny Tower are very similar ideas (they definitely could have come up with a better name) but two different versions of the game. Tiny Tower is very simple and easy for the most inexperienced gamer, while Sim Tower is obviously more complex and didn’t have much in the way of tutorials. And Nimblebit waited 12 years after the game’s release, where Zynga waited a year (if that).

Zynga’s Dream Heights is not based on Tiny Tower, it is a replica of the game with enhanced graphics. When I’m not being a gamer, I work in the market research and UX world and would love to see how easily people who’ve never played either Nimblebits or Zynga’s version could navigate one game after interacting only with the other.

Minecraft Terreria Comparison taken from http://proditus.tumblr.com/post/7526599262/i-dont-really-get-terraria

But this isn’t something new in the game world. Take the case of Minecraft and Terreria. Terreria is basically the side scrolling version of Minecraft. Gamers across the globe were offended that someone would be so blatant in copying an idea (I know I was).

But is it stealing? That is what this all comes down to. Is money owed to one party because the other stole their idea? It is some rocky waters, my friends. Minecraft hadn’t made a side scrolling version of the game so why shouldn’t Terreria be a game with a topic the developers know is already popular. Should Crush the Castle’s Chris and Joey go after Rovio because Angry Birds is obviously a knock-off of their idea?

Isn’t our world filled with copied ideas? The tables on the street corners of every major city in America are selling imitation designer bags and jewelry… the Tom’s and the Bob’s in the shoe industry…the colognes and perfumes they sell at Wal-Mart that have the disclaimer of what it’s supposed to smell like. These are all companies making money off of the demand for another product.

Zynga could have waited a bit longer before releasing this similar game, as Tiny Tower was just ‘iPhone Game of the Year 2011;’ but whose to say if they didn’t someone else wouldn’t have jumped on the opportunity to make something similar.

What bugs me the most is that Zynga should just come clean with it. They tried to aquire Nimblebit before developing Dream Heights and it seems the game was their retaliation to the sale that didn’t happen. It’s obvious it is the same game so tell us, “Yeah, we thought it was something good we wanted to get into.” We’ll all respect you just a little more as a company if you admit when you’re caught.

So is Zynga the evil King John of the social gaming industry? No, they’re just the greedy, ignorant Sheriff who uses the law to his advantage and doesn’t care who it affects as long as he keeps moving forward to be number one.

Las Vegas was great, Minecon was all right (could have been better)…but what people don’t know is about Steve’s down and dirty night on the Las Vegas Strip. Here’s the real story about how Steve enjoyed his time in Sin City.

The nerds were happily playing the newly released Minecraft 1.0 when Steve got fed up with it (he'd forgotten his laptop so was mad he couldn't play too).

"We're in Vegas, dudes! Let's get crazy!"

Obviously, this guy agreed with Steve, so it was decided to venture out of the Mandalay Bay hotel room and our secure wifi connection to the Las Vegas Strip.

You can't do the Vegas strip without a giant drink, but Steve forgot his ID so I was kind enough to share mine.

Steve likes to party, but he also likes to see the attractions. First stop was the Luxor Hotel where he played on the Sphynx and tried to steal some Titanic artifacts before being chased away by security.

Luckily he got away and was finally ready to party with his friends on the strip.

First stop was the Bellagio Gardens. Steve felt like he was on an acid trip after drinking the rest of my tall drink and staring at the ceiling for too long.

Once we pulled him away he ran around the rest of the gardens and tried mining through the dirt while screaming, "I know there's diamonds under here somewhere!"

After again being chased away by the security guards we found Steve at the Bellagio Water Show. He was extremely disappointed not to run into anyone from Ocean's 11 and started screaming, "I thought we were meeting Clooney here!! Where's Bernie Mac?!" (Steve had a little too much to drink at this point, it was getting a little hard to control the little guy).

Since he'd only been to Sweden and Las Vegas, we thought we'd go on a mini world tour and brought him to Paris Casino. Again, chased by security when he tried mining the fake Eiffel Tower for the iron he was sure it's held together with.

We scurried off to Ceasar's Palace where Steve kept asking (well, slurring) to everyone, "Do you know if the hotel is pager friendly?"

He eventually got tired of his own joke and decided to go swimming in the fountain outside Ceasar's Palace, resulting in another security chase.

On our way to the Venecian ran ahead of us and started screaming "It's Indiana Jones! INDY, INDY! OVER HERE! Let's go mine some caves, brah!" It took us an hour to get him to understand Indiana was just a display at Madame Tussade's Wax Museum.

When we got into the Shops at the Venecian, Steve got very confused and finally started crashing. We kept telling him it wasn't really daylight and they just made it seem like that, but it was obvious the world had stopped making sense to him.

We finally calmed the little guy down and got him on a moving sidewalk and began the long, slow journey back to Mandalay Bay.

Needless to say, Steve was a little hung over the next morning. But thanks to the photos, he’ll never forgot his awesome night in Vegas.

Check out this short interview I was able to arrange with Joel after a panel he sat on at Minecon.

The lever that launched Minecraft

Minecraft has officially been launched by Notch and the Mojang team at Minecon in Las Vegas.

I literally had to sprint to get my seat in the 10th row back from the stage and must say, it was well worth it!

Minecraftchick, Mojang’s “Director of Fun,” emcee-ed the 90 minute launch in front of 5,000 players at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Check out this video of the launch!

The Minecraft Pocket Edition was also announced at the launch, and the XBOX live trailer for Minecraft is now available in the XBOX Live Marketplace.

My Minecon Bag and Badge

Treepunch and I have been in Vegas since 9:30am and things are GOOD! We had a lot of time to kill today and ended up getting temporary Creeper tattoo’s on our wrist so we can look even more awesome when we meet Notch tomorrow.

As for Minecon Day One: We just picked up our Minecon tickets and are ready for tomorrow. Our cute little Creeper Backpacks have paper doll Steve’s and creepers as well as a Minecraft mousepad. Could not be happier!

Tonight we are meeting up with three other players from the game. This is our first face-to-face meeting, although we’ve talked on Skype many times. I’ve never done this before, although I have heard of a lot of WOW people who meet up with other players regularly….

Back to Minecon! Things that I’m surprised about:

1. The amount of children. Yes. I know it is Minecraft and the average player is well under the age of 18. HOWEVER. Being in “Sin City” I thought there would be more adults.
2. No love on the street. I’ve probably seen 10 people on the Las Vegas Strip who obviously here for Minecon and everytime I have shown them my Creeper Temporary Tattoo and 100% of the time the person would look away and pretend like they had no idea what the creeper on my wrist or their hat/t-shirt was all about. COME ON MINECRAFTERS! When you see a fellow player act like you’re driving at a Corvette waving at a fellow owner! We’re all friends here, don’t be afraid!

My creeper tattoo

That’s it. A lot of children making me feel old and a lot of introverted weird people.

But other than that, it is a great time! The line to get our tickets was very quick, the hotels are very welcoming and I can’t wait for tomorrow!

Updates as the release comes out tomorrow at 1pm! Can’t wait! Tune in!!! You can follow me on Twitter @eurekas_castle

Game on, Miners!