QuicklyBored

We’ll have more extensive coverage of the Mobile Game Conference for you tomorrow and into next week, but before we go out and party with our favorite industry bigwigs (word to the wise: Trip Hawkins likes Tequila), we thought we’d hit you with some Day 1 impressions.

• Communication and Social Networking are the buzzwords of the mobile gaming industry for 2006 (see Trip calling cell phones “social computers”).

• The Japanese are way, waaay ahead of what’s going on in North America. Maybe it’s because people like Okada-san want to work together and share expertise and innovation (cold fusion powered handsets don’t hurt either).

• If the carriers are saying that publishers need to do more to grow the industry, and publishers are saying the same thing about carriers, maybe they’re…Oh, I don’t know, both responsible?

• People in the mobile games industry cannot speak about anything for 5 minutes without using MySpace in an analogy (”this sandwich is like MySpace with cheese…”).

• Everyone wants their own gamer community, that integrates with everyone else’s gamer community across all carriers and platforms, has user-generated content, and that they don’t have to manage. And no one wants to pay for it. Microsoft, will you please fix this? Soon?

• We were surprised to see BlackBerry maker RIM not only with a booth at the conference, but as one of the sponsors. Looks like they’re starting to make an effort towards actually positioning the BlackBerry as a viable platform for mobile gaming. Developers take note.

• Porting games, apparently, is a real pain in the ass.