On the mm-mmove

All major cellphone game publishers -- including Electronic Arts Inc , Gameloft and Glu Mobile have signed up for the new Nokia's N-Gage platform that will allow developers to offer a single version of a game to more than 10 million phones.

This is a major shift from previous years in which mobile games and particularly "social networking" was largely disregarded by all major players in the mobile game industry. Which is quite curious, since the telephone is the obvious social medium "portal". This is of course the result of the boom in social networking which is finally calling the attention of the behemoth telcos.

Nokia's move alone is expected to increase mobile game revenues by 23% this year to 4 billion.

Is our avatar going to move on and take advantage of this new sim? It reminds me of that great British TV series from the 80's, the ubiquitous cyberpunk icon Max Headroom, the voice of a dystopian future that doesn't look too far from our chaotic present.

The show which apparently was either too good or too advanced for the taste of the general public (meaning Nielsen viewers) was taken off the air supposedly for low ratings, but its huge fan base is a testament to the contrary. I believe the move was more of corporate politics that did not like to be questioned.

Social spaces are taking the shape of an atomized MaxHeadroom, where there is room for more than one head to make a difference. (I know, that was bad :-)