‘Twas the Night before Christmas…

The Pops has done a special Red Sox version of this Christmas Classic. The Final Refrain: “Happy Christmas to all, and to all– go Red Sox!”
Only in Boston. Gotta love it!

Boston Pops

Those of you who know me won’t be surprised to hear that I am not exactly a regular at the Boston Symphony.
But once a year we do hit Symphony Hall for a special Family Holiday Concert put on by the Boston Pops.
So, here we are. Kids are munching on PBJs, i am sucking on a Sam Adams, listening to some fantastic holiday music with a couple hundred other families (and banging out this post on my blackberry).

Most Interesting Person You’ve Met: Scott Kurnit

I did a whole bunch of video interviews this past fall, asking the smartest people I could find where they think online video is going. A combination of user error and hardware problems (I guess dropping a laptop is not recommended) got in the way of putting all those videos up on the blog.

I just kicked up my Comcast account to their highest bandwidth levels, and will start uploading these interviews as I get the chance.

In the meantime, I am starting a new series of videoblogs: the most interesting person you’ve worked with.

Today, I nabbed the inaugural victim: my great friend Scott Kurnit. Here he is:

done

Quote of the Day

“Don’t mistake a clear view for a short distance.”

One of my CEOs read this somewhere. I like it.

The Acti-vendi Merger and the Future of VideoGames: Part I

There is just a tad of personal irony for me in the industry-changing merger of Activision and Vivendi Games announced a few days ago.

About three years ago I had lunch with Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. When I told him about an investment we had just made in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game company called Turbine Entertainment, he didn’t exactly fall out of his chair congratulating me. In fact, I’d say his reaction was pretty much identical to the scenario imagined by this New York Times article:

“As recently as three years ago, if you told a top game industry executive that your favorite genre was online PC games, you would almost invariably provoke a reaction akin to telling a television mogul that your favorite shows explain the migration patterns of obscure African fauna. In other words, you would get the verbal equivalent of a condescending pat on the head — “Oh, that’s nice” — while the executive looked around for someone with something more relevant to say.”

Over the ensuing three years the MMO market, fueled by the spectacular success of Vivendi/Blizzard’s MMO Worlds of Warcraft, has become hot.  So hot, in fact, that Kotick himself has gone and merged with Vivendi to create an 18 billion dollar game industry titan.

But beyond the scale of the merged entity, the transaction puts a fine point an an increasingly important trend which will remake the face of the videogame business over the next five years.

It is no secret that more and more of the world’s time is being spent online, and that the range of online entertainment is eating into the time historically spent watching TV in a major way.

Nor is it a secret that videogames played on the Xbox or PS3 have also displaced a huge chunk of TV time.

But these two things have emerged separately.  Sure, game consoles now include a web connection, but console gameplay has remained a very different user experience than the ultra-connected social experience that has emerged on the web.

This is beginning to change, and I think the change is going to have tremendous consequences both on the game biz and on the web.

The change is coming from two directions.

First, the online experience is just beginning to go 3D.  Second Life is certainly the most visible of the new category of “virtual worlds,” an online experience that has 3D graphics and physics that you would expect from a videogame. Today, Second Life remains an island — a virtual world that exists only for those web surfers who sign up, download the Second Life client, and enter the world. But where this is heading is, I think, pretty clear: more and more of the web experience itself will begin integrating 3D virtual reality. Today kids on social networks like Facebook and MySpace, that are entirely two dimensional experiences. But over time you can bet these environments — or the ones that replace them — will become 3D.

Coming from the other direction, videogames are going to become increasingly connected social experiences.  MMOS like World of Warcraft, and like the Lord of the Rings MMO recently released by my portfolio company Turbine Entertainment, are the first step in this. But, to date, event the most successful of these games like Warcraft have been played by a fairly narrow “hard core” gamer audience. The games are harder to play than your typical videogame and take lots and lots of time to “level” or progress to more advanced stages. What you can expect to see is mainstream game titles having more and more real time interplay between gamers, and more and more social elements, and MMO titles offered not just to hardcore PC gamers but also to more mainstream console audiences.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick certainly sees this, and his merger with Vivendi certainly is a harbinger of this emerging intersection between MMOs and console videogames.

But the hard part still is to come. Yes, Activision has a few console blockbusters, and yes Vivendi’s Warcraft is a fantastically successful MMO.  But the big win here is developing games that are both MMOs and console titles. This nobody has yet done. And for good reason: it’s not easy. It will be fascinating to watch how Acti-vendi fares trying to get there.

Meanwhile, while Goliath heads down this path, so is David — little old Turbine, which already is on its way down this path. It’s early to tell, but there are a few of us out here who are expecting and hoping that Turbine gets there first.

In part II, I’ll speak with Turbine CEO Jim Crowley. Back at you soon.

Bubble Video

Does Google Believe in Santa?

My 10 yr old daughter Maggie ascribes to the philosophy my wife drilled into our kids from an early age: if you don’t believe you don’t receive.

Naturally Maggie wonders what the North Pole looks like. So what does she do? She hops on Google Photo. Here is the picture she found.

Succeeding without “Remaking Ourselves”

Scott Kirsner is, in my view, one of the better tech journalists our there, and in addition to writing for the Boston Globe has a couple really good blogs: Innovation Economy and CinemaTech.

In a post on an entirely different topic, Scott gave us what I think was intended as a compliment by calling as an “old line” VCs who was “remaking” itself to remain current and in touch with contemporary entrepreneurs. I just left a comment (really more of a rant) to this post, taking poor Scott to task for suggesting we had to “remake” ourselves to accomplish this. As I mentioned in the comment, this topic is something I feel really strongly about, so much so that I have decided to reprint my comment in its entirety here:

“Scott: I am going to assume your reference to Polaris was meant as a hat tip that unlike some of our “old school” peers sitting high abovethe reservoir on Winter St, we are doing lots of things, like blogging and getting out and about in the entrepreneurial community, that break downthe perceived walls between entprepreneurs and the guys with the gold. And I certainly won’t argue with that observation. However, I WILL argue with your choice of the phrase “remaking ourselves.”

Having been a partner at Polaris over an 8 year period which has seen tremendous upheaval in the venture business, both in terms of investing strategy, culture and personnel, I actually take a whole lot of pride in the fact that Polaris has stayed true to the very same strategic, cultural and organizational principles that have guided our approach to venture capital since the day the firm was founded. In fact, I will go so far as to say our strategic and organizational stability is one of Polaris’s great distinctions and strengths in the venture business.

For example, unlike a number of our peers who have only recently come around to a strategy of “stage and sector diversification,” we have ALWAYS partnered both with entrepreneurs at the very earliest stages of company formation as well as with owners of more mature profitable businesses looking for growth capital; and we have ALWAYS backed entrepreneurs in broadly diverse sectors ranging from biopharma to digital media to computing infrastructure.

And, while we have enjoyed substantial growth in the partnership since our founding in 1995, we have also enjoyed one of the most stable partnerships in the business. Nine active Polaris partners have been with the firm for seven years or more, and EVERY General Partner has been with Polaris for at least 5 years. Compare this to the number of “top tier” VCs who established great track records in the ’90s but have only been able to remain current by recently hiring brand new “consumer Internet” “life science” or “energy” partners.

Finally, and more to the point of your post, if you ask people who know us well (and, to be honest, I had assumed you yourself did!), Polaris has always put a huge emphasis on human capital, and we have always put a ton of time and energy into getting to know the most promising up and coming entrepreneurs, often years before they are looking to raise capital, whether it be in the biotech labs at MIT, dinners and drinks at Nantucket, salons at the Metcalfe home, our annual Digital Media Summit, or any other of the dozens of opportunities each and every partner seeks to get to know the founders of the next Akamai or Momenta.

The way I was taught venture capital — and this literally was something the Polaris founders expressly emphasized from my first week on the job –getting out to find and get to know the best emerging entrepreneurs is the bread and butter of our business, and in my view if you don’t enjoy this you shouldn’t be a VC. In fact, I would go so far as to say this not only is something each and every Polaris partner considers part of our job, but it is our favorite part of the job.

So there you have my one issue with your post! Apologies for what ended up being a bit of a rant, but, as you might sense, my firm’s ability to succeed over the course of five funds without ever having to “remake” the partnership actually is a huge asset for us, and something I feel strongly about.

But, that small, tiny, eensy quibble aside, appreciated your post!”

Bode Miller Launches Skispace.com

The evening festivities tonight here at Beaver Creek is a launch party for Bode Miller’s new skier social networking site, skispace.com. Go check it out.  Bode has a fun video up on the front page.

Beaver Creek

We finally made it up to Beaver Creek and out on the slopes. Bucketing snow, got same great runs in, froze a bit, and then came in and stuffed a huge bowl of chili down. Best part of skiing still is getting the boots off!