Today I was walking over the Game Developers Conference expo floor when I saw a crowd of people around an arcade machine. Out of curiosity I took a look what was going on and then I saw that someone was playing Donkey Kong. That used to be my favorite game in the early 1980’s, not on an arcade machine but on a Nintendo Stop & Watch (I still have an old one, but it stopped working years ago).

The guy playing was extremely good and when I looked at the sign next to the machine I realized I was watching the world record holder in action, Steve Wiebe He was the first person ever to break the 1,000,000 points barrier in Donkey Kong. I haven’t played Donkey Kong in ages, but it was fun to see Steve in action. He actually plays very differently from how I used to play. I always tried to go up as soon as possible, he takes his time and tries to score as many points first before going up one level. Pretty cool to see him play. See for more information on Steve see his website here, or his Wikipedia page here. There was also a film made about him, see here for more information.

Today was the first day of GDC 2010, the yearly Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Despite a short night of sleep I felt pretty awake during most of the day, likely also due to the large number of cups of coffee that I consumed. Coffee is the drink of choice at GDC, every break there is free coffee and during every meeting I drink at least one cup as well.

When walking to the Moscone Center this morning I immediately knew who of the crowd around me was going to GDC as well. Game developers stand out in the crowd, their dress code and hairstyles are a bit ‘different’. As Popcap’s @giordanodc put it diplomatically in a tweet yesterday (he was on the same plane with me): “En route to GDC. You can always tell if a plane is bound for a game industry conference. mThis ain’t Fashion Week”.

After picking up my badge I tried to buy some food inside the Moscone, but it turned out that the food outlets were still closed (they remained closed the whole day actually, not sure why). So I went out to a deli to get a sandwich and talked to some people. Because your Twitter name is on your GDC badge it’s pretty cool that you can immediately check them out on Twitter, all conferences should to that.

During the sessions many people were using their laptops (mainly Macs of course) or going online on their phones. There was decent wifi this year, much better than last year when I could not find a signal anywhere, so tweeting was a great way to keep up with what was said in parallel sessions, or to read the comments of others in the audience on the session you’re watching. There was no Twitter back channel projection, which is something they should have added as well.

This year the social games summit was extremely popular, it’s clear that social games are hot. Some of the sessions were completely full and you even had to wait in line to get in (if you could get in at all). But the longest line was for the free Nexus One and Droid giveaway for developers. A super smart idea from Google: if you give game developers a brand new Android phone there is a good chance that they will start developing games for them. All over the place there were people with Nexus One’s, a nice sight.

The first day of the conference was totally worth the trip already. I met a lot of people, heard a lot of news and have a lot of new ideas to think about. And of course it’s always nice to hear the rumors about competitors, you only hear those things at this kind of conference. One full day down, three more days to go.

Four hours ago I arrived in San Francisco after an overnight economy class flight from Shanghai. Despite having the first row of cattle class I still did not manage to sleep much (=not at all) on the plane. But because I have several meetings later today and even a business dinner tonight I need to make sure I get over my jet lag as soon as possible. The easiest solution is of course to take a short nap, but that is more a temporary solution and it can actually make the problem worse.

The best thing to do in my opinion is to go for a long slow run. It’s not easy, but you feel great afterwards. So I put on my running shorts, shirt & shoes and ran down from Union Square to the Ferry Building next to Pier 1. From there I ran all along the Embarcadero to Fisherman’s Wharf and continued until past the beach and Fort Mason. A great run (1 hour 10 min), with lots to see and (on a Monday morning at 10 AM) not very busy. I took my Nexus One (=phone) with me and took some pictures during the run.

It’s strange, but each time I am in San Francisco I feel immediately at home here. I had the same thing last year as well, there is such an entrepreneurial vibe in this city. Similar to, but also different from Shanghai. What I miss in Shanghai I can find here: nature, fresh air and an outdoor life. I think I mentioned in a blog post last year that you should not be surprised if one day I would start a business here, and I have the same feeling now again. Maybe I should really look into this more seriously.

Of course not everything is perfect here. The one thing that struck me this morning, both in the taxi ride from the airport and during my 12 kilometer run, were the homeless people. They are everywhere. There are a lot more homeless people in San Francisco than in Shanghai I think – actually, now that I think about it, I hardly ever see beggars anymore in Shanghai. Also things are quite expensive here, but maybe not as expensive as Shanghai (note to self: check out housing prices in SF).

Anyway, I am looking forward to an interesting week at GDC (Game Developers Conference). A very busy week with right now 22 appoinments (plus 2 new ones that came in through Twitter this morning). I am ready for it! Next week I plan to take a week off to unwind a bit: I plan to go down to Mexico and then drive back up to San Francisco with my sister (who is on a round the world trip right now).

I regularly see interviews with Gary Wang, Tudou’s CEO, through Google Alerts and Twitter, but most are more or less the same. However, today’s interview with the China Daily is one of the better ones I have seen over the past years. I’m normally not a big fan of the China Daily, but this piece shows Gary like how I have got to know him over the years:

As a man who comfortably mixes his work and free time, Wang is happy dealing with business emails while camping during a hike and allows flexible working hour for his employees. As an interviewee he is relaxed to the point of resting his legs on the office table while excitably discussing his favorite books.

Surprisingly, these characteristics, regarded by some as perhaps conceited and arrogant, helped Wang win approval from many investors, one of whom once said he felt “assured” by Wang’s attitude towards work and life.

“Doing business is like playing games: You grow up by passing each level and fight with bigger bosses each time,” Wang said, sitting in his office in Beijing soon after CCTV and Baidu announced they were establishing their own video websites. “I believe we can survive and thrive.”

The article also talks about the business environment and how Tudou sees the entrance of new players, for example like the Hulu clone that Chinese leading search engine Baidu.com will launch soon:

For many like Tudou, the arrival of new competitors is akin to a group of scrumpers helping themselves to the ripe grapes one had looked after for years. But Wang said he knew this would happen “from the first day when I established the company”.

He said: “It is natural that big elephants will come when the market matures, but I don’t believe that anyone can dominate China’s online video market.”

He denies his firm is in direct competition with content makers such as CCTV and Hunan TV because “the licensed content on Tudou.com only accounts for two to three percent of our total traffic”.

Also makes sure you read the Q&A on the 3rd page of the article, it contains some good quotes such as “What makes people great is mainly down to circumstances. If he had lacked proper chances or the right environment, Abraham Lincoln may only have been a village teacher.”

On January 12 this year China’s leading search engine Baidu was hacked and showed the message “This site has been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army”. Nobody knew what happened, but domainnamewire.com now published the  complaint documents (pdf) of a case in which Baidu sues register.com because of the hack.

It turns out that register.com made some major mistakes that led to this hack. An unauthorized person claiming to be an agent of Baidu started an online chat with tech support at register.com and asked to change the email address on file for communication with Baidu. The representative of register.com then sent the imposter a security code that he had to provide. Because he of course had no access to the Baidu account he provided an incorrect code, but the register.com person did not compare the code to the one that was sent out.

Then the email address was changed from an official baidu.com address to an address that clearly does not belong to Baidu: antiwahabi2008@gmail.com. Note that wahabi is the name of a Muslim sect, and that gmail is of course owned by Baidu-competitor Google. From then on it was easy because with this address the password could be reset and the DNS could be changed.

Shortly after that Baidu contacted register.com through an online chat, but register.com refused to help them! Baidu tried to call register.com but was not able to reach anybody. It took a full 2 hours after Baidu started to contact them before register.com started to to take action to help Baidu!

An amazing story because is shows that ignorant irresponsible people are always the weakest link. Baidu lost millions of dollars because of the outage (that lasted up to 2 days) and this was not particularly good for its reputation either, even though it was clearly not their fault. However, Baidu is not completely without fault because it should have taken more precautions to prevent this. There are more secure ways to protect people from taking control of your domain name. Baidu did not specify how much money it wants to have as compensation, but if the details are correct this might cost register.com a lot of money.

For all the details of what happened see the complaint that Baidu filed here: http://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/baidu.pdf

Despite serious threats to leave China, it now seems Google is not walking their talk: there are job postings on Google’s Chinese site again, indicating that the search giant is not going to leave China anytime soon. As a heavy Google user I am of course happy about this, because I was worried to lose access to among others my Gmail account and my Google Reader RSS feed.

The story is certainly not over yet, but either Google’s negotiations with the government are going well (which would be very hard to believe), or more likely they understand that their US management made a big business mistake in announcing their departure.

Update: Several media, among others BusinessWeek, wrote about the fact that Google started hiring again, but according to a commenter there is also a report saying that these job posting had been there already before Google’s pull out threat.

From March 8-12 I will be in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference 2010. If you would like to meet me for a coffee at the Moscone Center, or somewhere around there for breakfast, lunch or dinner, let me know at marcvanderchijs (at) gmail (dot) com. I am especially interested to meet with online game companies (incl. social game companies) that are considering to set up their business in China, and in VC’s looking at the China online game or Internet market. But of course I also enjoy talking to entrepreneurs or people working for start-ups in or around SF.

Last year I planned so many meetings that I missed most of the GDC sessions, this year I hope I won’t make the same mistake. But I still feel that meeting people is the best way to learn new things about what’s happening in the Bay area in general and in game development in particular.

Also, if you are organizing a GDC party that week, feel free to invite me ;). So far I only confirmed the Accel Partners cocktail on Tuesday, all other nights are still open for parties… I am looking forward to a busy but also fun week!

In my time as a consultant about 7-8 years ago I visited many factories along China’s East coast. Always an interesting experience, especially compared to the clean and efficient factories that I was used to while working for Mercedes-Benz (where I worked until 2002). One of the things you always notice in Chinese factories is that workers do not seem to care about safety: their attitude is often one of ‘why should I wear safety glasses or safety shoes, it’s just a nuisance and I’m not afraid’.

Tonight I came across a good article on the blog of Hong Kong photographer Alex Hofford (h/t Danwei). He took a series of pictures in an ‘investment casting’ factory near Ningbo (a 2 hour drive south of Shanghai). The blog post shows the whole factory process in detailed pictures, with short comments explaining the process while also pointing out the health and safety issues. If you’ve never seen a typical Chinese factory on the inside or just want to understand how many industrial parts are still being produced, you should check out his blog post.

Picture credit (Creative Commons): Mavericyard