This week’s excitement has been that Disney announced on Tuesday that they are buying Playdom. Which I’m pretty happy about! I wouldn’t have minded if we’d tried to go it alone, but that’s a hard path to follow; and, if we’re going to be acquired by somebody, Disney’s a great choice. I was worried that we might be acquired by a game company: one of the reasons why I was happy to join Playdom was that I thought traditional game companies were ripe for Innovator’s Dilemma-style disruption, and being acquired by a traditional game company could squelch that. Being acquired by a well-established company could also have the potential danger that they might see us as a branding opportunity more than anything else, but Disney hasn’t shoved their branding into Club Penguin, so I’m pretty optimistic that they won’t do that with us. And I’m not against Disney branding, either: while I hope it won’t dominate all of our games, Disney certainly has many brands which would work well with many of our game mechanics, and I certainly don’t think that every one of our games has to be a unique flower.

So: yay! I’m looking forward to how things turn out; with the acquisition and some other recent events, I think we’ve got quite a bit of momentum.

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