Like most boys, when I was a child I went through a phase of wanting to be an explorer. My aspirations were knocked one day when I realised that most of the world had already been explored long before I was born.

I reckon I'd have set sail with Columbus, da Gama, Livingstone or Speke in a heartbeat. How exhilarating it must have been to head off in one direction, into the unknown, with no idea of what lay ahead...

And for the first time since I was a boy, it feels like the dream of exploration has returned again (admittedly in a much less physically dangerous way). I'm talking about the mostly unexplored world of online gaming. You see, the games industry has changed dramatically over the last three years, opening up vast new space for projects that don't cost multiple million dollars.

So what's different? If you're a traditional console gamer, you may not have even noticed the vast shift happening under your feet. And that shift is millions of people who wouldn't even refer to themselves as 'gamers' playing games on Facebook or casual game sites. Millions of kids playing a new breed of casual MMOs featuring penguins, monsters and fairies unlike any traditional game. Millions of people buying indie-developed games via the App Store on their iPhone.

Even console gamers can't help notice the ever-increasing percentage of games being sold digitally, predominantly smaller games on PSN or XLA, or even virtual goods in worlds like PlayStation Home. An iPhone game like 'Flight Control' can be created by a tiny team and sell 2 million+ units. Traditional publishers largely retreated from 'new media' in the recession leaving a huge, virtually unexplored area prime for new adventurers.

Over the last couple of years, we've been sending a few scouting parties in various directions and we've created a pretty decent map. We're building hard and over the next couple of months, a number of exciting projects will be announced which will show you the direction we're heading in and what we've found there. I wonder what Columbus would have made of it all.....

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