Mobile Gaming Explosion

Lyrics

Just glass and steel.
Cool in my hand.
January 2007, I remember the broadcast.
A computer in every pocket. He promised.

Before you, the gates were high.
Big buildings in San Jose, guarded desks.
You needed a publisher, a team, a million dollars.
My code lived on a dusty hard drive.
Just ideas in a text file.
Then Steve Jobs held you up on that stage in San Francisco.
And we all held our breath.
Not for the phone calls.
Not for the web browser.
For the door we didn't know was coming.

Then came July 2008.
A little blue icon on the springboard.
A tap on the glass.
A store with a billion shelves, all empty.
And a welcome sign that just said: anyone.
Anyone can build a world here.
Anyone can play.

My MacBook Pro hums on the kitchen table.
Xcode 3.0, a clean white window.
It smells like stale coffee, not the Caffe Macs in Cupertino.
No solder in the air, just the rain outside my window.
I'm not Scott Forstall, I'm just… me.
And I'm building a little game about a falling block.
A game about a bird that can't fly straight.
Something small. Something mine.
And uploading it to you.
You little miracle. You little tyrant.

July 10, 2008.
That little blue icon on my springboard.
A tap on the glass.
A store with a billion shelves, filling up fast.
And a welcome sign that still says: anyone.
Anyone can build a world here.
Anyone can play.

Of course, there were the letters.
The silent rejections in the queue.
The thousands of names not in the record.
The bedroom developers who tapped the glass
and found it was still just glass.
The gates are still there. They just moved to a server farm.
They just have a new, friendlier name.

But I got through.
My little bird is flying.
Somewhere in Ohio, someone just paid ninety-nine cents for my idea.
A single tap.
Anyone.
Almost anyone.