Tired of those pointless updates about the pointless games your Facebook friends are playing? Game industry veteran Alex St. John is going to the mat, literally, to do something about it.

St. John was a driving force behind Microsoft's DirectX technology before leading the Redmond-based WildTangent game company. Now president and chief technology officer of hi5, he's leading the San Francisco-based social network's move into gaming, and taking on Facebook in the process.

Back in town for this week's Casual Connect conference, this evening he's challenging a true behemoth, a sumo champion meant to represent Facebook, in a stunt designed to promote the launch of hi5's developer portal. In an interview today, St. John acknowledged his certain defeat but expressed optimism about his competition with the real Facebook and the future of games on social networks.

Q: So what's your problem with Facebook?

St. John: No, I don't have any problem with Facebook. I think a lot of developers trying to make games on Facebook have problems with them. I've been in the games industry a long time, and when you look at a company like that, which is wildly successful and trips over a fantastic gaming opportunity -- accidentally discovers a new gaming platform, and then neglects it to death or abuses it, you go, what a waste, because there's so much value. Clearly they discovered a new kind of game platform, that's hugely popular, and they're going to squander it. That's hard for me to see, and I'm excited to have the opportunity to go, look, let me show you guys how to do gaming in this environment correctly. It's great that you paved the way and discovered it, but it's clear that you're not really going to focus on being very good at being a gaming platform, and I know how to do that.

Q: The point in your essay is that Facebook is largely games for the sake of telling other people that the games are there.

St. John: Yeah, the first generation of social games on Facebook are parasitic, they are spam engines, and they're really not much in the way of games, because as you know there really isn't any skill, it's just iterating. The fact that those are hugely viral and popular is enormously informative, but clearly that first generation was really, from Facebook's point of view, a security flaw that allowed other people to use apps and a very thin premise of gameplay to expand their audience to acquire users for free, and Facebook put a stop to that, which is understandable. But I think they did discover something big, and I think the next generations of social media games will really show the potential of that new medium, that's different from spamming and parasitic content that's low-depth but viral and annoying to a lot of people.

Q: Obviously hi5 also started out as a more general-purpose social network, and still is to a certain extent. But you guys have taken a big gaming turn, coinciding with your arrival and your leadership there. How is hi5 approaching social gaming?

St. John: It's not in our interest to be anything like Facebook. I've told my guys we're going to take a radical departure, we're going to go a completely different direction, I'm not happy until there's very little in common with the experience of using our site and with Facebook. One of the things that's certain is that the vast majority of social media site use is not productive, it's people socializing or playing. That tells you that it's an entertainment experience.

The analogy I'd use is that the first generation of social media sites are like text-based MUDs. They're mildly engaging games that don't even begin to illustrate or show the potential of what it might be like if you really went and, say, made a World of Warcraft using the same kind of premise. My hope is to really define hi5 as a social play site, make it really about playing, meeting people, interacting, and about fun, and a lot less about keeping in touch with family and friends or a lot of the real identity stuff that is traditional to Facebook.

Q: How close are you to that goal?

St. John: I think to take that scale of leap will take a couple years. But the nice thing is that the simple things you need to do to be a really good gaming environment don't take much time at all. I'll give you some examples. One, we just cloned the Facebook API, so game developers who are already making games for Facebook can, as of this week with our new developer portal, just post them on hi5. So we can run the same games they can run. Second thing is that I'm much better at commerce-related business models than Facebook will ever be. So our current commerce system and subsequent versions coming out in the next few months will be vastly more efficient at monetizing users than anything Facebook is likely to come up with.

These (social media) companies are five, six years behind the learning and monetization that companies like WildTangent, RealArcade and Big Fish have. One of the things I can do is teleport that kind of understanding of commerce around gaming into the social media space and advance on monetization by many years without a lot of work. The other thing that's interesting is gifting and virality -- Facebook really cut back on that because they decided it was spammy and wasn't in their core use case. We're saying, hey, if the virtual goods or notifications are properly targeted, they're popular. So what we're doing is investing in a very powerful virtual goods economy, where virtual goods aren't just stupid little bitmaps. They have power, status, they persist in people's profiles. They can be earned and have scarcity, so the only way you can get certain kinds of virtual goods is to earn them from games. They can convey powers in the social graph, so we have a new virtual goods API, let's say you achieve a certain level at, say, Bejeweled Blitz. You could theme somebody else's profile for Bejeweled Blitz for a few hours when they open it.

So we're turning up the screws on the media and on the interactivity on a lot of the core mechanics that make gaming and social networks fun, instead of running away from them.

Q: You have a history in traditional PC and downloadable games, and you've been particularly outspoken on the state of Windows-based games, and Microsoft's direction with that platform. How do you feel about the state of PC gaming now?

Alex St. John

St. John: You know, Microsoft took some of my fun away recently, which is really irritating, because Windows 7 doesn't suck. You remember when I was slamming on Vista, Microsoft outright admits that Vista sucks now, whereas before, remember I was saying that stuff and they would deny it adamantly. Windows 7 is really good. I actually hate to say it. One of the reasons I'm quieter about Microsoft these days is that there really isn't anything good and controversial to say. I think it's funny that just as it's perceived that they're in decline, and Apple is sort of ascendant, I think in some sense Microsoft is executing very well. It's boring execution, but it's good. So I haven't had a lot of critical things to say.

Q: What about mobile? That is one area where Microsoft is struggling now, obviously.

St. John: The biggest problem Microsoft has always had in these areas is followership. Anytime they find themselves chasing Apple or chasing a competitor, it's already too late, they've already lost. They've often historically been able to rely upon having more money and more focus than the other guy so they could just out-execute you over time. But the real way to do it is to have your own vision for mobile that is differentiated from your competitors. And I actually think there is lots of opportunity for Microsoft to do that.

Interestingly, some of the guys who originally built DirectX are at Microsoft working on mobile strategy, and they've got the right kinds of minds over there. But when a company gets that big, it is very hard for it to do something that is high-risk, to say let's break the mold, let's do something nothing like Apple or Google. And I think that's what Microsoft really needs to do if they want to stand out against the market that Apple has really defined. And once you've got a competitor that has defined the market you're a fool for chasing it.

Q: Well, speaking of outmatched competitors, you've got a big event tonight. How did this come to be, that you're in a sumo wrestling match tonight?

St. John: Well, I'm well-known for being outspoken, and for being up for funny promotional stunts when it's relevant. I joined hi5 and of course they were very excited to have a crazy new executive who was good for crazy marketing stunts, and so my vice president of marketing said, let's have a sumo wrestling facedown with Facebook for the love and affection of the developer community. And then the next day they came in and said we've got Byamba, he's the world champion (not the guy in the promotional video above). I said, look we should get some skinny guy like Mark Zuckerberg for me to jump all over, and they said, no, this is too good. Let him beat the crap out of you for a bit and we'll come up with a funny resolution. So I am shaved from head to toe ... and I'll be charging this guy, and I do not expect to fare well, ultimately, from doing this, but it ought to be funny.