I recently got this from my ‘online fiction’ Google alert.  The first thing that sprang to mind is that EA is losing money and I was seriously questioning myself and the world I live in.  These people are the staples on the gaming industry.  Then I paused, collected my thoughts and wrote this sentence.

EA games are losing money.

Think about it.  That is a big statement.  So what are they doing to fix it:

1. Downsizing

2. Bringing out fewer games (my favourite Cricket game was one of these that suffered at the hands of this ‘downturn’.

Two things I would have thought are drastic measures for such a big player.  Why do companies downsize in a downturn?  Instead of thinking up new ideas and using the talent you have to innovate to recover lost profits, you decide to get rid of people?  Do you know what kind of message that sends to other employees?  Bringing out less titles.  Why not bring out more on a smaller scale?  As the article says:

Instead of spending $60 on a shiny new disc, many people are playing free or cheap games online, on their mobile devices and on Facebook. They are spending a few dollars here and there to buy virtual add-ons for the games, or they are signing up for subscription-based online games.

Find new models EA!  Don’t just sit around waiting for people to decide to buy disks again.  Make new models!  You are the industry leader in games and personally speaking gave me great pleasure with your titles.  What are some ways you could release a niche game cheaply and support it with trendy new ideas around new business models?

If EA games goes under then the world will end as I know it.  Well not the world… just the fun part of it.

The recent hyperbole about free business models has gotten me more than a little excited.  I have read a great deal about it, though I still haven’t found the time to listen or read Chris Anderson’s new(ish) book.  One of the things though I have noticed that’s absent from debates about ‘free business models’ is the cost that comes with running, developing and diffusing new ideas.  There is a cost.  And that cost is value.

If you want to be a leading writer, you have to write and keep at it until you get good enough.  That will take a lot of time.  If you want to sing and be the best you can, you need to practice.  Anything that’s easy or ‘at hand’ is usually simple to learn and master.   The cost versus the benefit in that equation is something like this:

Simple thing + Low Skill = Low Benefit.

However, if we raise the barrier it should look like this:

Hard thing + hard skill = High Benefit.

However, there is something missing from that equation and it’s this:

Value + Hard thing + Hard Skill = High Benefit.

You could say it this way, the more value increases the higher the cost to you and to your consumers, students, partners, chickens and whatever other relevant category you would to shove in here.

Now I have added another cost to the learning of a skill that has been overlooked.  The free business model idea hinges on value, as do most other ideas.  Without value you can work as hard as you like at giving things away and it won’t matter a damn.   If we take a poorly written book or a bad movie and say, ‘I don’t know how anyone can like that’, the answer is value.

So what is the cost associated with value?

Often when we come to teach at University we think we need to find ‘cool things’ or some trick to get them engaged.  This isn’t true.  Consider Xtranormal.  This first video was my reflection on the semester… I think it worked well and acted as a way to get them talking:

A colleague whom I teach with made one also:

These videos were well received, at least by me   The following was one we made with the whole class, including myself and Alison, inputting their ideas as we discussed them:

The only point I have is this: it doesn’t have to be boring, and it doesn’t have to be trendy, ok that’s two points.  Be clever and work collaboratively, you may be surprised what you learn.

I have discovered something about my brain.  If I work too hard on mentally strenuous tasks for too long my head reaches a point where it will refuse to cooperate with me.  I will sit down to write and it will say back to me, ‘no asshole, put the pen down I have had enough.’  I have actually found myself more productive when I do mundane tasks during the down slopes, and the ‘heavy’ stuff during the upslopes.  One time I started doing odd things when I worked too hard.  For example, making a coffee and putting the sugar straight in the bin or drinking the milk before putting it in.   Or how about waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep, how about that one?

I had pushed through the burn as they say and found that at the end of the road, even if I wrote something, it was crap.  Yes, more crap than usual and I would have to write the whole damn thing again from scratch.

Take it from me… don’t overwork your brain.

Susan Boyle, RATM and other things have made me realise something this morning.  The internet is no longer the realm of backwater geeks or nerds, sure I knew that and so did you, it’s now influencing the mainstream by becoming the mainstream.  You can ignore things like piracy, file sharing, email forwards (well you can ignore those) and the like because we are now seeing it finally become a mainstream thing.  This is exciting and it means I should finally get my finger out and do something with some of my ideas.  It also means that the internet is now crowded with mobs.  Boo.

A final thought for today: Things are what we make them.  Susan Boyle, RATM, Radiohead, Nine inch nails, Corey Smith… it’s up to us.  We live in a unique time where you can reach an audience via electronic means.  Making money is the hard part but people are having a go and that’s great to see.

I am off to the Zoo… it’s my daughter’s birthday!

No.  Why not?  In my limited experience there comes a time when you have to make choices that will benefit the corporation and hurt people.  You can only go so far before you will be required to sell your soul to get ahead.   There might come a time when the organisation is ‘restructuring’ or ‘changing direction’ and guess who they call on as the toe cutter?   Your choice?  To keep your job, you have to tell them who to get rid of.  One person I know once had to sack a group of people, one who was a good friend and dying of cancer, because shareholders didn’t have enough money.   It takes a lack of heart to do things like that, and a small piece of you dies when you do it.

Call it corporate objectives, call it ‘profit’, call it what you like, but the minute you put money and the corporation ahead of human decency you have sold your soul to the corporation and you have become it’s property.  Just wait until the wheel turns and it’s your turn to be crushed into powder.

After suffering at the hands of administrators more than once, as I am sure you have too, I have reached a conclusion.  It’s easy to do what’s right but even harder to do the right thing.  Doing what’s right means following established policy, running through the steps, implementing the actions and patting yourself on the back.  Doing the right thing takes courage, might go against policy and make you unpopular because it’s what’s needed.  It’s the decision that says, ‘my boss won’t like this but it’s what should be gone because it’s right and honest’. Too many managers I know follow the party line without thinking about what’s right.  We live in a society where ethics has become a thing to observer from afar, not the internal clock of conscience.

Next time you are faced with the choice see what you will do, I guarantee you will almost always struggle to make the ‘ethical’ choice.

Here’s a short thought:

Problems can only be practically solved because of the things we take to practically restrict their solving them.  People often blame politics, the environment, marketing, accounting but the biggest issue is what’s feasible or practical to do, given the known constraints.  There is a big difference between assumption and actual barrier, yet the actual barriers can be nothing else but thought in the beginning even though it may actually be a real issue that would hinder the problem solving effort.   Thinking, as someone said (sorry), doesn’t make it so.   The truth may be what happens after we do something, not sure about that; yet there is a level of pragmatism that always drives decision making in business.  We can’t do this because of that and we can’t do that because of this.   We need to think through these barriers carefully to see if they are real or a matter of our discourse.

One example happened to me years ago when I tried my hand at business.  We kept making decisions because ‘we had to’ and over a period of time the direction I blissfully steered the business to failed.  Each decision was thought out, reasoned over, implemented with an eye to improvement.  Yet as complexity unfolded, new ideas emerged which reset my decision parameters and modified my heuristics, I realised I was playing a fools game.  There was no ‘right’ answer, only what was feasible and known to me at the time and with the resources that I had to use.    Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber talked about this years ago, yet in all the work I have done, I have seen little progress in this regard.  Complexity is a bitch. Scholars like the late Herbert Simon called it decision making under ambiguity, what decisions are made that don’t contain that?  Tell me if you know.

The hidden tiger of decision making and complex problem solving is complexity.  It laughs at us when we confront it with our ideas, and changes shape the minute we make a choice.  What’s known becomes unknown and what seemed ‘right’ becomes not right after the action has been taken.  Is the truth something that happens to an idea as William James said?  Maybe.  Perhaps the truth is not just what happens to the idea but the reasons why it didn’t work in the first place.  It is elusive, nevertheless.

There is a dog, a proud member of the canine species called the Chihuahua.  Some of the uneducated call these wonderful creatures, ‘rats’ or some such pejorative, which portrays the Chihuahua as ugly or evil.  There are big raggedy dogs, loyal but stupid, that most people cling to as if they were Lassie or a member of the four-legged elite.  They lick you and jump around as if they can’t work out you are right in front of them and to a certain extent they are lovable..two full stops here! Yet there is only one Chihuahua.  This breed stands as the most wonderful and loyal of all companions a man or woman could have.

I remember a dog that was in our family, owned by the most annoying of all relatives, that was large, ungainly, smelly and loud.  When you saw him for the first time in a while, he would rush at you wagging his tremendous tail, knocking over vases, cups, small children and whatever stood in reasonable distance.  He was clumsy and would overpower you with his weight for that bizarre licking ritual that big dogs like so much.  When that happened you would wind up being covered in saliva, waving your arms about like a helpless moron and wondering why you made the journey to said relatives place in any case.  To say that big dogs are ugly and annoying is not fair because you can’t blame the dog for its form. You just have to except it.  And yes, a big dog is very loyal  (Loyalty, a quality absent from most organisations and sadly from most people) but the Chihuahua offers more than any of the other species of dog.

You could be under attack by a swooping bird (and I have been many times) or a Doberman and at the risk of all that is reasonable or even ‘worth it’ for most dogs, your Chihuahua would come running at the speed of light to ‘save’ you from the would-be assailant.   I remember once that my late Chihuahua attacked a dog at least twenty times his size, only to be picked up in the bigger dogs mouth and spat out, simply because he felt his owner was threatened.  When my first child was brought home, he sat there faithful watching over to make sure nobody could come near her, he was her ‘protector’.  Such is their loyalty, they will defend you and be there no matter what, even if it means their own hide.

Many years ago I used to have the privilege of visiting a farm for horse riding.  I was very lucky considering that people in my socio-economic class were lucky to even see a horse let alone sit on one.  I remember that the lady, a close friend of my mothers, had a little Chihuahua named ‘Garlic’.  A horse was taken by this little dog and thought it a novelty and placed its giant nose over the dog to see what it was.  I was surprised when the small, three-kilogram, dog jumped up and bit the horse squarely on the nose.  The horse was so shocked that it took two steps backward in utter dismay at the small creature that had dared to bite him.  Not only is the Chihuahua loyal, but they have attitude.  Most dogs are dumb, sad to say, and will run around chasing Frisbees or copulating with anything that looks even remotely doable.  A Chihuahua, despite the relative size of its brain, is cunning. You only need to realise that they can make you believe that it’s your fault for biting a horse, that you know this to be true.  If the little dog could speak it would have said,

‘I’m sorry but what the hell was the horse doing near me anyway, this is my space not his!’

Another thing a Chihuahua brings to a relationship is a sense of knowing which assholes not to let into your life.  They are excellent at detecting people of poor character.  I remember one time my aforementioned dog (may God rest his soul), would constantly attack a woman that would visit.  For no reason in particular, he would launch and begin biting her furiously[1].  My wife and I were left with no idea as to the reason for this violence. (Perhaps she wore a scent that made him think). Then a few years later, through the grapevine, we found out that she had abandoned her husband and taken to sleeping around with more than one person, and left him largely in the lurch with a small child they shared custody of.  Our dog knew she was a slut long before we did!  Incredible to think that a beast, no taller than a workman’s boot, can sense evil when it sees’s it.  This was not a singular affair either, it was on many an occasion.  One time we had to work hard to get rid of the problematic person but we eventually did it, long after my little Chihuahua had passed on. Yes, I have lost even more friends because my dog didn’t like a particular person and to this end it has always worked out for the best.

The final and most important part of having a Chihuahua is the love they offer in return for your companionship.  You will have friends that will dessert you, your dumbass relatives will fight with you but no matter what you do to your poor little Chihuahua, they will never leave your side.  You could be engulfed in flames or dying on a floor from a gunshot wound and your dog would defend you and sit there beside you.  You could hit the dog with a rolled up newspaper and they would forgive you, almost instantly, because they know what loyalty means.  Most people I have had the displeasure of spending time with, want something from me and aren’t interested in me or what I have to say.  It’s not about companionship, loyalty or friendship with most people, it’s about what’s in it for them.  With a Chihuahua they ask for your trust, love and companionship right to the very end of their short, meaningful little lives.  Their eyes never betray you for an instant, they never really have a secret plan to steal your job, or go behind your back to take something from you because they love you, unconditionally.

They never ask you for money or take advantage of you, sure they might steal your pillow or your seat when you rise to grab a coffee or to go the toilet, sure they are cunning, but that’s part of their spirit and I like that.  They don’t want to borrow or beg, unless of course ham is involved.  They need us and we them and put simply that’s why the Chihuahua is a wonderful dog: they exemplify what a dog should be… a true companion.

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[1] Now I should point out at this stage that the dog didn’t actually bite her, he was merely offering a warning by gumming her.  Although on at least one occasion he made her bleed.

Previously in this series I have talked about engagement and other important things to do with hits and misses.  What I want to finish this on is the problem of timing in hits and misses or what I call the Cutthroat Island problem.  So what is this problem?

The idea basically is that to have a ‘hit’ you must understand timing.  Books like the Tipping Point go a long way to explaining the ‘how’ but leave out a very important ‘why’.  The best example I have found of this kind of resonance is Cutthroat Island.  It actually bankrupted an organisation yet it was about pirates, adventure and has since proven to be a winning formula.   What went wrong?  Timing for one and before you start and say what most people say when a box office hit FAILS, no the movie wasn’t all that bad either.  A lot of people didn’t go to see it, which is why it’s a timing problem.

When timing fails so does everything else.  You can be first to market, as I was, with ideas that are now being taken up and sure it makes you pull your hair out and still fail miserably.  Why?  People aren’t ready they haven’t developed the need for it and the cycle of innovation hasn’t reached it peak.  I call to memory Kindle versus the Rocket E-Book reader and others.  You can argue that it’s the technology or the framework, which it may be, but it my mind it’s timing.

The best example I have found of this is e-learning.  Years ago (1996) we were told that the ‘internet’ was going to replace formal education structures because this new technology would revolutionise education.  Thirteen years later and a recent announcement by the incumbent Vice Chancellor of University of New England states that ‘blended learning’ (e-learning pretty much) is the way of the future!  It was the way of the future in 1996!  Why is there a massive uptake of it now?  People are ready for it.  People weren’t ready for Geena Davis back then but they were very ready for Johnny Depp.

In finishing up the hits and misses series I want to say that it’s horribly complex.  A hit is often the result of pipe size and audience engagement and resonance.  It is also a matter of the right time.  How can we know if people are ready for our products?  Research?  It’s very hard to say.  It could be like Rittell and Webber argue that we will not know what works until we try or what William James said, ‘the truth is what happens to an idea’.  The truth is unpredictable, complex, ever changing and multifarious.  Yet if we study the patterns of engagement and the time in which popularity occurs we can begin to understand what a hit is and a what a miss is.  And yes we should seek to understand these things through a systemic strategic lens!