“EVE has two kinds of currency. The first is called “ISK,” and it’s what players use to buy items within the game. The second is called “PLEX,” and it’s used to buy gameplay time. (Think of it as your monthly subscription fee transformed into an in-game item.) Players can buy PLEX in two ways: by trading in ISK earned playing the game or by purchasing it directly from CCP with real-world money.
To buy the vanity items offered in late June, CCP introduced a third form of currency. Called “Aurum,” this currency is created in the game by breaking down PLEX. The resulting Aurum is used to buy everything from an avatar’s clothes to his… monocle.”
Ars has a detailed writeup of the economic structure behind the vanity items into Eve. CCP were caught between three factors: 1) not allowing transactions that would have them regulated as a bank/insurance company, 2) not screwing up the existing economy, 3) generating extra revenue.
“I’m convinced that for an existing company to innovate, they must first make the decision to get rid of something. Unless you get rid of it, it will always be more a more compelling argument to improve the old rather than commit to the new. That small decision over time adds up to a total deflection, and you are never as motivated to innovate as the unencumbered new entrant.”
- Richard Foster
I’d go even farther. Not only do you have to get rid of something, you have to actively kill it and everything that supports it. If the new product is coming from a new process you have to disenfranchise old, powerful teams. If it’s even a slightly different size you have to let the old version dwindle to nothing on the shelves of Walmart and Costco before they will (at great cost to you) plug the new version into their system. If the new widget is a real leap you have to kill the old perceptions so the new ones can take root, and suddenly your brand has a long climb back to being instantly recognizable. There are very tangible reasons that gradual change just might not be possible.
The real dilemma – and the quote captures it – is that the tradeoff isn’t between an unsuccessful status quo and an obvious improvement. The real decision is usually to kill a very comfortable status quo not because it’s bad, but because someone else eventually will. You’re diving into an uncertain decision to avert an inevitable, but completely unpredictable outcome.
You have to be willing to risk cratering an entire business to let the new one grow.
And this gets to the heart of it; companies don’t get rid of something, people do. Individuals have to wrestle with a series of ‘bet the company’ decisions that are concrete and gut wrenching.
There’s fear in spades.
So as designers we have to remember that it’s not just our job to compellingly sell our vision of the future. We also have to arm our clients and executives to kill the past.
“A 22 year old individual operating alone, a thousand miles from me, has to got to communicate to me with confidence, I have to have trust with them, and I have to build their faith – and that’s a new kind of leadership for me.”
Stanley McChrystal on leadership: “How does a leader stay credible and legitimate when they haven’t done what the people they’re leading are doing?” Using overwhelming technology, say, that could allow you to watch your own son mired in a firefight a thousand miles away – in real time.
What struck me is his message that what keeps the military enterprise from being torn apart in this high-tech communication upheaval – the glue that keeps it working – is trust.
From top-down comes a trillion dollar infrastructure of metal, plastic, silicon and paper, but from bottom-up comes a creed made out of words that can spread virally, causing all who live by it to self-organize to support that structure. That clear internal creed gives each individual the way to bolster that infrastructure when it is threatened, and repair it when it is damaged. Without that active maintenance, the structure is brittle, lifeless.
That’s the glue, the trust that everyone will work to maintain that greater structure together.
Take the Ranger Creed, that McChrystal quotes from:
Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession, I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of my Ranger Regiment.
Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air, I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move further, faster and fight harder than any other soldier.
Never shall I fail my comrades. I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong and morally straight and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be, one-hundred-percent and then some.
Gallantly will I show the world that I am a specially selected and well-trained soldier. My courtesy to superior officers, neatness of dress and care of equipment shall set the example for others to follow.
Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country.
Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission though I be the lone survivor.
—Ranger Handbook SH 21-76[1]
It’s visceral (“the intestinal fortitude”) and specific (“courtesy to superior officers, neatness of dress and care of equipment”). There are similar creeds throughout the military.
Clear words can cause people self-organize into something greater. Children’s games – tag, hide and seek, simon says – are just a set of rules that create a greater order out of a ragtag bunch of kids. In a way, that’s what Obama’s famous “Yes we can!” offered. The trick is to keep the message short enough to be remembered and passed on, specific enough to create clear goals, and visceral enough to spread sincere values. The technology that allows these words to spread is just plumbing.
Emergent behavior from simple rules.
In companies, these viral intangibles create culture – which shapes the products and services they emit.
But how often do companies express their desired culture in such clear words?
Smart visualization of your social graph from LinkedIn. The clever nudge is that it gives you a very visceral sense of the gaps in your social network, encouraging you to get those missing contacts in there. Pulls, rather than pushes, you in.
Great way for LinkedIn to get people more engaged.
Most sites have a pricing structure much like the one above. You get price brackets, then features which are supposed to justify each price.
Akismet’s sign up is different, funneling you through different usage scenarios and only then giving you a price. It’s a well executed UI, overall.
The really smart part is the personal pricing. Asking the question: “What’s it worth to you”, makes the user draw their own connections between the price and the features. Instead of putting the price up as a barrier to access, a cost, it frames it in relation to the benefit you will receive. Losses loom larger for us than gains, so this framing should soften the blow of payment.
It is also much better than just making the account free. If Radiohead teaches us anything, it’s that some people will pay for something they value, even if they don’t have to. It’s surprising that more freemium services don’t add an optional payment to their most basic plan.
There’s a famous quote by anthropologist Clifford Geertz:
There’s a concept of culture I espouse, [...] that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.
(from The Interpretation of Cultures)
Everything Jason Rohrer does inspires me. Here’s the latest, from a panel at GDC which had the challenge “to design a game that is also in some way a religion, or a religion that is in some way a game.”
He explains how he was inspired by his grandfather who, as mayor of the tiny town of Fairlawn, Ohio, saved it from bisection by the brand new Interstate 77. The I-77 still arcs around Fairlawn, leaving the memory of Rohrer’s grandfather so indistinguishable from his action (and a few others – the guy seems to have kicked ass) that time has practically canonized him. More than a man, he’s now a legend, or a god.
“My grandfather has become less a man and more the idea of a man as these details have faded,” Rohrer said.
Rohrer said the effect is that he’s essentially mythologized his grandfather at this point, asking what the difference was between such an idealized man and a god. The same thing is done with historical figures, he said, noting that people are willing to travel great distances to see relics of mythologized people in the same way they make religious pilgrimages. Rohrer noted the way people travel to Jackson Pollack’s studio barn to see the artist’s paint-spattered shoes, or the steady flow of tourists travelling to Stonehenge.
He then translates this idea into a game which mimics the way that the relics of a long dead historical figure are distorted into legend.
There’s only one copy of the game in the world, and it’s on a USB stick Rohrer held up to the crowd. The player runs Chain World and plays until he or she dies exactly once. At that point, the game saves the world and copies it back to the USB stick. Then the player takes the USB stick and gives it to someone who expresses interest.
There are a few rules, however. Each player is forbidden from talking about the game experience to others. The only knowledge anyone should have of the game world should come from that single first-hand playthrough. Furthermore, building signs with text on them is forbidden. One that is permitted is player suicide, and Rohrer said the world even has a lava pit next to the spawn point for easy access, should players choose to take that way out.
The end result is a game that carries additional weight with the player. Rohrer said he experienced that first hand when he took his own turn at the game.
“I had one of the most heart-breaking and poignant deaths that I’ve ever experienced in my life, and way too soon,” Rohrer said.
He was upset partly because he didn’t have time to really do anything to shape the world and leave for future players to find, but the one life limit was inflexible. He then passed the USB stick to an audience member to be the game’s second player ever.
Eventually, a player might leave something behind that is significant enough to resonate down the next generations. As designed, you could see how each player could have an extremely personal ‘religious’ experience trying to find meaning in whatever artifacts were created.
It would be interesting to actually encourage each player to talk to the next one (and only the next one) about their experience, to mimic the way that legends get passed down. It would be a pity if the Chain World developed something as extreme as the diversion of I-77 around Fairlawn, but did not have a way to pass on the legend of its creator. This would show a different side to religion: the way that stories build up over time to explain the phenomena out in the world.
So, according to Derek Sivers and nearly a century of research:
“…when you tell someone your goal, and they acknowledge it, psychologists have found that it’s called a social reality. The mind is kind of tricked into feeling that it’s already done. And then, because you’ve felt that satisfaction, you’re less motivated to do the actual hard work necessary.”
I’ve noticed this, though still find myself quickly spilling the beans, following Robert Cialdini’s advice that people are more likely to do things they’ve publicly committed to (consistency and commitment).
The key advice is at the end of the talk: if you phrase your goals honestly and optimistically (“I’m going to bench 500 pounds by christmas!”), you get that dangerous little dopamine boost, but not if you phrase them in such a way that they have a potential punishment built in (“Cancel my Netflix subscription if I don’t go to the gym three times a week”).
There is a cool tool that may help with this called Stickk, a website where you make a commitment and set-up a cash punishment: a donation to a hated organization like the George W. Bush Presidential Library or Chelsea Fan Club). Load up your credit card details, get a referee so you can’t cheat, and you’re done.
Previsualization uses just-good-enough 3D graphics and virtual sets to allow a filmmaker to see entire scenes (and ultimately entire movies) before filming has even begun.
“It’s not like working on that final shot, it’s about seeing how that shot fits as a piece of the puzzle of the shots around it, and the scenes around it.” David Dozoretz
It’s the logical extension of storyboarding, and the documentary shows that it can do more than action sequences, dinosaurs and explosions. A director can test different camera options to get the greatest impact out of intimate, emotional scenes. It saves time – an example given is how it allowed post-production for War of The Worlds to be completed in only three months – and money:
“We had a team of twelve on Episode 3, which is the most we had on any of the Star Wars Films. We spent $1.1 million for a two and a half year period, the whole prep, shooting and post-production of the film. We easily saved $10-15 million, and that’s just on the production side. On visual effects, it’s inestimable.” Rick McCallum
Prototyping is the heart of design. Arguably, a designer is someone who can make something real before it exists, so that it can be improved through iterative testing rather than wishful thinking.
With these techniques, entire films can be more carefully assembled, piece by piece and element by element, before actors are even brought in to perform. They can be more consciously designed.
Jane McGonigal from the Institute of the Future at TED. Millions of gamers have a fully fledged education in skills that could help save the real world… if it was more like a game.
10,000 hours
“The average young person today in a country with a strong gamer culture will have spent 10,000 hours playing online games, by the age of 21. For children in the United States 10,080 hours is the exact amount of time you will spend in school from fifth grade to high school graduation if you have perfect attendance.”
“So, we have an entire parallel track of education going on where young people are learning as much about what it takes to be a good gamer as they are learning about everything else in school. And some of you have probably read Malcom Gladwell’s new book Outliers. So, you would have heard of his theory of success, the 10,000 hour theory of success. It’s based on this great cognitive science research that if we can master 10,000 hours at effortful study, at anything by the age of 21, we will be virtuosos at it. We will be as good at whatever we do as the greatest people in the world. And so, now what we’re looking at is an entire generation of young people who are virtuoso gamers.”
What are they getting good at?
1) Urgent optimism
They believe that they are capable of changing the world – and ready to take action at a moment’s notice.
2) Weaving a tight social fabric
Gamers are masters at rapidly creating strong social bonds. Also, it’s interesting to note that we like people more after we’ve played with them.
3) Blissful productivity
Gaming exemplifies that we are happier working hard than relaxing if the work is structured right.
4) Epic meaning
Gamers love (and are used to) being attached to world changing stories.
Right now, we are using games to escape into virtual worlds, but it doesn’t have to be that way. These skills could apply to the real world if the real world was redesigned to work more like a game. Just one example: World Without Oil
“We made this game in 2007. This is an online game in which you try to survive an oil shortage. The oil shortage is fictional, but we put enough online content out there for you to believe that it’s real, and to live your real life as if we’ve run out of oil. So, when you come to the game you sign up, you tell us where you live. And then we give you real-time news videos data feeds that show you exactly how much oil costs, what’s not available, how food supply is being affected, how transportation is being affected, if schools are closed, if their is rioting. And you have to figure out how you would live your real life as if this were true. And then we ask you to blog about it, to post videos, to post photos. ”
“Nobody wants to change how they live just because it’s good for the world, or because we are supposed to. But if you immerse them in an epic adventure and tell them, “We’ve run out of oil.” This is an amazing story and adventure for you to go on. Challenge yourself to see how you would survive. Most of our players have kept up the habits that they learned in this game.”
She also talks about two others: Superstruct which asks gamers to come up with smart ideas to solve the world’s problems (she’s got 5,000 and counting) and Evoke, a crash course in social innovation.
Great stuff, and if you’re wondering what that might feel like on a more everyday level, watch this genius talk by Jesse Schell from Carnegie Mellon University.
Jane McGonigal from the Institute of the Future at TED. Millions of gamers have a fully fledged education in skills that could help save the real world… if it was more like a game. 10,000 hours “The average young person today in a country with a strong gamer culture will have spent 10,000 hours playing [...]
Tokyo’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) doesn’t pull its punches. While many museums seek to entertain, this one hits you with beautifully presented information that rewards your attention with real teaching. The first exhibit I’ll mention is particularly relevant for readers of this blog. It’s dedicated to five types of innovation: Alternative: [...]
In their heyday, the existence of Native American Indians revolved around the buffalo. They used every part: “The buffalo gave us everything we needed. Without it we were nothing. Our tipis were made of his skin. His hide was our bed, our blanket, our winter coat. It was our drum, throbbing through the night, alive, [...]
