Very interesting presentation. The bottom line – as soon as the work a person is performing surpasses rudimentary mechanical tasks, giving bigger rewards actually starts having a negative effect on work performance.

Love is the most important metric

says @sebdeh of Playfish. And according to Zynga general manager Roy Sehgal, the number of players returning regularly (and not play time) is the metric that most closely correlates to a social game’s suitability for monetization.

Having monetizability in mind during the initial stages of game design helps, but the fact is that unless you have love, you have no business asking your players for money.

Ads may cover some costs, but only rarely to any significant extent.

But even when there is love, measuring just about everything and continuously redesigning and innovating the gameplay and monetization tactics from day one is what brought companies such as Zynga, Playdom, Playfish and others their immense success.

And this is only the beginning – social games are forecast to be a 1.5 billion dollar industry in 3 years, and even today, the number of unique monthly players on Facebook alone surpasses 55 million.

At my company Motiviti, we are keeping all of this in mind and we realize that in order to thrive in the casual/social games market, we need to put all of our efforts in creative innovation and sound execution. And as we prepare to launch our first games for the iPhone and the browser, we are humbly trying to learn from the best and the brightest in this young industry at Casual Connect in Seattle.

Follow me and the hash tag #casualconnect on Twitter if you want to discuss Unity 3D, Flash and social network game development.

In his latest book (Outliers), Malcolm Gladwell argues that if you want to really master something (e.g. playing guitar, programming, playing golf), there is a high probability that the number of hours you will need to invest into it will revolve around 10,000.

10,000 hours if you want to be an expert at something. This means 14 years if you are doing it 2 hours per day.

Looking back at Seth Godin’s insightful post entitled What would a professional do?, this makes me wonder:

How much can you really achieve by doing all the little tasks you’re (at most) average at yourself instead of leaving them to those who have devoted their 10k to them?

Once again the question of focus and extreme specialization. Sharing work and profits vs. keeping it all to yourself because you can just do it so much better and faster.

Based on the experiences of others and my own, I would say that the question you need to ask yourself is this:

Is the combination of your personal talents, traits and circumstances, confronted with all the tasks in front of you, so wonderfully special that you can do twice a better and cheaper job doing it all by yourself?

This is seldom the case, but surely not unheard of. And of course, your environment and circumstances might be preventing you from doing otherwise.

But consider this: if you can do it only twice as good as with a team of other 10k-ers, you will probably make a profit; however, the next time around you will not have made the important connections and experiences to even have this choice and you will most likely be doing it by yourself again.

And as you get older, and the cycle continues, you probably start losing your edge, along with your wonderfully special advantage – and you lose.

Bottom line:

Do the stuff that matters to you the most right now and stop thinking about what you feel might come in handy later.

Otherwise you end up just being an amateur at a lot of things. And – as Seth Godin put it -

Be an amateur on purpose, not because you have to.

There will always be enough time for your whims later on if you do it right. Right?

Focus FTW!

P.S.: I think we might be building up a little fascination with the number 10,000 here (see my earlier post, 10,000 Reasons To Focus).

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A powerful video drawing parallels between the development of a human fetus from conception to birth and the entire course of our evolution, right up to a version of the proverbial nuclear demise.

Especially during times when things are not so dandy for a lot of people and resources are short, these images should inspire a drive towards constructive introspection.

Let’s make this machinery work FTW!

I wanted to share Steward Brand’s talk on The Long Now Foundation’s ambitious project to build a clock that will be able to hold accurate time every single day for the next 10,000 years.

Far from being a mere engineering gimmick, the project entails the design of a unique and memorable experience during the ascent to the mountain cradling the 10,000 year clock.

Needless to say, long-term thinking like this is extremely valuable and inspiring, especially in these times of alleged crisis.

Recession or no recession – this is a great time to be creative and to focus on what’s really important in the long run.

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• Neal Stephenson and the 10,000-Year Clock
• Stephenson’s Anathem was inspired by Clock of the Long Now
• Neal Stephenson – King of the Worlds

Sling Jumper – an ingeniously simple and effective Flash game concept.

Crappy graphics, no sound and zero story line – but certainly great gameplay.

Use LEFT and RIGHT to move the ball bouncing off the elastics.

I love what Johnny Lee is doing – having fun with all kinds of seemingly simple designs and sharing them with the world. Here is his TED presentation, definitely worth watching:

Johhny showed everyone that $40 and a creative mind can sometimes have far bigger an impact that what most large corporations can muster with their immense budgets.

Another fun project of his even involves elasticity – literally. He built a giant slingshot that allowed people to bombard a soon-to-be-demolished building with paint balloons. Simple and fun!

This reminded me of the 3 days I spent in my basement working on a rotating-table 3D scanner I would use to capture convex 3D shapes, just for fun.

I remember the thrill I felt when the thing actually started rotating the way I wanted it to rotate -

but like with a lot of other endeavors, other projects came and took the limelight, and what was meant to be fun actually soon became a burden.

And as time went on and more and more projects seemed to be the most important thing since landing on the moon, I suddenly realized -

Did any of these make me feel nearly as full as my own little thing? Not even close.

Of course, everybody needs to make a living, and childhood dreams and pet projects rarely pay for rent.

But in the end, these are what keeps you going and make you wake up in the morning motivated and with a smile on your face.

It’s time to lose or at least loosen the shackles of everyday life and start digging through the basement designs .

A beautiful talk by novelist Amy Tan, searching for the heart of the creative process in childhood tragedies and present-day uncertainties.

Some thoughts:

Nowadays, as Seth Godin describes in this post, “infinite” is everywhere.

An infinite amount of choice pushes most of us into a shallower, best-seller driven reality.

But the infinite also gives rise to increasing levels of uncertainty. Uncertainty that can well sprout a new type of creativity that helps us deal with the vast onslaught of choice.

A comedian once said that the brain is not what helps us gather information. That in the beginning, human beings know everything, and the brain is the filter that lets through only the relevant parts.

Well – maybe not quite – but I would say it is likely that the next couple of Googles are going to be of the filtering kind.

We’re facing an infinite opportunity of selling – focus.

The philosopher appeared in front of the Hotel Imperial and attracted a crowd by his actions. He removed his coat, folded it, laid it on the sidewalk, placed his hat upon it; then he drew a small rubber band from his pocket. He broke the circle with his fingers, and, stretching the elastic to its limit, held it above his head.

“Gentlemen,” said the philosopher, “and pardon me – ladies – I did not see you. In this little piece of elastic there is the philosophy of life and living. When it is stretched to its full length it represents the strained life; when relaxed it is the simple life.

“Appearances, ladies and gentlemen,” said the philosopher, stretching the elastic until it threatened to snap. He allowed the rubber to relax with a snap and chuckled.

“But there’s the goods. It doesn’t look so big, but it amounts to as much as is more solid.”

“And you, ladies?” Once more the elastic extended. “Dress! But there’s simplicity. And who shall say that the original Eve was less of a woman than any of you?”

That decided Policeman Xenodocius, the Classic Cop of the Tenderloin. He arrested the Philosopher of the Elastic Life.

“Pardon me,” said the sophist. “I have but one more lesson to-”

“Come on!” said Xenodocius urgently.”

“Well,” said Sergt Charles Place, placidly, a moment later, “I don’t see that he did anything dangerous.”

“Aha!” cried the philosopher. “Here is a man of good elastic. I congratulate you, Sir.”

As the philosopher turned to go, he saw the reporters. Out came the inevitable elastic.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “you see it is stretched. Now it is not stretched. This applies also to journalism. There is no need for you to make it the length of this. See!” And he slowly allowed the rubber band to contract. “Observe that it loses nothing but gains rather by compactness.”

A wave of his hand and he was gone.

- The New York Times; May 6, 1905

You must read this brilliant post by Clay Shirky:
http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html.

*update on May 15, 2008 – video, hat-tip to Dean*

The bottom line:
in the early phases of the industrial revolution, with the rise of accelerated urbanization, people (esp. in London) didn’t know what to do with the newly acquired “civic surplus” – and they turned to gin until they figured it out and started building public libraries, better education, etc.

In the 20th century, people started having more free time, but had no idea what to do with it – and this is why sitcoms became so extremely popular.

Now, well into the 21st century, perversities such as Big Brother are taking this cognitive surplus safety-net to the extreme.

Yes – to the average web citizen, this abomination of passive media is well below standard in terms of its ability to capture attention.

But to the average non-web-savvy consumer, it’s just about all there is.

Big Brother – the ultimate gin of 2008. The year that Larry Niven thought we’d had interstellar drives (link).

Yep – people sit back and enjoy looking at people with no life building one – while neglecting their own.

But as Clay Shirky says in his (I have to say it again – brilliant) post – we are all looking for the mouse.

Once everyone has a comfortable way of interacting with the media – they will!

If my grandma had a way of influencing the content she’s bombarded with on TV, she would. She would grab that mouse and tell that incompetent excuse for a politician to fuck off and do something useful for a change. Or she would connect with other folks her age or find someone who’s lived through the same borderline bearable times during WW2.

But she can’t do that. I wonder if she ever will.

Yes, the TV she has got now may be HD with a digital signal showing her hunderds of channels from all over the world. But it’s still the same thing as 50 years ago. Channels.

Gin is still gin, it doesn’t matter if it comes through normal post or DHL.

So – one shiny day in 2013 (or sooner, I hope), the huge beast that is mainstream media will be ready to take on clicks.

But will it matter then? Media will be pouring (as it is already) from phones, watches, walls, posters, T-shirts and the like, reacting to your every move.

Videos of missing children with submit forms for clues on milk cartons? Sure! OLED, multitouch, cameras … everything is shrinking, blending, melting into one nearly perfectly connected mesh of peace-seeking individuals (the Borg, anyone?).

It’s all about elegance. And sitting in front of the telly looking at stupid people doing meaningless stuff … passively … is far from elegant.

Step up. Do something. Even if you’re exhausted coming home from work/school/whatever, you’ll end up being the same stupid a-hole you’ve been watching and making fun of every evening if you don’t actually do something.

As Tolstoy (I think, ask Gregor) said – not living out what you were meant to be hurts you.
And I can hardly imagine someone’s purpose in life being watching other people jerk off on TV.

One life. Live it!

Clifford Stoll is an astronomer who helped capture a notorious KGB hacker and who spends his afternoons making zero-volume (Klein) bottles.

In this really fun and entertainingly unfocused talk, he wanders from techno-skepticism, futurism to education and even manages to empirically determine the speed of sound in the process.

His most notable point? If you want to know what the future is going to be like, don’t ask a technologist. Don’t ask a programmer. Yes, they can speculate. But no. Ask a kindergarden teacher – an experienced one. THEY KNOW WHAT THE WORLD IS GOING TO BE LIKE IN 30 YEARS.

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What We Learned From Peter Pan and Willy Wonka

At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, the (in-)famous blogger Robert Scoble was walking around with a Nokia camera phone doing impromptu interviews with people like Marc Benioff, Tim O’Reilly and Rick Warren (who runs the largest church in the US, btw) and streaming the videos live to Qik.

While I do find the way he ambushes people with a “you’re live on the internet” scare quite amusing (look at the video below with Michael Dell), I would rather have him do a quality interview with some of these people using a decent camera – I don’t mind waiting a couple of minutes for him to sync the video to see it online.

I agree that live video streaming for everyone is a very useful enabling technology, but just not very much so in this particular field. A clear case of using technology for technology’s sake.

A wonderful talk by Isabel Allende about writing, women, passion and feminism.