This is the final part of the series about no-brainer games and the inner moron. In the first part I talked about what moronism is, and in the second part I talked about Four-Elephant ideas, hidden factors and our old friend Techthulhu. This part is about the delusions of spreadsheets, overly strategic thinking, and just plain old boredom.
And an argument for taking risks.
8. Is It Based On A Spreadsheet of Wooden Dreams?
The Spreadsheet of Golden Dreams is a sales tool that is intended to paint the following picture:
- There is a viable business model for an idea
- That the creator has tried to account for the hidden factors
- There are fall back options if it's not a giant hit
- There are scaling options if it is
The Spreadsheet of Golden Dreams is an exercise in storytelling. Most competent investors know this. They understand that the spreadsheet is just a part of trying to make a case, and that the reality has many hidden factors that the spreadsheet cannot capture.
However the moron tends to prefer the Spreadsheet of Wooden Dreams. This spreadsheet is the one that treats past performance as gospel. It looks at an older success and how it was formed, and then treats that success as a template to which all other games must adhere.
This means that if the moron can’t make an idea work with their previously validated model then it simply can’t work. Remember: moronism means dull, not stupid. The problem with believing in the Spreadsheet of Wooden Dreams rather than the Golden version is that it kills all imagination. So, backed by the wooden spreadsheet, the moron can only think small. This means no-brainers.
The problem with this line of thinking is simply that past performance is usually only an indicator of worsening future performance. In many game franchises, even the very successful ones, there is an appreciable decline in performance over the years if they keep cranking out exactly the same thing.
What rejuvenates franchises is bold thinking and new directions. But the wooden spreadsheet moron wants more of the same. Why change things up when the spreadsheet shows that we did just fine last time? Why innovate when we can just copy a competitor’s game?
What the wooden spreadsheet moron has actually done is convinced themselves that the games don't matter. Instead they think they have a proven process, or a secret sauce, and the individual games are at best a plus or minus 20% factor. What really matters is the model, the acquisition, revenue and retention spreadsheet that proves that people will funnel around the game regardless.
The resulting profits just seem to fall out of the model no matter what the game is. In the worst examples the Spreadsheet of Wooden Dreams then becomes a set of targets to achieve, and success or failure are measured in comparison to it rather than anything current.
9. Is It Part of A Big Play?
The other spreadsheet-based source of no-brainers is the Big Play fantasy.
In this scenario, the moron is so obsessed with the big picture, venture capital and exits that they view their games as pawns on a chess board. To a degree, this is what any publishing strategy does. However the moron is so focused on the grand prize that they don't see that the ideas they are trying to push are terrible no-brainers.
The difference between smart publishing and the Big Play fantasy is connection to the product. As a smart publisher, you need to be evaluating, playing and imagining what the games you are fronting will be. You need to be involved, even if only in passing. The Big Play fantasist instead sees product slots and business models, and is usually nowhere near production. She assumes product quality is all equivalent.
But what she is getting wrapped up in is a picture of the future with no feasible way of getting there. She’s often putting way too much faith in brand engagement, the guessed-at market conditions or other factors, and so the Big Play usually does not have sound underpinnings. The major exception to this is if there is an exclusive distribution deal surrounding the Big Play, but those are not too common in a post-platform future.
Big Play fantasies often come with talk of engine strategies, owning genre spaces, re-usable technology, distribution deals and other buzzwords. None of these are bad, but the key to successfully deploying them is the games. They need that imaginative leap of idea and execution that will make them desirable. No-brainers just won’t cut it.
10. Is It Just Boring?
Lastly, you should be asking whether an idea is simply boring. No-brainers frequently have a good-on-paper quality, or even good-on-slides, but when it comes to doing some of the hard work of mapping out the detail, do you find yourself checking email, surfing the web or reading this blog instead?
If you do then tread carefully (and subscribe to What Games Are) because you are bored. And if you find an idea a bit boring, then chances are so will everyone else. The funny thing about games is that players have many different preferences for the kinds of game that truly get them excited, but boring stuff tends to be universally boring.
It's not a requirement that you personally find every idea that you have really exciting, but it does help. If you can't have that, then is there someone on your team who does have the passion for it? No? Someone that you know maybe? Still no? Is everybody telling you that it's not really their sort of thing, but they can see that it might make sense from a business perspective?
Danger!
If you really can't find anyone in your circle who responds with genuine enthusiasm rather than bland encouragement, then there is a strong chance that your idea is a boring no-brainer.
Boring game ideas are boring, whether they're no-brainers or not. They're hard to sell, hard to market, and even hard to develop because the people making them just don’t care. A lack of genuine excitement quickly leads to shoddy art, hacky code and poor level design because everyone on the team is just ringing their performance in.
Take the Risk!
Games is an industry driven by ideas, and yet the people who are in charge are often removed from the work. They try to be objective and sensible, but end up regarding their whole business, market and development strategy as a series of levers. Those levers just need to be aligned in the right way to yield amazing results. Such folks convince themselves that all ideas are equivalent, that ideas matter less than execution, and so the goal is to find the simplest fit that let's execution happen.
In the rest of the world they call this putting the cart before the horse. Players only rarely behave like automata when presented with enough choice, and the business leader does a disservice to their customers and themselves if they go down this road. Buying into no-brainers is a long term strategy for failure unless you have a distribution lock-in (and very few companies really have those any more) because it can only lead to diminishing returns. There are too many competitors in the market today for you to sit back and play it safe.
What drives no-brainers is the inner moron trying to ward off the fear of risk. Embrace it instead.
Focus on the game and its potential, rather than the strategic opportunity. Strategic opportunities are often only half-real, meaning that while a new way to deliver games may have opened up (Facebook is a good recent example), it still requires the right mix of idea, approach and execution to really make it work. No-brainers are not the secret to achieving that.
Embrace half-formed ideas, don’t flee to the predictable and safe. Predictable and safe is increasingly behind the wave, not ahead of it. Passion, risks and genuine excitement matter more than ever.
Even apparent no-brainers that have succeeded (like Zynga Poker) were not no-brainers at the time that they launched. They were interesting and risky bets that paid off. They only appear to be no-brainers in hindsight, so learn the real lesson: Be bold.
So beware the no-brainer. If you don't have to think about it, be creative and explore the idea properly, chances are it's a moron's path you're walking. And you will inevitably fail.
(Follow the What Games Are Twitter account to be notified of new posts and participate in the What Games Are Journal!)
Comments