Are You Solving the Right Problems? How good is your company at problem solving?
Probably quite good, if your managers are like those at the companies I’ve studied. What they struggle with, it turns out, is not solving problems but figuring out what the problems are. In surveys of 106 C-suite executives who represented 91 private and public-sector companies in 17 countries, I found that a full 85% strongly agreed or agreed that their organizations were bad at problem diagnosis, and 87% strongly agreed or agreed that this flaw carried significant costs.
Fewer than one in 10 said they were unaffected by the issue. The pattern is clear: Spurred by a penchant for action, managers tend to switch quickly into solution mode without checking whether they really understand the problem. It has been 40 years since Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jacob Getzels empirically demonstrated the central role of problem framing in creativity.
Part of the reason is that we tend to overengineer the diagnostic process. The Slow Elevator Problem 1. Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog: The Best Leadership Books of 2017. Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Ageby Edward D.
Hess and Katherine Ludwig Smart technologies will become ubiquitous, invading and changing many aspects of our professional and personal lives and in many ways challenging our fundamental beliefs about success, opportunity, and the American Dream. New skills will be needed. Uniquely human skills. Those skills, while uniquely human, are not what we are typically trained to do and require a deal of messy personal development. Ego Free Leadership: Ending the Unconscious Habits that Hijack Your Businessby Brandon Black and Shayne Hughes “Anytime we know intellectually what to do, but our actual behavior is inconsistent or in contradiction, it is a sign we are being short-circuited by our egosystem.
Design Principles. William Grosso's Blog - 8 Questions About Dynamic Pricing. The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. This article builds on previous articles I've written and talks I’ve given. In particular, it is a follow-up to my recent article on Dynamic Pricing, Personalized Offers, and Modern Gaming. That article was an extended discussion of the recent uproar around randomized price-points in Zynga’s CSR 2 and a survey of how prevalent sophisticated data-driven merchandising techniques already are in mobile gaming. Readers of that article objected to dynamic pricing as a practice, using words like “shady” or “shameless” and claiming that dynamic pricing, if adopted widely, would destroy the gaming industry. Dynamic pricing is the practice of altering prices for goods or services in real-time without altering the goods or services (e.g.
Auctions. World Series of Poker: How Playtika's Montreal team has kept the mobile game on top - view all. Social casino games have become a $4.2 billion business, and Israel-based Playtika has about a quarter of the market.
The company, which was acquired last year by a Chinese consortium for $4.4 billion, generated an estimated $306 million in the most recent quarter, up 26 percent from a year ago, according to market researcher Eilers & Krejcik. And a big part of that revenue comes from the World Series of Poker, a web and mobile game that is based on the popular TV show series. The game has a big brand name, but Playtika has been growing the property on an annual basis, thanks to a combination of aggressive user acquisition, live operations such as new kinds of tournaments, and big efforts to retain players. Harry Potter and the publisher's casual vacancy.
Indies overcompensating on marketing. Oops I Did It Again: Finding Flow in Hard Games. Pictured: Thumper Dark Souls is more likely associated with anguish than euphoria as a series, but it -- and other notoriously difficult games -- are where we can find some of gaming’s most pleasurable moments.
If you work through your urges to throw your controller at a wall, you might be lucky enough to experience the joy that keeps us all coming back for more “YOU DIED” screens. We’re going to delve into what leads to these experiences, why they feel so good, and how they can be designed. To find yourself in a state of flow, first there are some parameters: You know your goalYou know how to accomplish your goalYou are receiving feedbackYour skill and the difficulty of the task are matchedYou are free from distractions You might be stuck on that #4 right now. First Search. Oops I Did It Again: Finding Flow in Hard Games. The making of Homescapes. Playrix has quietly become one of the most successful developers in Europe.
It's developed hit titles such as city building game Township and hit match-3 release Gardenscapes - originally a hidden object game for PC but transformed for mobile devices. Such was Gardenscapes' success on mobile, it's launched a follow-up in the shape of Homescapes. The title is much the same, based on match-three gameplay combined with house decorating and a story to keep players engaged.
EA are creating more open world games to encourage monetisation says former Bioware developer. Speaking to Waypoint Radio, Manveer Heir said he's seen people "literally spend $15,000 on Mass Effect multiplayer cards Former Bioware developer, Manveer Heir, has spoken to the Waypoint Radio podcast about the development culture at EA studios.
The design of EA's games and the ethos behind them has come under scrutiny following the recent closure of Visceral Games and the redistribution of its single player Star Wars title, which many considered to be a repositioning away from the single-player story experience in favour of a more monetsiable model like the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront 2. Manveer Heir was a developer at Bioware Montreal before its closure earlier this year. Gamasutra:Arelius's Blog -Designing Computer-Games Preem. In this paper I mapped the top ten emotions computer-game players experience, as categorized by Chris Bateman, to player types.
I compared three models of player types (Bartle, Lazzaro and Yee) to produce as an encompasing model of player types as possible. Furthermore I have made use of Bateman's speculations upon which biomechanisms each emotion stems from and assigned them to player types. The result is what I call the Augmented Yee Model which could help computer-game designer to have a clear picture of what gamers desire from their preferred activity and perhaps to identify if a design is missing aspects that are applicable. Game boss interview: Rob Pardo says playtesting is critical to game design. Rob Pardo developed his relentless focus on excellent game design when he was at Blizzard Entertainment, making games, such as StarCraft, Warcraft III, and World of Warcraft.
He learned to experiment and playtest and to do that over and over again until the game felt right. He also learned to let go of games that didn’t meet the highest quality standards and move on to the next project. He took those sentiments with him when he left Blizzard in 2014, after 17 years at the big game publisher. He was an adviser at Unity for a while and then moved on last year to start Bonfire Studios, which raised $25 million from Andreessen Horowitz and Riot Games. Pardo is now working on a secret project, but he still believes that excellence is something that you try to do every day. Pardo is going to give a talk at The View conference, an event that takes place in Turin, Italy, on October 23 to October 27. Democratizing UX – Tomer Sharon – Medium. I’m excited to share Polaris, a new tool WeWork UX has launched to help WeWork become a better listening organization.
Update: watch my 28-minute Leading Experience 2017 conference talk titled, WeWork’s Polaris: A System for Deciding What to Work on. The problems we wanted to solve We identified the following problems: Bad research memory. 3 Top Features to Implement In Your Next Live Event. When it comes to success (and survival) of free-to-play mobile games, keeping your audience entertained and engaged continuously is the key. As there are hundreds of thousands of titles out there, it isn’t a huge effort for a bored gamer to abandon your creation and start anew with your competitor’s game.
So how to best keep those fickle users from fleeing? One efficient (and increasingly trending) answer lies in live events and various live event related features. We have covered live events from various angles in our earlier posts (which can be found here, here and here), but as this topic has become increasingly popular during the past couple of months, it won’t hurt to visit it once more. This time we’ll be focusing on three effective features built around live events that’ll help boost their impact even further. 1.
The Lessons and Questions of the iPhone X and the iPhone 8 – Stratechery by Ben Thompson. It’s tempting — and easy — to be cynical about the richest company in the world beginning its annual unveiling of new products with what effectively amounted to a promotional video for a building custom-built at enormous expense for said unveiling, set to the soundtrack of John Lennon singing “All You Need is Love”. There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game It’s easy Nothing you can make that can’t be made No one you can save that can’t be saved Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time It’s easy In fact, the song was perfect; the temptation to be cynical is right there in the first verse, with the observation that by virtue of doing or singing or making you are operating in the bounds of what is merely possible, no more.
And yet, the second verse holds forth salvation: find yourself, and find fulfillment. Deconstructing Merge Town: The Rise of Hyper Casual – Mobile Free to Play. Rewarded Video Ads have been a constant, dominating trend in free to play over the last few years. Starting with companies like Ketchapp and Futureplay, it became abundantly clear that games can drive meaningful revenue from video advertisements, and advertisers can find a captive audience in mobile players.
In the last couple years, Video Ads have reached a tipping point. No longer seen as superficial revenue on top of IAP revenue, designing for video ad revenue has become the dominant revenue growth area for free to play companies. Designing for video ads has allowed for innovation in the maturing mobile space that is much needed. Source: SOOMLA Blog (an excellent source of info on Video Advertising!) Live ops and long soft-launches: Wooga's CEO Jens Begemann on its renewed focus. It's not unfair to say that Wooga had something of a difficult 2016. Following the underperformance of titles such as Futurama: Game of Drones it cut 40 of its jobs in August 2016 and re-structured into three distinct studios focusing on specific genres of casual games. This also led to the closure of its mid-core studio, Black Anvil Games, while its office in Japan was also shut down during the restructuring.
Turning around. E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture - Putnam - 2007 - Scandinavian Political Studies. Task 3 Innovation. Proof That Diversity Drives Innovation. Donald Fan is senior director in the Office of Diversity at Walmart. In a State of the Union address, President Barack Obama mentioned the word “innovation” nine times, more than any other president ever has, according to Fareed Zakaria. This highlights a key point that in this new era, rife with volatility and ambiguity, innovation is critical in sustaining organic growth and securing success in a globally competitive environment. We know that there exists a strong connection between innovation and diversity and inclusion; our challenge is to help our leaders and fellow professionals understand that connection. By exploring scientific research, corporate practice and personal observation, this article aims to connect those dots.
How Diversity Can Drive Innovation. Most managers accept that employers benefit from a diverse workforce, but the notion can be hard to prove or quantify, especially when it comes to measuring how diversity affects a firm’s ability to innovate. Disrupting conventional wisdom about mobile esports. The divide between console/PC eSports and mobile eSports has never been more stark. The making of Guns of Boom. How Rocket League is looking to shape the future of esports. The shaping of Titanfall: Assault. Everything that defines Titanfall makes it difficult to bring to mobile. The first-person shooter series boasts massive action, fluid movement and complex multiplayer battles. Hence, the announcement in October 2015 that publisher Nexon and developer Respawn had invested in the creation of Particle City, a new mobile-focused studio to make the franchise portable, was something of a surprise.
The Secrets of Machine Zone's Success - Part 1: The History — Deconstructor of Fun. 'Forge Of Empires' Company Lays Out Strategy For Sustained Growth. InnoGames was founded by two brothers with their friend to create a game they wanted to play with their friends. Its first game, Tribal Wars, which released for browsers in 2003, grew so quickly that it prompted the trio to officially found InnoGames in 2007. The German company now has two studios, one in Hamburg and the other in Düsseldorf, with the latter dedicated to developing mobile games. Kinderdajk: Zemlja oteta od mora - B92.net. Vetrenjače u Kinderdajku u Holandiji sagrađene su sredinom 18. veka, a uz pomoć njih je ispumpavana voda iz zemljišta, koje se nalazi na nižoj tački od nivoa mora. Deconstructing C.A.T.S. Keeping Loyal Fans in PvP Games – Mobile Free to Play. Creating a novel mobile experience is a hard task.
Seniority – Hacker Noon. ZeptoLab: "There's no way around it. Devs need to understand the numbers" EA Boss Andrew Wilson's Vision of Gaming's Future Will Blow Your Mind - Glixel. Games are set to change more in the next five years than they have in the last 45, he says. Kabam's leaders offer mobile gaming lessons and a bittersweet goodbye. Mary Meeker’s 2017 internet trends report: All the slides, plus analysis - Recode. KP INTERNET TRENDS 2017. Authority Nutrition - Daily Articles About Nutrition and Health. Two years on: ZeptoLab on the evolution of King of Thieves. EX-99.1. Introducing the 100 most influential people working in the British games industry. Golf Clash: A case study in free-to-play monetization - Mobile Dev Memo. Rethinking Carrots: A New Method For Measuring What Players Find Most Rewarding and Motivating About Your Game. From Rational to Emotional: Designs that Increase Player Retention.
Engines of Play: How Player Motivation Changes Over Time. Pixonic on maintaining its quality-first ethos after Mail.ru acquisition. Game Refinery Fact Snippet vol. 1 - What drives success in mobile games? I Draw Dragons To Destroy The Stereotypes About Them. Mesmerizing Paintings Of Alternative History With Mecha Robots in 20th Century East Europe – Slavorum. 10 Awesome Places That Slavs Hide From You – Slavorum. Gameloft on designing an open-world F2P mobile game in Gangstar New Orleans. Two years on: Seriously on the evolution of Best Fiends. Hearthstone is killing itself - Superdata. Clash of the concepts: Startup Ventures VS Large Corporations.
Clash Royale's card balancing guru leans less on metrics, more on design intuition. Two years on: EA on the evolution of SimCity BuildIt. Riot Games: Taking Play Seriously. App Store and Google Play AB Testing: Icons, Screenshots and Videos ASO. Mobile A/B Testing for App Store and Google Play. Data-Driven Design Day 2016 presentations. Simon Sinek on Millennials in the Workplace.
Culture Codes. Building a Successful Team through Determined Optimism: Winners vs. Whiners. 7 essential design principles for product managers - Roadmunk Blog. FTL Postmortem: Designing Without a Pitch. MVPM: Minimum Viable Product Manager – The Black Box of Product Management – Medium. UX and UI : The Invisible Art. The UX of Pokémon GO : A Case Study – Pedro Almeida – Medium. How To Build A Product Roadmap Everyone Understands - ProdPad. How Do You Measure Leadership? Game design patterns for building friendships. Bob Tilford's Blog - Spoiled for choice: The psychology of choice overload in games, and how to avoid it. Some think live ops is a sweatshop churning out content. It doesn't have to be that way. Www.wsj.
An Open-source Mobile Gaming Taxonomy. Dear Angelica: New Ocuclus Animated Movie Was Drawn in VR. Elon Musk: The World's Raddest Man. Jobs in Games: How to get a job as a Chief Product Officer. Using science to make truly tappable user interfaces - Scott Hurff's Blog. How Seriously won YouTube Ad of the Year with Best Fiends campaign.
Outplay on why free-to-play tower defence games can still be successful. Both Guns Blazing. The World's Leading Research & Insights Platform. Six games in six weeks: Why Nitro Games has dedicated itself to 'super fast failing' Five years on: EA on the evolution of The Sims FreePlay. Games data and market research » Market Brief — Year in Review 2016. How Marketers Get You to Buy New Stuff - The Atlantic. Fifa: the video game that changed football. Mark Sorrel on behavioural economics and ugly brother pricing. Om Tandon's Blog - Casualising Mid-core? King ready to march on Supercell's turf. Has Supercell already upped its game?
Om Tandon's Blog - UX Review: 'Piggy Bank (Endowment) Effect! unique monetisation hooks of Slotomania. Om Tandon's Blog - UX Deep Dive: Painful reality of building FPS experiences on mobile? - Part 2. Om Tandon's Blog - UX Review: Marvel Contest Of Champions. Om Tandon's Blog - 5 Incredibly powerful F2P monetisation patterns! using 'Behavioural Economics' in UX design. Untitled. Gunslinger Studios raises $1.4 million for one-minute multiplayer games. Charlax — Negative feedback antipatterns. 12 Signs You’re Working in a Feature Factory – Hacker Noon. Forbes Welcome. Hammock Driven Development - Rich Hickey.