FT: “The huge size of today’s gaming audience, which already dwarfs other forms of mass-market entertainment, is playing to the strengths of companies that can build and manage giant online businesses to spread their costs, according to Bing Gordon, a longtime video game executive and venture capitalist. “The new critical mass is bigger than ever,” he says. Comparing pressures building up in the games industry to the streaming video wars that are reshaping the TV and movie business, he adds: “Someone’s going to create a games service with hundreds of millions of subscribers.”…“Fifteen years ago, you had about 200m gamers in the world and today you’ve got about 2.7bn,” says Neil Campling, tech analyst at Mirabaud Securities. “It’s become the biggest form of media.”” WaPo: “Games aren’t just where kids go to unwind anymore. They’re where kids go to hang out.”
strategy+business recommends “Beyond Collaboration Overload” by Rob Cross to tame collaboration dysfunction: ““A decade of research shows that we create roughly 50% of the collaboration overload problems in the form of the beliefs we hold,” explains Cross. “By ‘beliefs,’ I mean deeply held, and often unexamined, desires, needs, feelings, expectations, and fears centered around how we assume we need to show up for others.” These beliefs are manifested as two kinds of triggers: identity and reputational goads, such as the desire to help others; and anxiety and need-for-control goads, such as fear of missing out. The book includes tips for combating each trigger. If you are driven by the need to help, for instance, become aware of why people are coming to you. If it’s because they hope you’ll do their work for them, learn to say no—and teach them how to help themselves instead.”
Tavleen Singh: “It should shame Indian politicians and policymakers that a government job remains the ultimate Indian dream in the year that we celebrate 75 years of independence.”
