Friday Thought: Money and People

Money is hideous.
Money has a natural, an inevitable tendency to brutalize every noble faculty of man.
Yet, we are dependent on it to live, to be able to enjoy a good life.

What Business Can Learn From Summer Camp

Be Safe
Be Respectful
Be Yourself
Try New Things
Have A Positive Attitude
Be Clean
Be Energetic
Be Enthusiastic
Be Encouraging
Be Creative
Have Fun!!!

Go, Do!

Every day millions of people go to predictable jobs, to do predictable tasks for predictable pay.
They have had the truth beaten out of them.
The truth that they have the power to take control of their lives.

They are disabled.
Shut down.
Hollow, hopeless casualties.

Rehabilitation for such an ailment is surprisingly simple.
However, the fear, the volatile reactionary rejection makes this almost impossible.

These are the people who call me crazy for my life choice.

What makes Prince Prince?
How did Steve Jobs get that grit and determination to dare to defy convention?
Why didn’t Martin Luther King Jr ever give up?
Society says that if you express your true essence, you are the exception which proves the rule.
The truth is that if we stop listening to the incessant buzz of life & listen to ourselves, we can build the future we want to see.
We are all capable of creating great ideas daily.
We just have to commit ourselves to believing in our art.
We can change the world.
Go, do!

The Power (of the People)

I find it worrying how bands like The Beatles, Bob Marley and the Wailers & Rancid are seen as counter culture.
The messages in the art these guys produce is of love, of brotherhood & of having a good time.
If such feelings and messages are “counter”, then what does that say about society?

Is it more acceptable to become a passionless, faceless, puppet?
To play by the book and not think twice about making things better?

Dog eat dog, survival of the fittest doesn’t work.
If you want evolution, you want creativity & as we all know the right (creative) hemisphere of the brain works best when relaxed.

So, why do we let society crush and quell our natural instincts?
The most powerful feeling is to be told by someone who you look up to that you’re doing a great job.
That sense of connection makes us feel that warm fuzzy feeling inside, which we can’t get enough of and in most employment cases, don’t see any of.

For some it seems easier to not only broadcast negative feelings, but to project them in a way that puts the blame of his/ her dissatisfaction on the artist.
Art’s not for everyone, I’ll be the first one to say that my poetry’s pretty macabre, that’s why we should encourage as much variety so, we can all get more of what we love.

The power of supporting people & nurturing their development is unashamedly missing in our schools and this filters throughout the many institutions within the tired and fraught modern industries.
And now, more than ever we need to support great ideas, as who knows, maybe that person you pat on the back could go on to direct your favourite film.

Industrialization was fun, mass consumer culture was wild, who wouldn’t like to work on a deskilled production line?

Now, let’s get back to being humans & throw rationalization in the bin where it belongs.

Share a smile.
Encourage your fellow artists.
Love each other & you’ll be amazed how far that feeling will travel.

Become You

I am a world changer
I am the height of unorthodox
In my approach to life and the challenges I face
I am focused
Driven to the point of passion
Intrinsic
It is a part of me that I shall play the song of life at a different tempo and in a different key
Unfamiliar to you
My composition is definitive
I am defiant
I will not hear the word no
I will hear the word perhaps
To try things another way
With a far more complete and thorough approach
I am thoughtful
Mindful of the pitfalls that I face
Life is an assault course and I’ll conquer it at my own pace, in my own way.

Artisan

The people who will rise to the top in this new social economy will be the artists, the architects, the artisans.
As the mass market has greatly reduced in size, only the professionals who specialise in developing experiences which people can’t get anywhere else will be able to retain and grow their audience.

Innovate

Dream

Wake
Exercise
Learn
Plan
Eat
Sleep

Believe

Wake
Exercise
Learn
Develop
Eat
Sleep

See

Wake
Exercise
Learn
Ship
Eat
Sleep

Engage

Wake
Exercise
Learn
Listen
Eat
Sleep

Embrace

Repeat

Inspire

We are all in a race
We are in a race not against time
But against ourselves
We are in a race against procrastination
Against fear
Against feeling incomplete, worthless, weak and powerless.
To get to where you want to be, you have to understand that you are nothing and will remain nothing until you learn to run whilst being knocked down, being spat at, cursed out and told to give the fuck up
Throw in the towel, you’re never going to make anything of yourself.
You have to get over your complacency.
Over your true fear.
Not that you can’t but that you can
That you can change the world
That you are so powerful, so strong, so right
That you possess the answer to everyone’s questions.
You have the power, you have the ingredients which will bring humanity to the next level.
What are you willing to give?
Time? Effort? Sleep? Life?
Are you willing to dedicate your every minute to making your dream a reality, to making the incremental steps needed to change the world for the better?

Did you forget to bring your humanity to work with you today?

Industrial society funneled and forced us to ditch our need to reach out and connect with others.

When you’re commuting to work, look around you, look at all those awkward faces in uncomfortable uniforms, going to inconvenient work to do unnatural tasks.

Dry
Sterile
Unfulfilled

These people are working in conditions in which they are unable to give their best selves, to exert any real emotional labour.

Like a group lab rats, industrial society took us from our natural community-oriented habitat and forced us into an alien situation in which our community has been decimated from a village of ~150 to immediate family at home & our colleagues at work.

We’re naturally social creatures & yet we find it awkward when a stranger offers us a helping hand, with our initial gut reaction being “What does he/she want from me?”

Something’s not right if someone as approachable and genuine as Seth Godin can’t offer to share a cab ride without raising suspicion (check out his book Linchpin).

& you know what?
The industrial age is coming to an end.

The time of mediocre people doing mediocre jobs, creating mediocre content for average people has come to an end.

Find the thing you love most in the world, the thing that forces you out of bed in the morning & bring the best you to your work.

Make yourself.

The Vineyard Theory

Video game success & indeed the success of games companies can be paralleled to that of a grapevine.

When deciding on where to grow a crop of wine grapes there are a number of key points we take into consideration, which, in turn will affect the quality and type of fruit produced.

Grape variety:
Each Grape species has a uniquely preferred environment for ideal growing, this includes the air temperature & the soil acidity.
The development of the fruit:
The tannin, acid & sugar content affects the quality of the wine produced.

So, before we even press the grapes, an irreversible number of factors have already shaped the end outcome for our wine.

The same is true for games.
The environment, the people in the team, the support (financial, community, press, marketing etc), the hours spent planning and iterating the initial development document all help shape the quality of the end product.

For variety & high quality to be given the respect it deserves, the games industry has to put developers first.