Saturday, January 14, 2012

Steve Jobs on Failure



My dad used to say: you already have 'no' and you might get a 'yes' if you just ask... This is so true. The funny thing about our behavior in games is that in games we are actually open to fail where as in real-life we are afraid to make mistakes and fail, because of fear of being laughed at, yelled at or even getting fired. I see this a lot in change-management projects where we use games as a tool to train staff and get them used to the 'desired situation'. When we ask people on their jobs to do things differently, in 90% of all cases you will have people saying: "But I am used to doing it like this, or we tried it but it didn't work or I use the new method, but the old one really worked better." We always use the same ways to get to our goal where as in games people find out the best way to achieve their goal through trial and error. And also, once we 'master' the game we invent 'challenges' for ourselves to push the boundary, like fighting with one arm, or running through a level without killing anyone or... well...

I hope to find the time this year to write my new book 'A Playful Life' (working title) which will be about life topics and how games can help to look at things in new ways...

Have a playful weekend!

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