{"id":870281,"date":"2026-08-25T00:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T00:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/870281\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T00:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T00:26:12","slug":"why-it-pays-to-run-a-business-like-a-video-game-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/870281\/","title":{"rendered":"Why It Pays To Run A Business Like A Video Game Platform"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Group<\/p>\n

What can The Battle for Middle-earth, Minecraft, and The Sims teach us about business? A lot, if you look at the success of the business models that propelled these and other online games to stardom. And such success is bult on emotion, experience, and energy.<\/p>\n

Think about the endless, 24-hour-aa-day enthusiasm customers show for their favorite video games. Wouldn\u2019t it be nice to capture some that in a bottle and apply it to your own business?<\/p>\n

Now, one of the architects of the video game business has written a book about crossing that enthusiasm beyond the video game world. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s the word from Bing Gordon and Chloe Gordon, in their latest book, Everybody Wins: What Games Teach Us About Making Products People Love.<\/a> Bing Gordon was cofounder and CEO of Electronic Arts, followed by a stint as chief product officer for Kleiner Perkins, and Chloe Gordon (Bing\u2019s daughter) is a producer on films documenting the gaming industry. <\/p>\n

Successfully designing such games require \u201cWow Moments” that add those tantalizing features that bring in customers, they state. There\u2019s a pattern to successful games: an emotional response that comes from \u201cartistic detail and great design variation.”<\/p>\n

Accordingly, with new business or product ideas beyond games, there need to be a \u201cWow Test,\u201d the Gordons write. \u201cthe Wow Test measures how effectively a team is crafting quality. When you map the emotional rhythm of an experience, you can see where it amazes and where it falls flat and determine how closely your game or product, is to your intentions.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his current role as venture capitalist partner at Kleiner Perkins, Bing Gordon relates how when he\u2019s discussing a new idea with a business founder, he grabs a pen and stopwatch and records when he feels genuine emotion, when he catches himself “smiling, leaning in, fist pumping, or losing interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Gordons break out how the winning formulas seen in the gaming space can translate to the larger business world:<\/p>\n

Create \u201cWow Moments\u201d for customers: \u201cStart with unforgettable experiences of excitement,\u201d the Gordons write. \u201cA Wow Moment is when you first catch a Pokemon with a Poke Ball, take your first gryphon rise over the landscapes of World of Warcraft, or nail your first ground pound in Super Mario 64.\u201d This is where the \u201cWow Test\u201d comes into play, they advise. \u201cI\u2019ve seen hundreds of confident young founders walk in the front door to woo investors with a professionally polished pitch deck, only to fail to connect with a Wow Moment. I tell game teams, product teams, and founders to identify their Wow Moments before they even start building.\u201dMotivate customers and users with \u201cwinning\u201d results: Make player or user wins “frequent, clear, and earned,\u201d the Gordons advise. \u201cGreat games have winners and winners. In life, the emotion of a loss is bigger than the emotion of a win. Games, producers, and organizations that run on positive-return economics outperform those that are zero-sum. Outlining paths to clear wins for team members, and then regarding each of those wins with praise and promotions is a far better motivator than an \u2018employee of the month.\u2019”Enable customers and users to invest and express: \u201cGive users ways to express themselves and gain recognition,\u201d the Gordons urge. In the gaming world, \u201cplayers invest time and energy into the game and are rewarded with tools for self-expression, namely decorations.\u201d Think Farmville, which gained 32 million users overnight. Social media platforms thrive on the invest and express philosophy. Ensure interactions are worth the time spent for customers and users: Make these interactions easy and intuitive for customers and users, they suggest. \u201cIn a gaming session, emotional economics trump financial ones. Regardless of the actual price, when a newcomer picks up a football game and finds the first session is more homework than action, she probably won\u2019t play the game a second time, let alone buy it again the next year.\u201d Build social interaction into the product: \u201cAlways build social connections directly into the product,\u201d the Gordons advise. While gaming, for example, may seem about competition, it\u2019s more about cooperation. \u201cCompetition is actually pretty demotivating for most people. Cooperation is stickier. It\u2019s unusual to put a rubric around something as intangible as friendship. It\u2019s not mathematically perfect, bit I really do believe that building around human relationships makes better and more successful games and stronger products. We lean on cooperation and social connectedness to increase motivation every day. Our products should be no different.” However, this is a message that has not sunk in across the business landscape. \u201cI find, shockingly, that product makers don\u2019t take social design as seriously as county clubs do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What can The Battle for Middle-earth, Minecraft, and The Sims teach us about business? A lot, if you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":870282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[302167,49,48,9617,874,29284,61,302168,302169],"class_list":["post-870281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-bing-gordon","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-electronic-arts","tag-gaming","tag-kleiner-perkins","tag-technology","tag-wow-moments","tag-wow-test"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}