Founders, If Video Games Are So Useful, Do Something About It
Last week saw the annual parade of Valley leaders proclaiming the importance of games and the fundamental business lessons they supposedly teach. Apparently, games like StarCraft are hidden MBAs, training players in resource allocation, thinking on their feet, and a variety of other hand-wavy, pro-MBA attributes. Pavel Durov claims, "These games taught me planning, timing, resource allocation, and risk management." Brian Armstrong tells us that games help him realize, "that entrepreneurship and business is the ultimate game."
Of course, this is all just a bunch of horseshit. Valley leaders post to be ironic. If that's not the case and I'm wrong, then the lesson is very simple: aggressively recruit and hire top-tier StarCraft players. Or, even better, fund more game universities. Maybe encourage it to be taught in MBA programs, given that half of these leaders sit on university boards and yet do nothing.
While Valley leaders should get away with a slap on the wrist, the real disappointment lies with the industry's own leaders. Tim Sweeney made an extremely generous preservation of North Carolina's forests, but he's invested jack diddly squat into building out a games program at N.C. State. At this point, I'm convinced @Mark Pincus doesn't even care about games and more or less tripped into Zynga. He rarely talks about them, instead focusing on right-wing politics. I'm curious to read his new book: does Pincus pick up as someone who actually bleeds for games? I have a funny feeling that won't be the case, but I hope I'm wrong.
It's more surprising that we don't see Chinese firms like NetEase and Tencent investing in game universities. If nothing else, building a strong hiring pipeline would put downward pressure on wages while helping combat China's skyrocketing youth unemployment.
This is why I wrote earlier this year about the loss of @Jason Citron as CEO of Discord - he was "one of us." We know this because he wasted millions building a MOBA, a practical rite of passage for anyone who actually cares about making games.