This Management Monday we're going to be look at two aspects of management: marketing and reusing materials you already have.
Our example today comes from the Warner Bro. franchise of videogames. I have played a number of these games and one is my top favorite single player game (Mad Max, 2015). What I have noticed is that this gaming franchise uses a lot of the base assets and game mechanics again and again.
This was the most obvious when I started playing Middle Earth: Shadow of War. Now the Arkham series, Mad Max, and the Middle Earth games all use a similar base combat system. A lot of hand to hand, button combo fights that flow from enemy to enemy. In its first iteration in the Arkham games, it was very clunky, slowly getting refined until it was very intuitive by their later games.
But this was not the mechanic that I noticed. In Mad Max, you can scout out an area ahead of time and produce a fast travel location by using these tethered air balloons. It really helped you plan out what you needed to to in each area and is usually the first thing I do when I play through the game.
Well in Shadow of War, you can do the same thing. But instead of a hot air balloon it's a tower. And instead of a pair of binoculars, it's your otherworldly wraith vision. But the concept remains the same. When I first made the connection I had a "Really?" response. "You couldn't come up with something else?"
But then it got me thinking. They had done a lot of variations of this basic open world game style before. They would be absolutely foolish to ignore the assets and methods they had spend the last 8 to 10 years developing.
We often overlook the tools available to us when we feel stuck. So we waste a lot of time looking for the new "magic bullet" to solve our problems. However, we sometimes just need to pause and take stock of what we already have. I don't need to buy a whole new business, etc. just because sales are down.
This response comes from a fear of failure, and I am speaking from personal experience. Sometimes I feel the pressure of life and I just want to run away and do something else. Because obviously whatever I'm doing isn't working. In reality, I need to readjust. I need to look at what I can do, what resources are available to me, and how I can leverage skills and abilities I already have to buy enough time to learn other ones.
It's easier to use what we have than to wish for what we don't have.
Think about it.
Sincerely,
The Irreverent Gentleman
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