(2024-10-16) Duggan Reading

Mat Duggan is Reading "Play Nice", the story of Blizzard ComputerGames. Really good book, but also a fascinating look at a company following a very similar trajectory to a lot of tech companies.

0. Have a small passionate team that makes products that consumers really like.
1. Take the team for granted that they'll continue making your wildly successful product for less than market rate because "they love the work".
2. Don't check toxic leadership who have been hitmakers for you in the past and who regularly abuse their power and positions.
3. Engage parasitic consultants like McKinsey who advise you to follow user-hostile patterns that end up destroying a critical market for a tentpole product.
4. End up being unable to execute because you are now effectively paralyzed by investor expectations that every new product will be the biggest launch yet, meaning riskier or smaller ideas are killed (even when they might work).
5. Because every launch has to be a potential biggest revenue generator ever, teams are forced to grow and add features which don't make sense to the core product in the hopes one will stick.
6. Find yourself no longer able to deliver consistent hits that consumers like.

As I'm reading I'm just like "oh yeah that's exactly how that goes".