3 ms·

Not to make light of a serious situation but if this is some kind of viral marketing I’m actually impressed. It’s captivating.

larkeith 8y ago
I mean the author even says: > Is this an advertisement for the video game I'm working on? Well, honestly, yeah, it kind of is. I'm more than okay with seeing this sort of thing, whether or not it's an advertisement, as long as it provides value to read. I hope someone sends in that FoI request and posts it later (I might do so myself once I have access to a computer), as the context sounds fascinating. Interestingly, this is also much more effective than traditional advertising, at least for me - I'll be keeping an eye on this game when it goes to early access, whereas I actively avoid the majority of products I recognize from advertisements.
- andruby 8y ago
  I'd say it's a great example of Simon Sinek's advice "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it". https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_insp...
  - Niksko 8y ago
    Thank you, that's a really wonderful and interesting video. It all seems a little too easy and too sensible to be the cause of such radically outlying success. But it certainly presents an interesting narrative that I'm going to try and use in presentations and in convincing others in the future.
api 8y ago
It's a commentary on our age that your first thought is that it might be a lie.
- dmix 8y ago
  It's one side of a story, where all the details of that side (let alone the opposing side) are classified. I'd take it as a rule of thumb not to trust it. Most likely its a) probably far more interesting to the participants than a public audience and b) could easily just be your typical government/big corp managerial politics issues, as it's rarely the talent who float to the top of administrative (and risk-oriented agencies like the CIA are super administrative). Those stories are typically built on type of a ton of tiny small insignificant interpersonal issues that snowball into bigger problems until they start affecting real work. The type of problems that could easily have been dealt with far earlier on in the process had reasonable adults been in charge.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  Was there an age when people blindly trusted everything they read? Healthy skepticism can be a very good thing.
  - MarsAscendant 8y ago
    It's taking things to an extreme – like automatically mistrusting the source because it seems to attempt playing the reader's heartstrings – that's a defining characteristic of the Internet era. Not everyone makes up their stories, and not nearly everyone is lying – but there are people who will abuse the natural trust people exhibit, and take the profits into their pockets, as opposed to helping their fictional cause. It's so prominent because there's a whole lot of people who do that. Similar to the "vocal minority" phenomenon, people start assuming that everyone in the same group is <something>, regardless of how valid the assumption is, because of the exposure towards a certain kind of the group's members.
baddash 8y ago
It definitely is. This kind of advertising is pretty commonplace, you can see it all over reddit. This guy just happened to explicitly say it was.

larkeith 8y ago

I mean the author even says: > Is this an advertisement for the video game I'm working on? Well, honestly, yeah, it kind of is. I'm more than okay with seeing this sort of thing, whether or not it's an advertisement, as long as it provides value to read. I hope someone sends in that FoI request and posts it later (I might do so myself once I have access to a computer), as the context sounds fascinating. Interestingly, this is also much more effective than traditional advertising, at least for me - I'll be keeping an eye on this game when it goes to early access, whereas I actively avoid the majority of products I recognize from advertisements.

andruby 8y ago
I'd say it's a great example of Simon Sinek's advice "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it". https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_insp...
- Niksko 8y ago
  Thank you, that's a really wonderful and interesting video. It all seems a little too easy and too sensible to be the cause of such radically outlying success. But it certainly presents an interesting narrative that I'm going to try and use in presentations and in convincing others in the future.

api 8y ago

It's a commentary on our age that your first thought is that it might be a lie.

dmix 8y ago
It's one side of a story, where all the details of that side (let alone the opposing side) are classified. I'd take it as a rule of thumb not to trust it. Most likely its a) probably far more interesting to the participants than a public audience and b) could easily just be your typical government/big corp managerial politics issues, as it's rarely the talent who float to the top of administrative (and risk-oriented agencies like the CIA are super administrative). Those stories are typically built on type of a ton of tiny small insignificant interpersonal issues that snowball into bigger problems until they start affecting real work. The type of problems that could easily have been dealt with far earlier on in the process had reasonable adults been in charge.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
Was there an age when people blindly trusted everything they read? Healthy skepticism can be a very good thing.
- MarsAscendant 8y ago
  It's taking things to an extreme – like automatically mistrusting the source because it seems to attempt playing the reader's heartstrings – that's a defining characteristic of the Internet era. Not everyone makes up their stories, and not nearly everyone is lying – but there are people who will abuse the natural trust people exhibit, and take the profits into their pockets, as opposed to helping their fictional cause. It's so prominent because there's a whole lot of people who do that. Similar to the "vocal minority" phenomenon, people start assuming that everyone in the same group is <something>, regardless of how valid the assumption is, because of the exposure towards a certain kind of the group's members.

baddash 8y ago

It definitely is. This kind of advertising is pretty commonplace, you can see it all over reddit. This guy just happened to explicitly say it was.