Most of this seemed like feel-good fluff, but the last one was interesting to me. At AWS I often heard one phrase echoing around: “There’s no compression algori

Most of this seemed like feel-good fluff, but the last one was interesting to me. At AWS I often heard one phrase echoing around: “There’s no compression algorithm for experience”, and without unpacking† all the consequences and corollaries (for they are many) the idea of acquiring management experience by proxy through games, whether to build customer empathy or because it’s cheaper than an MBA, was not amongst them. Nevertheless if I look through all the games that’ve engaged me to completion, over the years, most of them are basically management games. Even ones that didn’t purport to be, like Shadows of Mordor or Fallout 4, in hindsight had something to teach on topics from organisational change management to implementation of strategy. I’m still waiting for a AAA title that requires inferential analysis of financial statements. After all, as Ben Affleck demonstrates in The Accountant, there’s nothing quite so satisfying as explaining discrepancies in a receivables footnote via a thorough analysis of quarterly EBITDA reporting. The closest approach I’ve experienced in a game, both cognitively and emotionally speaking, is probably completing the Challenge in “The Witness”. I live in hope. †(sorry)