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      <h5><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">//<a href="../../../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">loonygames</font></a>://<a href="../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">issue 
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                      <p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000FF"><i><a href="../../2.1/uc/index.html"><font color="#904C10" size="3">Beaker's 
                        Bent - On Vision</font></a></i></font></b><br>
                      
                      <div align="right"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">By 
                        Rich &quot;<a href="mailto:rich@loonygames.com">Beaker</a>&quot; 

                        Wyckoff</font></div>
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                    <h5 align="right"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#00025E">Vol. 
                      2, Issue 3&nbsp; <br>
                      November 24, 1999&nbsp; </font></b></h5>
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              <loonystart> 
              <h5 align="right">&nbsp;</h5>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The common 
                feature of visionary companies is actually a strong, company-wide 
                commitment to a core ideology. And these ideologies are never 
                &quot;to make money,&quot; or even as simple as just &quot;to 
                dominate our market.&quot; No matter how a visionary company comes 
                about or what it makes, they all have an ideology that is more 
                than just a meaningless mission statement pasted to a wall and 
                then forgotten. Collins and Porras document instances where visionary 
                companies have lost focus on their core ideology, and those companies 
                faltered until they renewed their commitment. The visionary companies 
                rarely faltered just because of a change in management, whereas 
                the comparisons tended to live or die on the strength of a CEO. 
                The ideology of the visionary companies is held by the institution, 
                not any individual.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Because 
                these ideologies are more than just meaningless words and are 
                a strong part of the structure of the entire institution, they 
                have a noticeable affect on the character of the company. Most 
                noticeably, visionary companies are very careful when they hire 
                people. The authors use words like &quot;indoctrination&quot; 
                and &quot;cult-like&quot; with full knowledge of how loaded the 
                terms are, because they accurately describe what goes on at these 
                companies. Visionary companies have comprehensive training and 
                orientation programs that go beyond the 20 minute PowerPoint benefits 
                explanation or mandatory and boring sexual harrasment meetings 
                that are the norm in other corporations.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Also linked 
                to the core ideology is the idea of the &quot;Big Hairy Audacious 
                Goal&quot; as Collins and Porras put it. Visionary companies continually 
                set goals that would seem too risky to attempt to other companies. 
                BHAGs don't always work out, but when they do, they result in 
                phenomenal progress into areas that competing companies didn't 
                even see as possibilities.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">There's 
                a lot more to <i>Built to Last,</i> but these three concepts are 
                perhaps the most important, and what interested me about them 
                was how directly they can be applied to game companies. First 
                and foremost, it is clear that very few companies in the industry 
                have a core ideology or have one that they actually stick to, 
                from the CEO down to the playtesters. The few large companies 
                in the industry are the results of so many mergers that it is 
                unlikely they are thinking much beyond trying to make their next 
                run of titles sell more than any of their competitors, and the 
                many startups are formed by developers looking for freedom but 
                with little experience in the realm of management. A good sign 
                of a lack of core ideologies would be a company suddenly expanding 
                into types of games it has no experience or internal desire to 
                produce just because the management decided that it wanted to 
                capture that market. This kind of unfocused thinking has been 
                the end of many developers.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">If a company 
                is to have a strong ideology, it is also clear that industry-hiring 
                practices have to change. Over the years I've talked to or even 
                interviewed at a lot of different developers, and in very few 
                cases have I heard anyone try to evaluate me in terms of their 
                ideology. Interview questions for designers focus on your skills 
                and your ideas, but rarely do people describe their culture or 
                attempt to see if you will fit into that culture. For my first 
                job at Looking Glass, I had two different day-long interviews, 
                by the end of which I felt that I knew almost everyone at the 
                company, so that when I finally did walk in I felt like I was 
                already a part of the crowd. Since then, however, it is rare that 
                I have even talked to more than one or two members of a team I 
                would be working with. Looking Glass's intensive interview process 
                was definitely an unofficial indoctrination when I started there, 
                and the general atmosphere of the company acted as a continuing 
                indoctrination. However, the company had no clearly stated ideology 
                that would act to make this indoctrination more official, and 
                during the time I was there new hires were being screened less 
                and less thoroughly, leading to a definite change in the overall 
                character of the company.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></loonystart></font></p>
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Illustration 
  &copy; 1999 Dan Zalkus. Beaker's Bent is &copy; 1999 Rich Wyckoff. All other 
  content is &copy; 1999 loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited, 
  so don't do it or we'll sick our lawyers on you. Muhahahahahahahah. ph3ar our 
  m@d l3gal sk1lz y0.</font></i></p>
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