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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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              <h5 align="right"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#00025E"><img src="../../images/icons/bent_final.jpg" width="192" height="243" align="left"><loonystart>Vol. 
                2, Issue 3<br>
                November 24, 1999 </font></b></h5>
             <br>
              <div align="center">
                <p align="center"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000FF"><i><font color="#904C10" size="3">Beaker's 
                  Bent:</font></i></font></b></p>

                <p align="center"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000FF"><i><font color="#904C10" size="6"> 
                  On Vision</font></i></font></b></p>
                <p align="right"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">by 
                  Rich &quot;<a href="mailto:rich@loonygames.com">Beaker</a>&quot; 
                  Wyckoff</font></p>
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              <p align="left"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="../../images/letters_new/o.jpg" width="25" height="39" align="left">ver 
                the summer I finally started to read some nonfiction that was 
                related to my job. Frankly, I've had trouble finding any non-fiction 
                that could hold my interest for long enough to finish them, and 
                there just are no worthwhile serious books about the business 
                of game design and publishing. There are the industry histories 

                out there and there are some &quot;learn to make games books,&quot; 
                but compared to the work which has been written about the general 
                software industry, the games-specific books are lightweight.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I finally 
                decided to sample the more general software books in the hopes 
                that I'd find information that would be relevant, and I'm glad 
                I did. As it happens there are eye-opening books about both design 
                and general business out there which are as fascinating as the 
                best novels. In my reading so far, I've had beliefs I've held 
                with little justification confirmed and I've been introduced to 
                ideas I previously had never considered &#150; pretty much the 
                point of reading, I guess. </font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">One of 
                these rather startling ideas is that there is such a thing as 
                a large, visionary company. As many of my personal bad experiences 
                in the industry have come directly from the management bungling 
                which seems endemic to any organization larger than a single team, 
                I had formed the opinion that big corporations are by their nature 
                bad. This was until I read <i>Built to Last: Successful Habits 
                of Visionary Companies</i> by James Collins and Jerry Porras.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Honestly, 
                I didn't even want to read this book at first though it was given 
                to me by perhaps the best boss I've ever had. I was sure that 
                no company could actually be anything I would consider visionary, 
                and I thought that it was going to be some sort of &quot;how to&quot; 
                book founded on principles I wouldn't accept. Instead, <i>Built 
                to Last</i> is a scientific study of around twenty companies that 
                have lasted for over 100 years and are the most well regarded 
                and usually best performing in their fields. The point of the 
                study was to determine what elements were common in all these 
                companies: thus, what constitutes a visionary company. They make 
                an argument that is compelling enough and founded in enough evidence 
                to completely change my mind, at least.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Each of 
                the visionary companies is paired with a comparison company which 
                has existed for a similar amount of time and is in as similar 
                a line of work to the visionary company as possible. As an example, 
                some of these pairs were Sony (visionary) and Zenith, Hewlett 
                Packard (visionary) and Texas Instruments, and Boeing (visionary) 
                and McDonnell-Douglas. Many of the visionary companies had wild 
                differences in their histories and organization, but despite these 
                differences, the authors make a convincing argument that there 
                is an underlying similarity between them all.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">This column 
                isn't intended to be a book review, but rather an explanation 
                of the applicability of this book to the computer game industry. 
                The book can be boiled down into an assertion that it is a myth 
                that great companies are distinguished by the specific individuals 
                who run them and are purely profit-driven. Instead, it turns out, 
                the companies which are widely regarded as visionary do not rely 
                on the presence of any specific CEOs nor do they focus on money-making 
                above all else. Yet despite this, these visionary companies in 
                the long term have often outperformed their comparison counterparts.</font></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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