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Play to Work

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body feels compelled to do. — Mark Twain

Make play out of work, engineer incentives, seed desires then provide lavish praise in return for focused attention and loyalty. Great storytellers are essential to a startup because everyone wants to play a part in a great story.

Conviction

Games are the future of work, capitialism and society.

Influence​

Tom Sawyer must whitewash the fence as a punishment for prior mischief, being young, wished he could play instead. His friends saw him doing this job and did their best to ridicule him. Most people would bow their heads but Tom spun the situation around. At the end of that day, a dozen boys painted the fence for him, paying for the privilege, while he played.

Desire​

How Tom Sawyer switched Perspectives: Ben Rogers commented about Tom's work. Tom asked, "what work?" and proceeded to paint the fence with careful precision, checking the application of the paint with every stroke of his brush. Ben, curious now, asked why Tom annoyed. Tom replied, "I don't see why I would be, you don't get to do this everyday" showing careful concentration to the task.

Perplexed and completely absorbed Ben couldn't help asking if he could "paint a little". Tom resisted at first, the eventually resisted and agreed to allow Ben the privilege of painting the fence in return for an apple.

Mantra

To make any human covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. — Mark Twain

Value​

People won't do good work if they don't think it has value. For a person to value a task, the following must be true:

  1. the work must be difficult enough to challenge the person constantly
  2. the person needs to believe their efforts are important to the big picture

Delegation​

The responsibility to deliver valuable work falls on two kinds of people.

The first, is the leader, that doesn't simply delegate difficult work, but emphasizes its importance first and foremost and sells a story of why the task at hand is important to the big picture.

The other, is the professional that understands and embraces the difficulties entrusted to him and will see the job through, especially when the task is undesirable.

Recognition​

Finally the leader needs to be lavish in their praise for a job well done, recognising the sacrifice and dedication of the professional that could easily have found something more stimulating to do.

Combined, these people make success look easy.

Mantra

People have a deep need to be appreciated for their efforts

Elements of Play​

Play to Learn. Play and Earn. NOR's play manifesto

  • Play comes first
  • Play is now
  • Play is new
  • Play is free
  • Play is naive
  • Play is alive

Engineer games that force interactions between people of varied backgrounds to generate collaborative growth.

Team Sport​

Focus on playing teams sports that develop co-ordinated collaboration among player of shared values and complimentary capabilities.

Lore​

The backstory of a game and all the design elements that complement the principal narrative.

Flow​

Sequential​

In games like monopoly or chess, players make decisions and do actions in alternating turns.

Simultaneous​

When players make decisions and take actions at about the same time, they are unaware of the choices made by other players, such as in rock-paper-scissors.

Actions​

Strictly-defined behaviors that a player can choose from.

What options can players choose from?

  • Upfront or Fake?
  • Fight or flight?
  • Chance luck?

Schema​