Peter Hagen

The problem is not that people are saying that they are now reading between 9-15 publications each week, nor that you probably think this is a high number. Nor is it a problem that the people who likely answered are all media professionals and thus don't really represent the larger public.

The problem is that this number is way too low and likely... See more

Facebook inflated its video metrics, a bunch of digital media executives carelessly pivoted to video in the hopes that they would become essential content suppliers to Mark Zuckerberg, and then he imperiously killed them all because he realized it was far easier to negotiate with an infinite supply of individual burned-out Instagram influencers.... See more

People are the most engaged in an activity when they feel like they are highly skilled at it, and are using that skill to confront a great challenge.

That sets down the most essential considerations for designing good gameplay:

1. It has to present a challenge that the player can meet.


2. The player has to be able to get good at it.

The second part is... See more

I highly recommend this activity and format. You can start one yourself. It goes like this:

1. Choose where to walk — somewhere with lodging for 8 people every 15 km — where someone else can drive everyone’s bags from place to place.


2. Someone (local person or business) walks it all in advance to make sure it’s actually good. This person is the

... See more

Probably the bigger change, from what I've heard, was losing Amit Singhal who led Search until 2016. Amit fought against creeping complexity. There is a semi-famous internal document he wrote where he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning, or at least contain it as much as possible, so that ranking stays... See more

Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part 2 was created at $220 million with nearly 200 staffers. Meanwhile, Guerrilla Games' Horizon Forbidden West set back Sony $212 million with 300 employees on the project.

If you look closely, all these problems fundamentally come from:

1. Decreased skin in the game, which reduces team alignment


2. N^2 communication, which creates need for managers and specialization, which reduces individual agency and breadth of learning


3. Reduced risk tolerance, which slows everything down

#1 and #2 are inevitable results of having more... See more