Daniel Gross: evaluation

Transcript context

…All the different games you played. You tell me. I committed the sins of anyone growing up in the 21st century, I guess, which is a lot of video games, and I have a lot of respect for them. I think they’re an incredible accomplishment, actually, of the human species. When you think about it in the abstract to the extreme, there are people in South Korea that are playing video games to exhaustion, to death in some cases. We’ve managed to create a collection of photons that we’re projecting from screens into people’s phobias, that manage to get them to ignore their most basic evolutionary instincts and just be in flow until they pass out. Obviously, that is bad, but they deserve a lot of respect. I think a lot about this whole idea of gamification. It sounds childish and silly, but if we take that as a given, that there are these pieces of software that people really yearn to use . . . If I told you, in abstract, I have this alien technology, and no drugs are required, but it’s just a thing on your computer, and people really want to use it, and when they’re not using it, they’re just thinking about using it. You’d say, “Well, that’s impossible. You need a drug for that.” And I say, “No, it’s called video games.” Can and how would you use that same type of thing in order to make yourself more productive, in order to make productivity software more fun? I think it’s very underutilized. It’s a thought everyone might have but no one really acts on, and it all comes back to talent at the end of the day. Ask, why isn’t Gmail more fun? Why doesn’t Gmail help you accomplish your goals? Not the simple stupid goals you have for the afternoon of just clear out the inbox, but your actual goals in life. The things you actually want to do. Write a book with Tyler, try to have a little bit more fun in every day. Why isn’t Gmail helping you do that? I think a lot about it. At the end of the day, you might think it comes down to, well, this, that, profit, incentive. A lot of it comes down to talent, and I think game designers are very underrated people in that sense. By the way, a small sidebar here: software engineers from the gaming industry are extremely underrated, and there’s a nice thread on the internet the other day, about how, effectively, the entire Starlink team who’s building SpaceX’s internet network are gaming engineers. I think that whole corner of the world is really overlooked by adults who view gaming as somewhat of a pejorative. But it’s a very powerful sphere of human creativity, and I think more of it needs to be brought into day-to-day life. By the way, just in general, when I think about gaming and fun, more of that needs to be brought into day-to-day life. There should be a Michelin guide for having fun. What are the best ways to have fun? Can I have fun by asking you a bunch of questions about tech? And this is just I ask, you answer, because I want to know the answers. Why do ad companies keep on making their products worse over time?…

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