Category Archives: business

Facebook’s Mobile Gaming Apocalypse

Crowdstar recently announced they are abandoning the Facebook platform to focus on mobile social games. After amazing success on iOS, they have discovered what many of us have known for years: Facebook games are dead.

In the wake of Farmville’s massive success in 2009, investment in social gaming hit a fever pitch. The Facebook audience grew to 500 million with the rising tide floating all boats. We went from “RIP Good Times” to a veritable all-you-can-snort coke buffet in the little over a year.

During this period, Facebook shut down viral channels making it more difficult to acquire ‘free’ customers and instituted a 30% tax on social gaming revenue in the form of Facebook Credits. By 2011, user growth flattened out and user acquisition costs skyrocketed as social gaming companies blew their war chests fighting over the same group of casual social gaming customers.

Apple, on the other hand, introduced In-App-Payments for free apps and created an entirely new genre of tablet games with the introduction of the iPad. News of new social gaming startups declined, but mobile gaming investments became white hot. The mobile social gaming gold rush was on.

Recent filings from Facebook show that Zynga, one of Facebook’s single biggest contributors of revenue, is now responsible for a shrinking portion of Facebook’s income. This may be due to a change of focus. New game releases on Facebook from Zynga have slowed to a trickle. Meanwhile, Zynga has been feverishly acquiring mobile startups and barking up their stock price with social gambling chatter. While some companies stubbornly cling to the Facebook platform, in most cases social gaming companies are evacuating Facebook for mobile.

Facebook can’t earn a dime off of mobile social games despite their usage of the Facebook API because mobile billing is all controlled by Apple or Google (and now Amazon). There is no place for Facebook credits in the mobile ecosystem. If you try to use any alternative payment system in an iOS app, Apple won’t approve it.

This is why Facebook is making carrier billing agreements and beefing up their HTML5 platform. They can’t get a cut of native app revenue, but can position themselves as a premier destination for HTML5 mobile browser games with Facebook Credits as the billing system.

Even if buying Facebook Credits can be made as seamless as iTunes billing, Facebook still has to fix the fact that HTML5 sucks. This is a problem that is somewhat out of their control, as HTML5 performance is affected by features in mobile browsers developed by Apple and Google.

Facebook is desperately trying to figure out mobile–spending $1 billion on Instagram is an example of this. The unstoppable shift to mobile media consumption threatens Facebook’s core revenue streams from all angles. Facebook Credits have no use in native mobile games and Facebook can’t generate much ad revenue as ads are largely non-existent in their own mobile apps. Facebook’s walled garden is under attack from another walled garden of closed mobile devices. I guess it’s karma.

Android Users Are Apathetic

I launched the virtual pets spoof, Brick Buddies, on Android and iOS last month with zero PR. It was a crazy idea I wanted to make for no particular reason. Since both versions were launched with the same minimal PR effort (a mere tweet and a Facebook post), I figured I’d use this as an opportunity to analyze both platforms from a new perspective.

The top line: Brick Buddies on iOS gets 10X the downloads of the Android version. I got more iOS downloads in the first day than I did in 3 weeks on Google Play. Although both versions have earned a pittance, iOS users spend more money too.

Brick Buddies’ iOS release got picked up as a news story on at least 3 websites, including The Guardian, with no PR. I saw far more Facebook likes, shares, and retweets about Brick Buddies on iOS through my social graph than the Android release.

But wait, isn’t Android beating iOS in market share?

Pondering this, I thought about everyone I know that has an Android phone. They are my friends least into mobile tech. When I get a peek at their home screen, they hardly have any apps installed. They are seemingly content to have a slick-looking phone with a giant screen that makes calls and sends messages. iPhone users (myself included) appear to be platform zealots and voracious consumers of apps.

I had a hunch that most Android users just aren’t into their phones–which makes sense. If you aren’t into mobile tech, you’d probably settle for an Android device. Let’s face it–Aside from the Google ‘pure’ handsets, most really aren’t so great.

I put a survey up on Mechanical Turk to unscientifically poll the public about the habits of iPhone and Android users. I wanted to see how they like their phones and how excited they are about apps. I only got about 200 responses, so this really isn’t statistically significant.

Hey–it’s good fodder for an inflammatory linkbait post about Android users! Here are some results:

WHO ARE ANDROID USERS?

Both Android and iOS had the same ratio of men to women users.

My results supported what I’ve heard from other studies–Android users trend younger than on the iPhone. 60.6% of Android users polled were under 29 as opposed to 47.3% of iPhone users.

Android users trend younger than iPhone

Android users also reported lower incomes and education levels than iPhone users. Not that this is relevant information–Unless you are an Instagram snob.

ANDROID USERS SEEM LESS SATISFIED WITH THEIR PHONE

When asked if they would buy the same kind of phone again, 89.3% of iPhone users said yes, while 78.9% of Android users did. Android owners also seem a little less satisfied with their phone when asked–89.2% of iPhone users were satisfied or extremely satisfied with their devices versus 81.7% for Android.

ANDROID USERS DON’T CARE ABOUT APPS

A chart showing the app recommendation habits of iPhone and Android users.

Android users seem less likely to blab about apps to their friends.

Android users seem slightly less likely to recommend apps to friends, with 37.5% of iPhone users recommending apps to friends often or extremely often and only 19.7% for Android. Hey, Android users just aren’t into apps–why talk about them?

Nearly 43% of iPhone users reported using apps extremely often, compared to 31% of Android owners.

ANDROID USERS ARE CHEAPSKATES

Android vs. iPhone users: Have you paid for an app?

iPhone users pay for apps, Android users don't.

Although the vast majority of Android and iPhone users have downloaded free apps, only 47.5% of Android users have ever paid to download an app vs. 80.4% of iPhone users. Also, 77.5% of Android users reported never having made an in app purchase in a freemium game versus 58.9% of iPhone owners. Hey, it’s been said before.

CONCLUSION

This data is based on too small a sample to really make a conclusion. I still think it’s decent data to expand on my hunch–Android users just aren’t into apps. This presents a marketing challenge. Android users are out there, but how do you get them excited about your content?

According to this final chart, users of both platforms look for information about apps in similar places.

Info sources for new apps ranked by popularity for Android and iPhone users

Android and iPhone users have similar tastes as far as info sources for new apps.

The audience exists. Perhaps you have to address them differently in the same channels.

Some developers seemed to have cracked this code. For most, monetizing apathetic Android users remains a challenge.

More Quick Notes

I don’t have enough material for an entire blog post, so I figured I’d hit a few minor points before they are too stale to use as an excuse to blog about.

One Month with the Sony Vita

George Broussard famously stated the Vita seems like the last dinosaur at a mammal convention, and sales figures may be confirming this. Still–as a die-hard gamer from the monochrome era, I got one at launch. I’m the earliest adopter there is.

Regardless of the market reality, there is one game that proves the Vita is a serious piece of gaming hardware–Uncharted: Golden Abyss. This is a PS3-sized game of AAA amazingness that you hold in your hand. It’s doubtful the Vita ecosystem can support many games of Uncharted’s scope, but it really is an incredible experience for a handheld.

Oh, and the Near network is cool. It’s strikingly similar to a location-based mobile games ad network I built in 2010. So, yeah–this kind of tech is dear to my heart. What’s up with only being able to refresh every hour?

Adobe Cries For Help

Is Adobe trying to kill itself, or is hurting Flash just a cry for help? Maybe Adobe is just a cutter. Anyway, adding a 9% tax on all content built using Flash’s new Alchemy opcodes is another desperate attempt to create a Flash ecosystem.

This is obviously a move to make UDK and Unity3D’s Flash exporters prohibitively expensive. If you develop Stage3D apps in ActionScript using Adobe’s own tools (or deploy on AIR or mobile), you apparently can release content royalty-free. Too bad. I was really looking forward to using Flash as a low friction web platform for Unity3D content.

GDC 2012 Impressions

My GDC impressions are over a month old and pretty stale. So I’ll keep it quick. Facebook games = dead. Mobile social games = tail end of cokehead frenzy. Social gambling = the fuse has just been lit. The crab cioppino at Sotto Mare = greatest meal of all time.

Why Cloning Is The New Gaming Business Model

Game cloning controversies seemed to have died down over the past month, but the issue will blow up again once another successful game is inevitably ripped off. It’s not even that new of an issue. Still, it came to a fever pitch when Zynga shamelessly copied NimbleBit’s Tiny Tower, then presented this absurd defense of its actions.

You can’t protect an idea. That’s intellectual property 101. Although, it is true that you can protect the expression of an idea: level layouts, art, perhaps even scoring. I’m not a lawyer, but as far as I can tell Zynga is in the clear here.

You have to know the culture that produced social gaming to understand why cloning is the new business model for games. The social gaming industry was created by MBAs, not game developers. To an MBA, there is no difference between a game and any other web service. Both Orbitz and Travelocity sell plane tickets online–but nobody complains that Orbitz ripped off Travelocity. They are simply two competitors in the web airline reservation space.

To a company like Zynga, Tiny Tower is merely a pioneering entry in the Mobile Virtual Tower Simulation space. Zynga is simply producing another entrant and attempting to carve out their slice of the total addressable market for this type of service. There’s no creative soul to Dream Heights, perhaps, but neither is there one for airline ticketing websites.

This is abhorrent to a lot of developers who have been creating games since before the social gaming revolution. Yet, I meet a lot of young gaming entrepreneurs for whom this is the way of things. They speak in terms of attracting another game’s customers with cloned mechanics and a few changes–perhaps in platform, delivery, or other business model differences. Never in terms of creative twists.

Social gaming giants usually clone games from smaller developers and buy larger companies who produce games they’d like to be cloning. This is probably because well-funded startups often have the same cokeheads backing or advising them, and thus a cloning controversy will ruffle some valuable feathers. Smaller developers should be already well into the development of the next hit-to-be-cloned by the time the VC backed cookie cutters arrive.

0 Users Is Better Than 200,000

I recently met with an entrepreneur who was incredulous at the fact that he had steadily gained a small user base for his applications but couldn’t convince investors to fund his company. This wasn’t shocking to me. I’ve learned from experience that prototypes and soft launches do not impress investors.

This usually is a trap that technical CEOs fall into. To a technical (or even just perfectly rational) person a functional prototype is impressive. It proves the ability to execute. To most investors, a prototype is an application with no traction. As we’ve discussed before, traction is a key element of social proof investors look for when evaluating opportunities. Plus, it’s usually not immediately obvious that your ability to acquire a small user base scales with investment.

When pitching cokeheads, it’s important to create a reality distortion field. A gifted pitcher can pump up everyone in the room about how game changing his company will be accompanied by lots of hockey sticks and absurd 3-year projections. With rare exceptions, seeing your product in action shatters this illusion.

If you show a prototype, investors are confronted with reality. Reality is usually not as impressive as the grandiose mental images inspired by a slick PowerPoint delivered with some effective table dynamics. “Oh wait–that’s what it is?” “Why don’t you add this feature and come back to us later?” This rabbit hole leads nowhere.

Even worse–If you’ve soft-launched your service, you further deflate this bubble. Where are your users? Why is your growth so low? It’s not proof that you can execute. After all, investors think developers are cattle. Execution is a given. What’s more important is making sure that hockey stick is real.

When raising money, you may find it much easier if you haven’t written a line of code but have your pitching strategy down. Only build something that you know you can launch and monetize without outside investment. If you need to raise money early–stop building and start talking.

Let’s Keep Dying

Remember when Bill Gates was the enemy? Ahhh the 1990s–It’s almost like they never happened. Yet, Microsoft still carries with it the Evil Empire reputation it gained from 20 some odd years of suspect business practices and ultimately being declared a monopoly by the FTC…sort of.

Since software broke free from boxes in the Web 2.0 era, Microsoft’s power has waned and Bill Gates put himself out to pasture as a philanthropist. I suspect Bill Gates discovered what we all do–he’s going to die. Perhaps even more depressing, he’s not going to be able to spend all his money before he kicks the bucket. So, Bill Gates has admirably chosen to spend the rest of his life giving away his vast wealth to charitable causes of personal interest: malaria, polio, that sort of thing.

This is in direct contrast to the new generation of rich tech elite. Recently I read this article about Peter Thiel–billionaire venture capitalist and one of the earliest investors in Facebook. Many of his new investments are in biotech–in particular, investing in companies that are trying to cure death.

Bill Gates’ sense of his own mortality is so old school. The Silicon Valley investor class has also realized they can’t live long enough to enjoy all of their wealth. However, instead of spending their fortune on bed nets they are trying to become immortal. The cokeheads will live forever. Time enough at last.

In the same interview, Peter Thiel criticizes modern investors for building trivial technologies that don’t move humanity forward. He waxes nostalgic about the 1960s Space Program and contrasts it with today’s meaningless web 2.0 developments (many of which he is personally responsible for).

I think Peter Thiel is trying to eliminate one of the greatest innovators of all time: death. Just imagine if you could become immortal, but it was really expensive. We’d still be living under the yoke of 16th century kings who want to burn you at the stake for believing in heliocentric orbits.

Plus, your unpredictable expiration date is great motivation for getting stuff done. Steve Jobs’ premature death was a wake-up call to a lot of people putting off things they want to do until some nebulous future date.

It’s not all bad. I’m sure the advancements biotech companies create while slaving away to discover the fountain of youth for their overlords will trickle down into medicine for the rest of us. After all, we’re just now starting to see the benefits of a few decades of stem cell research.

Still, I can’t help but think the human lifespan is in a sweet spot for innovation. Live too short and you’ll never accomplish enough to evolve (fruit flies)–live too long and you’ll put off accomplishing anything for generations (whales–a bunch of slackers). Let’s keep dying, it’s good for the human race.

The Biggest Gameplay Innovations Come From Outside The Industry

The rise of the indie developer has coincided with the advent of digital downloads and gateless ecosystems. However, it’s always been true that independent and non-professional development has driven major gameplay shifts over at least the past decade. Here’s a brief list of major innovation brought on by efforts from outside the realm of professional game development:

Counter-Strike (1999)

Although the first Rainbow Six game predates Counter-Strike by at least a year, it was this hobbyist mod for Half-Life that sparked the tactical FPS revolution. Counter-Strike started out as a Half-Life mod created by Minh Le and Jess Cliffe while both were attending university in 1999. By 2000, Counter-Strike became so wildly popular that Valve acquired the game and hired its two creators. Minh Le left Valve to work on his own game while Jess still works there.

Since the creation of Counter-Strike, countless games have borrowed its competitive tactical FPS gameplay. One of the weirder cases being Microsoft’s Shadowrun–turning FASA’s beloved RPG into a cyberpunk Counter-Strike clone. Valve has made a few middling attempts to turn Counter-Strike into a full blown retail product, but has redoubled its efforts with the official sequel.

Not that I have details–but considering how influential Counter-Strike is, it seems like Minh and Jess got a raw deal.

Defense of the Ancients (2003)

Defense of the Ancients started out in 2003 as a free fan-created mod for Warcraft 3. Although the mod changed hands several times, in the end the reclusive “IceFrog” became the game’s star creator/maintainer. Once again, Valve attempted to capitalize on an indie mod sensation by hiring IceFrog in 2009.

DotA isn’t just a game, it’s an industry. DotA even spawned a new acronym–Multiplayer Online Battle Arena or MOBA for short. The genre seems to print money. Riot Games’ f2p DotA inspired RTS, League of Legends, grew so successful that Chinese gaming giant Tencent acquired a majority stake in the company for over $350 million in 2011.

The MOBA wars are just beginning. Valve and Blizzard are fighting over their own “Defense of the Ancients” titled online games. Not to mention many attempts to create MOBAs as digital, mobile, social, and console titles.

Tower Defense (2007)

There have been games stretching as far back as the early ‘80s that used what has come to be called Tower Defense gameplay. Korean mobile games publisher Com2us even trademarked the title “Tower Defense” in 2007. Still, it was Paul Preece’s IGF award-winning Flash game, Desktop Tower Defense, that took the gameplay style mainstream that same year. Since the game’s success, Tower Defense games have flooded the App Store, social networks, and console digital storefronts.

Minecraft (2009)

By now you must be sick of hearing the Minecraft story. Swedish game programmer “Notch” quits his day job working on MMOs at King.com and starts building his own Infiniminer-inspired shareware game involving carving out and building structures in an expansive world of randomly generated cubes wrapped in simple 8-bit textures.

Without any fancy f2p economies or elaborate web portals, Minecraft became a viral hit–so far grossing over $40 million for the developer. Minecraft’s success has created an entire genre of block mining games. Including Terraria–a 2D take on the Minecraft style selling over 200,000 copies via Steam during its release week alone. The Minecraft aesthetic is even leaking into other genres with the Ace of Spades FPS on PC and Brick Force on mobile.

Minecraft is often described as being like Legos. In fact, Lego released their own branded MMO during the timeframe of Minecraft’s release. The game was shut down and Lego recently began selling Minecraft licensed toy bricks. Total victory.

I could go on…Portal…even Canabalt if you want to stretch it. There’s probably more I’m missing.

Indies Created It, Publishers Decorated It

Large publishers and AAA titles seem to advance technical features that nudge gameplay along. GTA’s streaming open worlds, World of Warcraft’s massive persistent online universe, Splinter Cell’s dynamic shadow stealth, and Assassin’s Creed’s fluid climbing and crowd dynamics were all outstanding technical developments that created new twists on existing genres which have become commonplace. (Ok, GTA was more than a nudge) Most of the dramatic indie innovations are purely in gameplay–usually built on top of modest technical foundations.

Companies such as Valve have acquired and successfully worked with the developers of these innovative games. What about a company that can be as influential and disruptive as these independent efforts to start with? Is it even possible?

Amazon Mechanical Turk Survey Strategies

I recently crafted a survey to collect data on the consumption habits of gamers. I wanted to identify different types of gamers and drill down further with future surveys targeted at specific categories of game players. To do this, I used a combination of SurveyMonkey and Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Making the Survey

The first step was creating the survey. For this, I paid for an account at SurveyMonkey. I find SurveyMonkey not only has the easiest survey creation tools but great features for analyzing the data. Alternatively, you can create surveys in Google Docs for free or inside Mechanical Turk itself using HTML.

There’s a science to creating a survey. I never took a class in demography, so I relied on some books discussing proper survey technique.

A few quick tips:

  • Always ask about what the person has done, not what they will do. For instance, instead of asking how much money they would spend on a car, ask what they spent on their last car. You will get a more accurate answer.

  • Make sure they are paying attention. Especially if your survey is long, you may be vulnerable to users clicking randomly just to get through it. This Scientific American article has a neat technique for checking if the user is taking an online survey seriously. Just ask ridiculous questions at random points. If the user answers something like “Have you ever eaten a dinosaur?” positively, throw his data out. He’s obviously not giving you valid answers.

    • Amazon Mechanical Turk

    Mechanical Turk is Amazon’s micro task site they launched in 2006. You can create tasks (called HITs) of any sort and pay workers to complete them. For instance, give someone a nickel to tell you whether a username is profane or not. In my case, I paid users 25 cents to fill out my survey.

    I used this blog as a guide on how to do it. Except instead of making the survey as a web form inside the HIT’s HTML code, I embedded my SurveyMonkey survey.

    Some tips:

  • Don’t be cheap. At first, I was trying to get away with paying 10 cents per survey. At that rate, I only got 5 or so filled out a day. When I upped the price to 25 cents, I got 30-50 a day. If you look at this confidence interval calculator, you can see it takes about 400 responses to have a decent degree of accuracy. So at 25 cents you can probably get yourself 400 responses in a week. Up your payment to a dollar and you’ll get 400 in a day.

  • Don’t get excited by your first day numbers. For workers, HITs are primarily sorted by when they were created. On the first day you create your HIT it will be at the top of the list. You’ll see a significant drop off in activity after the first day. Instead of collecting results all week it might pay off to break it up into 2 day HITs. (SurveyMonkey tracks IPs to prevent users from filling your survey out twice)

  • Give workers enough time. When designing a HIT you specify a duration. Even if your survey takes 5 minutes to complete, make the HIT last at least 30 minutes. When I shortened the window to 10 minutes I started getting complaints about it expiring before workers could complete it. Yes, you will get emails from dissatisfied workers–even over a 10 cent task.

  • Amazon’s demographics are surprisingly close for the US. I had almost an even ratio of male to female responders. Racial demographics were a little off, but not enough for me to correct them. This article provides some good insight on who is using Mechanical Turk.

    • Sign up as a Mechanical Turk worker yourself to see how it’s being used. You’ll see a lot of surveys as well as tasks like transcribing audio clips or even calling customer service phone lines and rating the operator’s performance.

    You can use MTurk surveys to collect all sorts of important data on your product or service before you even start writing code. See if you are solving a real problem for paying customers with your start-up. I’ve even heard of people surveying to test how likely users are to click on different app icon designs. The possibilities are endless and the information invaluable.

    2011 Year in Review

    Location isn’t dead. It’s just everywhere.

    When Facebook announced they were killing Places, it was kind of a shock. Several months later it makes total sense. Location isn’t a feature people use apps for. Location is now part of the social web’s fabric.

    Instead of a separate Facebook feature, you can now tag a location on to anything: posts, photos, and (yes!) check-ins. It seems like location apps such as Loopt, Brightkite, and SCVNGR have faded as they all ‘pivot’ to Groupon clones or whatever.

    Now location is merely an expected feature. I’m willing to bet most people don’t use Instagram primarily because of location. Still, tagging locations on photos is popular. Instagram is outpacing Foursquare for growth. Probably because it’s actually useful beyond announcing “I’m here!” to complete strangers.

    Peak Soccer Mom.

    Zynga is a monster of a company and congrats on their IPO. I remember seeing Mark Pincus at Cassie Phillips’ very first social gaming conference 5 or so years ago as a relative nobody. This was back when SGN had more funding.

    Today, SGN is nothing but a memory. Zynga managed to upend the entire game industry, plunging the old guard into panic and chaos while blazing a trail to a 7 billion dollar valuation. Bravo!

    A lot of analysts are disappointed with the IPO. And yeah, Zynga desperately needs new customers. For this reason the company seems like it’s not a growth stock.

    Is it a risky investment? Perhaps not. Zynga is the first public company whose performance you can watch in real-time. Instead of looking at guidance and waiting for quarterly reports, just go to AppData and watch their DAUs. If only there was a way to automatically sell a stock once their user retention dropped across the board…

    Unity 3.5

    The Unity 3.5 beta is now public. The GUI is nowhere to be found–my #1 problem with Unity. Still, it has file locking for SVN and P4V support, multi-select, and a bunch of other small fixes that I’m happy with. Oh, and the Flash exporter really works. Plus, there are some promising new GUI add-ons in the Asset Store.

    Console Disruption

    The 3DS has been able to pull itself back from the brink with quality software this holiday season. This effort may prove futile as tablets and mobile devices are still pounding the handheld market into submission.

    I’m big on the Sony Vita. I even paid extra to reserve the First Edition bundle early. I am fully aboard this kamikaze mission to stuff every conceivable feature in a massively powerful device directly aimed at a market that wants nothing to do with it. A glorious death on the battlefield! I want to see how this turns out–even though a brutal, bloody loss for the axis is seemingly inevitable. Operation DOWNFALL.

    Folks I know that got a Japanese Vita say it’s a glorious piece of gaming hardware. However, the 3DS outsold the Vita during launch week in Japan. Not a good sign.

    Action Bronson Has The Best Album of the Year

    Action Bronson’s Well Done is the best album of the year. The first rapper to rhyme about how to properly cook and serve puffin. Real talk.

    Mackerel Management

    The only time I’ve ever been fishing is one trip in my early teens to fish for mackerel. Apparently this is the perfect beginner fishing trip because mackerel are really easy to catch. I remember staring in amazement as dangling a shiny lure above the water caused hordes of fish to leap into the boat. You didn’t need to hook them! I went from a total novice to catching 20 pounds of fish in one afternoon. Unfortunately, that meant eating mackerel out of my mom’s freezer for two months that Summer.

    In the software world, it’s not uncommon to be dealing with management that behaves much like mackerel. Let’s say you’ve been charged with coming up with some grand plan for a new product or changes to an existing one. (Yes, I know this is very anti lean startup, but mackerel haven’t caught up with that yet) You might come up with a ‘road map’ having all sorts of features to be deployed upon some imaginary timeline.

    The thing is, if you are working for mackerel, you have to understand that each option or feature is a shiny lure. When presented with a number of options, mackerel will jump on every single one. They are all sparkling, attractive, and worth risking a slow, gasping death aboard the deck of a fishing vessel for.

    The good thing is, mackerel are easily distracted. When managing mackerel, your job is to keep them hopping on lures and thinking they are making real decisions while you enable the people who actually do stuff to build and launch the product the right way. I’ve seen products ship using this technique. Producers convince the project leader he is in charge, but secretly direct the team to do otherwise. Once the project ships, nobody can really complain. It’s the whole “ask forgiveness later than permission before” thing.

    Mackerel management requires two things. The first one is not caring about your employment status. After all, you are directly defying the mackerel and might get canned for such brazen action. Mackerel travel in schools and don’t like to think as individuals. Also, you need the rest of the people on the project to have such disregard for mackerel that they’ll agree to silently ignore management’s requests. If you have this perfect storm of “I don’t give a shit” philosophy you may be able to upwardly manage mackerel.

    Of course, if you find yourself in this situation, you might reconsider even trying this and either start up your own thing or get a better job where such absurdity is not necessary. Still, it can be a fun sociological experiment–especially if you don’t care about getting fired.