Scrabble as a System of Conflict

On February 10, 2010, in Uncategorized, by Ben

My analysis of Scrabble for my Game Design class:

In the game of Scrabble players go against each other by laying letters on the game board to make words. Each player at the beginning of the game receives 7 letters. Each letter has a numeric value that when played is added to your point total. This results in players competing against one another to create the words with the highest point values. High point totals can be achieved by either playing letters with high point values (usually letters used the least in English like “Q” or “Z”) or long words. The person at the end of the game with the highest point total wins. The usage of points in Scrabble creates a form of single player v. single player conflict. This staged conflict between the players is what creates meaningful play.

“The struggle among the players to achieve the goal of a game and become winners is the competitive activity that drives a game’s system of conflict.” (Salen 250) So the system of conflict in Scrabble is the struggle among players to win the game. In order for a player to win Scrabble they must have the highest point total. This creates two types of competition. First it creates competition between players – a single player v. single player conflict. Players compete against one another in the single player v. single player conflict by playing the longest and highest point words. Players try to accumulate more points than there opponent. This player v. player conflict leads to player v. oneself conflict. In this conflict players try to think of words using the 7 letters they have and the letters already on the board. This conflict occurs within the player. These two conflicts are dependent on one another and directly affect each other. For example, if one player has a dictionary they will have a competitive advantage in the player v. oneself conflict. This leads to a competitive advantage in the player v. player conflict. If a weak player v. player conflict exists (your opponent is illiterate) an equally weak player v. oneself conflict will exist (you won’t try hard to come up with words). These two conflicts are essential to Scrabble. Without the player v. player and player v. oneself conflict meaningful play would not exist. In Scrabble the system of conflict directly leads to the creation of meaningful play.

 
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Why College Is So Expensive.

On December 11, 2009, in Business, Politics, by Ben

We hear alot about the skyrocketing cost of health care. In fact, that is what is fueling the current health care debate. What about the skyrocketing cost of education in this country? Now it can be debated which one, education or health care, is more important. The long-term effects of both are huge making it a very messy debate.

But right now, which one is a bigger problem? With all the hoopla over health-care costs you would think health care is the bigger problem. I did. I was wrong.

From John Uebersax

From John Uebersax. Click image to read more about this graph.

If you look at the graph on the left, it clearly shows the cost of college tuition increasing far greater than the average cost-of-living (general costs). It even increases at a far greater rate than health care costs!

This is due to simple supply and demand. I’ve spent the day looking at data from the United States Census Bureau regarding the number of higher education institutions in this country and comparing it to the number of students continuing on to higher education. The data shows me that the number of students entering college and universities has increased at a far greater rate than the number of institutions. Let me explain: the supply of education (the number of higher education institutions in this case) has not kept up with the demand (the number of students seeking bachelor’s, masters, doctorates, etc). If the demand goes up, and the supply does not go up at roughly the same rate, price will be pushed up.

Look at my graph below (sorry it doesn’t look as pretty as the one of the left). As the number of higher education institutions only increased every decade by less than one percent, students attending higher education institutions grew by as little as 1.5 percent to as much at 5.5 percent in 1980. For instance, in 1960 there were approximately 2,000 higher education institutions in the United States. By the year 2000, there were a little over 4,000 (4,182 to be exact). It took about 40 years for the number of higher education institutions to double. In 1960, 7.7% of adults 25 and older had a higher education degree. In 1980, 16.2% of the that population had a higher education degree. It took only 20 years for that percentage to double. So the number of people getting higher education degree doubled in half the time as the number of institutions offering degree’s. See the problem? Supply did not keep up with demand.

So at the end of the day why is the spotlight on health-care costs when the ballooning costs of education is worse? The skyrocketing cost of higher education is hurting our standing in the world. With more and more students graduating every year with debt America’s innovation and entrepreneurship will be stifled. Graduating with higher debt encourages students to take the highest paying job. It does not encourage graduates to take the one with the highest possible future return. Student’s will op to take the steady paycheck and work at a large corporation. They will choose not to start their own business, take a steady paycheck for a year and change the world. Had Bill Gates graduated with $200,000 in debt would he have gone on to start Microsoft? Or become a doctor or lawyer?

Comparing the rate of increase for higher education institutions and students

Comparing the rate of increase for higher education institutions and students

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The Future of Pandora and What It Means For Radio

On November 24, 2009, in Business, by Ben
Pandora is a real threat to Radio, unlike Satellite Radio

Pandora is a real threat to Radio, unlike Satellite Radio

Right now I’m cruising at 32,000 feet on an American Airlines flight to Palm Springs, CA. I was lucky enough to get one of American’s plane’s outfitted with Gogo Wifi so I don’t have to listen to the kid behind me for 3 hours. Instead, I’m listening to Pandora and scouring the internet. This brings me to my point and something I’ve been thinking about for the past week:The future of Pandora.

The future of Pandora and the expansion of Wifi, like in planes for example, go hand in hand. Wifi is becoming more common place and it will only accelerate. With the introduction of Sprint’s 4G network (also called WiMAX – just a glorified, wide scale WiFi network) Pandora will be available in many different locations. This can currently be seen with the Pandora mobile apps, like the one of my iPhone. I’ve listened to Pandora on both the EDGE (2G) and AT&T’s crap 3G network. Both times I got acceptable audio quality. With the expansion of the 4G network, and download speeds of 4 – 5 megabytes per second, Pandora’s audio quality potential will rival CD’s, not to mention radio.

When TV was introduced, terrestrial radio adopted by moving their main means of contact with the customer from the living room to the car. This has been the same for decades. Radio has weathered the storm known as satellite radio (Sirius/XM) with the prevalence of local content among other things. I feel like the cost/benefit analysis for satellite radio is off kilter – with regards to paying for commercial free music, satellite radio’s main attraction. People don’t see the justification for a monthly fee in commercial free music.

As 4G/WiMax networks roll out in the next decade, a high-speed internet connection will never be out of reach. I see no reason why car’s will not have receivers to use these high speed 4G connections. Car’s will be turned into mobile hot spots essentially. People will be able to connect to their car’s wireless network with their iPhone, Blackberry, laptop, etc and get an internet connection anywhere.

This could lead to Pandora becoming serious competition for terrestrial radio. With the car having an internet connection there is no reason why there couldn’t be a Pandora button on your car radio. Especially with the growing prevalence of ‘touch screen’ entertainment center’s in vehicles – something Pandora is positioned to capitalize on with the option to purchase songs with iTunes or bookmarking songs. This is out there but with GPS being installed in nearly all new vehicles, Pandora could tell where you are right now and play local news, weather and commercials – something that has protected radio from satellite radio and iPods. Think about driving down the interstate and Pandora tells you that up ahead 3 miles there’s a crash. Pandora passes the information to your car’s GPS navigation and automatically spits out a new route.

So far, I’ve said alot. And I’ve maybe gotten ahead of myself. First, about Pandora. Pandora is an internet radio station on STEROIDS! When you first visit Pandora.com you enter a song, or artist, and Pandora automatically generates a “station” consisting of songs similar to the song or artist you entered. As you listen to the songs you can “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” songs and Pandora learns your music tastes and plays music catered to you. Also, did I mention it is free? Well, kinda. You can listen for free for 40 hours a month. When your 40 hours are up you can pay 99 cents and listen as much as you want for the rest of the month. Or you could join Pandora One – pay $36 a year ($3 a month) and you get unlimited listening, higher audio quality (192kps, which is better than terrestrial radio), no advertisements and other things.

Now, how would Pandora in the car make money? Well, there’s nothing stopping them from selling advertisements or charging like they do now. Advertisements would be better from a business aspect. Think about it. They know exactly what songs we like. Whether we like it or not our taste in music says a lot about us. That’s what radio, television, print and internet advertising is based on now: demographics and tastes. Most of the time they don’t know half what Pandora knows. Pandora would be best positioned of any of those mediums to place an ad in front of the right person. They could even implement the thumbs up and thumbs down for ads: narrowing down your taste even more. Find that Shamwow commercial helpful? Thumps up it. Hate McDonalds? Thumbs down it. Pandora is sitting on information about their user’s that marketers want and could use.

Pandora has amazing revenue potential. Not just as an internet music service but as a mobile music service. In my mind it all revolves around Pandora getting in the car, something that 4G and WiMax will make possible in the next couple of years. In fact, it’s available now in many parts of the country: Clear.com, Chicago Tribune “WiMax edges closer to city”

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Unconventional Startup Financing

On November 18, 2009, in Business, by Ben

Seth Godin’s blog had an interesting post the other day on how a startup, or small business, can raise money.

The two most common answers to raising capital are 1) getting a loan from a bank, and 2) raise equity from an investor by giving up part of your company in exchange. Banks don’t like making risky investments meaning, depending on the size of your loan, you may have to put your house as collateral or other assets. Also, there’s more people who want Venture Capital money than there is out there making it hard to find. Because these two options may not be optimal for small business’ or startups Godin put’s forth a third option:

I’d like you to consider the idea of selling part of your income.It works like this: you have an idea, a fledgling business or a new market to enter. You find an amateur investor (a wealthy dentist, a retired executive) and raise the money to bring it to market. And in return? The investor gets $xx for every unit you sell. From the first one until forever.

No fancy bookkeeping, no board meetings, no worrying about the accounting. Instead, you pay a royalty on income. The rest is up to you.

Of course, this is exactly how the math of book publishing works. The publisher puts up money and keeps 80 or 90 percent of the income. You get the rest.

It could even run on a sliding scale, with early royalties to the investor being lower, or with a buyout once a certain amount was earned back… If you needed $5,000 for some tooling, perhaps you could offer an investor $100 for every unit you sell until you’ve paid her $10,000, then $40 a unit forever after that. (typos fixed, sorry).

Need to raise money for a restaurant? It’s hard for an investor to figure out how to win by owning equity (because it’s so easy for the owner of the restaurant to manipulate profit). But if the investor gets 4% of every check paid, that’s money back starting on the first day.

Investors are as irrational as the rest of us. They buy a story and expectation about risk. They buy the excitement of upside. They buy an opportunity to turn one thing into another. Banks want a boring story. Other investors might like this alternative story quite a bit.

My general bias for entrepreneurs starting out is to bootstrap their business, because raising money is so hard and so distracting. But if you’ve set out to do something that needs cash you can’t raise any other way, this is worth exploring. Tell a story to an investor that wants to hear it, and create a cash-flow scenario that makes the investment worth it for both of you.

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U.S. National Debt Clock

On November 12, 2009, in Politics, by Ben

This is a great web site that every one should look at – usdebtclock.org.

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