u/TenthLevelVegan

A friend of mine made a video examining something I've always found interesting about Final Fantasy Tactics.

How does a game that starts with class warfare, political corruption, and competing claims to the throne eventually arrive at the conclusion that the real problem was demons?

Which, to be fair, would simplify a lot of political science textbooks.

One interpretation he explores is that the Zodiac Brave Story is itself a historical narrative written by Oran, rather than an entirely objective record of events.

That raises an interesting question: how much of the supernatural stuff are we supposed to take literally, and how much might be history slowly turning into legend?

I'm not suggesting the Lucavi were invented. But there's something funny about a historian trying to explain a complicated civil war and eventually having to write, "Anyway, then the pope turned into a monster."

I'm curious whether people think this interpretation holds up, or whether we're giving the writers too much credit.

Here's his video if anyone's interested: Youtube Link

On our channel we use games to explain management and leadership ideas, and XCOM 2 ended up being a really good way to talk about what happens when everything starts feeling urgent at once. The thing XCOM does really well is make you feel like whatever is directly in front of you HAS to be the most important thing. Mission timer is ticking down, somebody is wounded, you just activated another pod,

there’s some horrible alien standing there doing alien bullshit,

and meanwhile the campaign is still moving in the background. Avatar Project is progressing. Soldiers are getting hurt. Research is taking time. You still need resources. You still need a roster after this mission. So you can absolutely make the “right” decision for this turn and still make your overall situation worse. Threat prioritization is probably the easiest example. A Sectoid can look like the obvious problem because it’s weird and scary and has all the psychic stuff, but somebody who has played enough XCOM might be much more worried about the boring Officer or Trooper who can actually ruin the next turn.

That was the part I found really interesting from a management angle. When everything at work is urgent, people get very good at reacting to whatever is loudest. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re reacting to the thing with the biggest consequence. Grid Commander helped me with this episode because I wanted somebody who actually knows XCOM at a high level to explain what experienced players are seeing that newer players aren’t. Then I tied that into decision-making under pressure, expert intuition, and how people keep track of the wider situation without freezing up.

If that sounds interesting: Youtube Link

Screw it im going all in on this momentum strike

On our channel, we explain management and leadership theory using games as analogies and sometimes as little sandboxes to mess around with the ideas before trying to apply them in the real world. The basic idea with this one is pretty simple. Having a giant stockpile does not necessarily mean you are actually prepared. Don’t Starve is kind of perfect for this because you can have chests full of logs, grass, food, random crafting materials and all kinds of stuff you were convinced would be useful later, and then still get caught needing the one resource you barely bothered to keep around.

So in reality im really learning what i should protect myself from instead of something simpler like how much stuff should i have If logs are easy to replace, then having ten stacks of them might not be doing much for me. If Pig Skin is harder to replace and I know I need armor for something dangerous coming up, then that is a completely different kind of buffer. Food gets weirder because it can spoil, so a giant stockpile can actually become waste before it ever protects you from anything which as it turns out is pretty close to how the management side works too. Companies build buffers everywhere. Extra inventory. Extra capacity. Backup suppliers. Contingency time you know this is basically the stuff I as a purchasing manager/operations manager deal with irl. Sometimes those are absolutely necessary and ometimes they are just leftovers from stuff i got yelled at for not having when we needed it. So I'm reading up on inventory theory to actually have some legit theory to backup my decisions instead of just pointing at whtever the sales forecast says and winging it. How uncertain is demand? How long does replacement take? How bad is it if you run out? And once we have enough, what should actually trigger me to get more? I like to tie these lessons into gaming analogies, and this one ended up using Don’t Starve Together to look at Goldratt, safety stock, lead time, and pull systems, but really it is about that very familiar survival-game problem of being surrounded by useful stuff and still somehow not having the thing you need when you need it. I made a longer video about it here if anyone is interested: Youtube Link

On our channel, we explain management and leadership theory using games as analogies and even sandboxes to experience concepts before trying to apply them to the real world.

The basic idea here is that organizations often assume an information problem is solved once the information is available. But having access to information and actually knowing what to do with it are two very different things.

Front Mission 3 is a great example because of its Network system. You can find a web address, get a password, open a site, or receive a message and still have no idea why any of it matters yet.

The information is there. You have access to it. But another clue or piece of context can completely change how useful that same information becomes.

The management idea is pretty similar. A company can put something in a shared drive, write a procedure, build a dashboard, or send an email and technically make the information available to everyone. But that doesn't mean everyone has the experience or context to know which part matters, what it means, or what they should actually do with it.

That's why you can have a perfectly documented process and everyone still goes looking for the same experienced person when something weird happens.

I made a longer video about the management theory behind this using Front Mission 3 alongside Deep Rock Galactic to look at the difference between data, information, and knowledge, why useful knowledge can get stuck with particular people, and how organizations actually move it around.

If you're interested: Youtube Link

On our channel, we explain management and leadership theory using games as analogies and sometimes as sandboxes to experience the concepts. The basic idea here is that sometimes a team needs more structure. But sometimes the structure itself is now solving yesterday’s problem. I talked with Ben Carcich from Building Better Games about this. He went from being an Army officer to production leadership at Riot Games, which gives him a pretty extreme version of that transition. What worked in one environment could become friction in the other. Closing decisions quickly might help when delay is dangerous. On an R&D team, closing the same decision too early might kill information you still needed. So the interesting question became: what problem was this management habit originally solving? Because if the problem changed, repeating the thing that made you successful can actually make you worse. We made a longer video about that here if youre interested: Youtube Link

I discovered MM when i used it in a video to explain management debt. Thought of you all when I saw this video about Dyeversion. Fans of the escalating difficulty in Mini Motorways will enjoy the roguelite skill tree, which lets you permanently upgrade your network capacity and strategy over time. If the thrill of perfecting a complex, interconnected system is what draws you to Mini Motorways, Dyeversion offers that same satisfaction, just with a vibrant, tower-defense twist.

if youre interested in checking it out on the channel where i found it: https://youtu.be/Krwu-BTkzsY?is=fqob7hpJRtUErrKF

Steam link for demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4899940/Dyeversion/

On our channel, we explain management and leadership theory using games as analogies and even sandboxes to experience concepts before trying to apply them to the real world.The basic idea here is that sometimes a system is underperforming because people aren't trying hard enough. But sometimes the actual problem is that the system around them makes the work harder than it needs to be.

Oxygen Not Included is a great example because you can raise the priority on a job and get a duplicant to pay attention to it sooner. But that doesn't create the missing materials, shorten the travel path, fix a bad schedule, give them the right skills, or put oxygen where they're trying to work.

So if the real bottleneck is somewhere in the colony design, making the task more urgent can move it up the queue without actually fixing what was slowing it down.

The management idea is pretty similar. Leaders often respond to slow work by adding more pressure, tighter targets, bonuses, penalties, or another round of "this needs to be done now." Sometimes that works. But if the real problem is bad role fit, missing resources, poor information, too much travel between tasks, or a badly designed process, then you're basically hitting the priority button on a colony that still has the same underlying problem.

I made a longer video about the management theory behind this using Oxygen Not Included alongside How Many Dudes? to look at incentives, motivation, and why pressure can sometimes make the wrong problem more visible instead of solving it. If you're interested: Youtube Link

The basic idea here is something called a catalytic mechanism, which is basically a small rule or structural change that ends up changing how a much larger system works. Against the Storm is a great example because one cornerstone, blueprint, production bonus, or other change to your settlement can suddenly affect a bunch of other things. Sometimes one choice solves several problems at once. Or, if it doesn't fit what you've built, it can create a completely different problem somewhere else. The management idea is pretty similar. Sometimes changing one rule people work under does more than repeatedly telling everyone what the strategy is supposed to be. I made a longer video about the management theory behind this using GuildRun as the main game analogy. If you're interested: Youtube Link

The basic idea here is something called a catalytic mechanism, which is basically a small rule or structural change that ends up changing how a much larger system behaves.

Anno 1800 is a great example because once your economy gets complicated, changing one trade route, stock minimum, production chain, or workforce allocation can suddenly fix problems in several other places. Or, if you get it wrong, create a whole new set of problems somewhere else.

The management idea is pretty similar. Sometimes changing one rule people work under does more than repeatedly telling everyone what the strategy is supposed to be.

I made a longer video about the management theory behind this using GuildRun as the main game analogy. If you're interested: Youtube Link

When writing about management and leadership theory, I use games as analogies to explain concepts that can otherwise get pretty abstract. I wrote about something called a catalytic mechanism, which is basically a rule or constraint that changes how a whole system behaves without requiring someone to constantly manage every individual decision. Frostpunk is a pretty good example of this because so much of the game is about changing the rules the city operates under. You can tell yourself what kind of city you want to build, but once you start changing laws, work expectations, resource priorities, and other systems, those choices start producing consequences throughout the city whether you intended all of them or not.

Thats basically the management idea Im trying to explain. Organizations can say they value one thing, but people usually end up responding to the actual rules or incentives (think goodharts law)

The other interesting part is that changing one rule can solve a problem while creating a completely different problem somewhere else, which is where systems thinking and feedback loops come into it. If you're interested, I made a video using a different game as the analogy to explain these concepts: Youtube Link

I used Guildrun to explain a concept called Catalytic Mechanisms, which is a theory about how small changes influence entire loops and systems. Think about how your relics change your entire teams behavior despite, or how small positioning shifts change the entire incoming damage calculation. The key to realize is that guildrun is an easy way to understand on a larger scale that systems management especially when it comes to orgs that involve people (like if youre a manager or leader) are modified by small, incremental changes that influence entire systemic loops.

If youre interested in the video that takes these observations and uses them as an analogy for management and leadership theory, here is the link: Orchestrating tiny changes that make large changes (youtube)

Here's the link to the vid if you missed it:

https://youtu.be/WEVpSHdGDgU?is=NQnTcBY2xHc9aMTJ

For a lot of us in management, me included, we somethimes let ourselves fall into a trap of relying too much on one key person, to the point that if they suddenly quit or have a sudden extended absense your entire operation will grind to a halt. Luckily, we can learn a few techniques on how to optomize setting up a bench and a leadership pipeline to spread knowledge and capability across the entire organizaiton so that if that superstar leaves the organization doesn't leave with them. I used Homm as an analogy for this like how if you only train up one hero and give them all of your best artifacts and the entire army, if you lose that hero and all your mules are totally worthless and underleveled, you won't stand a chance of a recovery.

No, this isn't some unhinged Linkedin feverdream.

Here's a link to the video if this sounds like something you'd be interested in: Youtube

Here are the sources I cite throughout the video:

Capron, L., & Mitchell, W. (2012). Build, Borrow, or Buy: Solving the Growth Dilemma. Harvard Business Review Press.

Cappelli, P. (2008). Talent Management for the Twenty-First Century. Harvard Business Review.

Charan, R., Drotter, S., & Noel, J. (2001). The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership-Powered Company. Jossey-Bass.

Coyne, K. P. (2008). Enduring Ideas: The GE-McKinsey Nine-Box Matrix. McKinsey Quarterly.

Or do I go back to the drawing board? Im using homm3 to explain a team management concept and im designing the thumbnail

Right. Yeah. This isn't Linkedinslop. This is me as an operations manager suffering from feelings of guilt in dealing with an employee, and instead of doing what was optimal for the organizaiton I let my feelings of guilt make the wrong choice for the team and made everyone feel bad and kill long term productivity. I worked on learning how to manage and process these emotions, and came across Emotional Functionalism, basically labeling emotions and then repurposing. I used two games as analogies: Papers, Please to Label the emotions, and then Smash Melee's wave-dashing, in that a glitch was basically repurposed as a powerful movement technique. If you're interested in it, I made a video that goes pretty indepth about fMRI's, disgust, and medical research that digs into how our brains manage these responses and how we can more objectively process them as managers and leaders:

Youtube Link (to the past. or toon link)