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My learnings from 6 years of building a game studio.

How to design fun work experiences and bring my team into a flow state.

I've learned so much about developing high-quality products from building video games.

Creating products that, like games, inspire thousands of players is so much fun.

Here are three of my biggest learnings from designing video games over the past ten years.

I apply them now to every one of my businesses to slingshot them to the next level.

The title is already so clickbaity, so here is one more.

I promise you that the third lesson will forever change your view on work. 😜

Three Lessons from Game Design for Building a Business.

1. Follow the Fun

There are several ways to design a game.

This is the approach I like to use:

Develop a quick and dirty prototype.
Immediately play it.
Keep what is fun and throw away what is not.
Rinse and repeat.

I can develop any other product in the same way:

Build an MVP.
Release it to users.
Keep what makes them happy and throw away the rest.
Rinse and repeat.

I like how the game version of this approach focuses on “fun.”

My product is fun when it solves my customers' problems and doesn't feel like work.

Going the extra step of making it fun will pay off every time.

My product iteratively builds itself, and I surpass my user's expectations.

Now, let's take this even one step further.

I apply this approach of following the fun to my work.

What is fun for me and my team to do?
What do we not like doing?

We find ways to remove the things we don't like and make more time for the things we like.

As a result, my team and I will have a fun playground we love playing in every day.

More fun, and less energy drainers ⇒ better product, with less effort.

2. Playing the Long Game

Developing a high-quality game takes on average 3-7 years.

This is a long time.

In our fast-paced startup world, I hear everywhere stuff like:

When you don't launch within 6 weeks, you must be doing something wrong.
Release your product before you build it.
You must reach product-market fit within 3 months, or your product is no good.

I have to tell you these people have a very short-term mindset.

These goals are not realistic and don't tell you that your business is successful at all.

In some cases, they found product market fit within 3 months.

This is not the average, though.

And not every business needs to become a unicorn to be successful.

To build a sustainable business on a realistic timeline, calculate 3-7 years to get there.

Building a sustainable business is a marathon, not a sprint.

This led me to rethink how I run my companies.

Who do I hire?
How many do I hire?
How do we work together?
And how do I keep everyone happy and keep them from burning out for several years?

We need to play the long game to build something other than an Exit-GmbH, as we call it in Germany.

Yes, you can reach the exit within one year.

If you don't want to take that exit, plan for sustainability and do things right from the start.

Which leads me to my third learning.

3. Let them Flow

I'm sure you've heard of the state of flow before.

It is a term coined by the Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

You probably know it with deep-focused work.

Countless videos and the productivity community talk about it every day.

As a game designer, I strive to achieve flow for my players with every experience I create.

Flow is the state of highest engagement with a topic that we can achieve.

The more engaged we are with a topic, the more fun we perceive it.

If we fall out of the state of flow (e.g. engagement weakens), we either get bored or anxious.

This results in less perceived fun.

I'm not talking about the kind of engagement that marketers talk about.

Their engagement is synonymous with "interested.”

I'm talking about deep cognitive involvement with your product.

An engagement where you forget everything around you.

It's like playing a game, and you zone out.

You don't hear the telephone ringing.

You forget the pizza in your oven.

Hours later, you notice that you wanted to go to bed early for once, and it's past midnight again.

That's the kind of engagement I'm talking about.

Game design is the art of creating experiences that maximize the state of flow in our players.

I want my players/users to have fun.

So, I need to find ways to engage them.

I need to find ways to bring them into a state of flow.

Apply this to your product.

Create a user journey that brings your user into a state of flow.
Remove all the obstacles from your product that could rip your user out of the flow.

If you achieve this, your user will achieve their goal with fun. Win-Win.

The onboarding of Tally is a great example of this principle.

You click one button, and you're right in a sandbox where you can play around building your first form.

The hurdle between what I want to do and how to get there evaporates.

I'm immediately playing around with the results.

As always, don't stop with your product; apply this to your team.

Remove, automate, and optimize everything that doesn't relate to their core tasks.

This way, they can concentrate on their essential core tasks.

Move meetings, emails, and communication to the peripherals of your day.

Create as much space as possible for uninterrupted flow state work.

Imagine you have an engineer who loves writing high-performance code.

Yet, they spent 5 minutes rebuilding and deploying the project after a 1-minute change to test it.

If you reduce the build and deploy process to 20 seconds, this engineer can do the job of three.

In most cases, you don't need more manpower. You need better environments for your existing team.

Final Words

I got a bit carried away with the flow topic.

I'm very passionate about designing environments. 😅

Let me recap my three learnings:

Follow the fun — prototype, test, keep the good, cut the bad, repeat.
Play the long game — plan your actions to sustain them for several years.
Let them flow — give them an environment where they're in a flow state.

Implementing one of these three in my business was already a game changer.

I'm constantly searching for new ways to make work more fun.

I want to revolutionize how we work together.

Let me hear what you do in your business to make work more fun.

Shoot me a message on LinkedIn.

3 Lessons Game Design Taught Me For Building Businesses