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September 2006
October 2006

2006-09-20 »

Delirium 0 (second try): Nerve Center

When you play a computer strategy simulation, there might be hundreds of agents doing your bidding - workers, warriors, transports, cities, convoys, and maybe even angels and demons. They march to your orders, they do more work than you could ever do for yourself, faster than you can see, because the computer handles the details - you just handle the strategy.

But the real world isn't quite like that. In the real world, real minions cost real money, and have real feelings, and want real self-actualization and self-expression. Minions are real people, just like strategists, and minions want to grow up to become strategists like you. But managing the feelings of your minions takes work - it takes away from your game - it weakens you compared to the other players who "feel" their minions better than you do.

What if your real-life minions weren't people, but computers? What if whole aspects of your business didn't need human minions anymore - just automatons with some strategic direction? What if every human was a strategist, and every meeting was a strategy meeting, and the details managed themselves?

Well, then your business would have more power than any other business. You could do more with fewer, smarter humans, all of whom would actually be worth hanging out with after work. One change to your management logic would retrain all your hordes instantly. This sort of power is dangerous if you don't know how to use it - but soon, it'll be the difference between winning and losing the game. And the one who rules the game is the most powerful strategist, the one who defines the game itself. The one who programs the minions.

The winning strategist is the one who can hold the whole game in his mind at once, and let the details work themselves out exactly how he would want them to work out.

So what if I told you I've found a real-life game that we can really play this way? I guess then we'd just need the right programmers to control it.

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