These shovelware articles need to stop. Here are rules so we can get some basic journalism back into business articles.
RULE ONE: If you do not own ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ book or the disruption books, you do not get to talk about them. The books are available at your local bookstore. If you are too lazy to go purchase them, then you should consider yourself a rousal-rabbler instead of a journalist. Wikipedia and book reviews on the Internet are not a substitute to comprehension, and they do not include the necessary tools that are within the books. The only exception to Rule One is Rule Two.
RULE TWO: If you do not own ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ book or the disruption books, you may talk about them if you accurately quote the authors in various articles and interviews. There are a few ‘experts’ whose lives are dedicated to these strategies. Quoting them also works.
RULE THREE: If you cannot include a quote from Nintendo’s Senior Management saying what their strategy is all about, then you do not get to write articles on Nintendo’s strategy. Nintendo’s strategy is not what YOU believe it is because YOU do not run the company. If you cannot quote what Nintendo says their strategy is, it is likely you do not even know what their strategy is and are using internet memes.
RULE FOUR: Your opinion has no relevance in business articles. These are not game reviews. There are *facts* that must be adhered to which will be followed if you perform rules one, two, and three. All you can do is look at the trail of facts and see where they lead. Your ‘feelings’ matter for nothing.
RULE FIVE: Business articles are about business. If you want to talk about gaming, do a gaming article. Taking sales data and talking about games is not a business article, it is a games article. Using sales numbers to depict a type of ‘horserace’ is not a business article, it is a sensational Console War article. If you do not know, or more importantly are not interested, in knowing what ‘marketing’ really is, what ‘business models’ really are about, then you do not get to write business articles. What you will end up doing is writing a gamer article talking business cliches.
These five rules are very simple. If followed, they would eliminate 98% of the shovelware garbage articles we have been seeing. The big problem is that since gamers are obsessed by sales numbers, and make little charts with them, they think that is business strategy. It isn’t. It is just charts of sales numbers.
There is nothing wrong with gamers not being interested in business. That is how it should be. What I believe has occurred is that ever since the Dreamcast’s death, gamers have flocked to sales numbers as a type of ‘portal’ to see what is going on in the business world. They cross over in an attempt to see the future. They didn’t think that business types would use that same ‘portal’ to cross over into their gaming world. There are entrepreneurs (myself included), investors, business academics, and all looking at gaming more closely precisely because of the ascent of the Wii. If you don’t want to hear about business strategy, stop talking business. If you are sick of ‘Blue Ocean’, stop talking about business.
You cannot talk about sales without talking about business. The Gamer Community needs to ask itself: Why are we talking about sales if we have no interest in business?
