Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Akil.
And for today's episode, we cover how to go from ideas to
actual applications, where to start, which ideas to pick and
all the work involved to a point where you have a full-fledged
mobile game. For example, my guest Rosemary,
low cost is the CEO and founder of Story by Studio where they do
all of that. And more, I'll put all our
socials in the description below.
Check her out. And with that being said, enjoy
the episode. Take space in Switzerland
because I have no clue. Actually pretty good.
I mean, the penetration of technology and so it's, um, it's
pretty high and that's why there is a bunch of tech companies
here because, you know, the customers here actually use a
lot of technology and also we have, you know, a couple of
really, really large International companies like
Novartis of my love of UBS and Credit Suisse.
And so they they account for a lot of the tech market.
And that means that there's also a lot of people delivering Tech
to them here. Yeah.
Okay. Just Swiss people do like to
innovate a little bit, even though that that's not really
what they're known for worldwide, but they like doing
that. And so, for example, where I
live in, zook there's a bunch of blockchain companies and crypto
companies that have sort of saddles here and they call this,
they like to call themselves crypto Valley around here.
Yeah, yeah, they can get incentives and tax incentives
and stuff like that. So there's there's a over 200
small companies that are in that space.
Of crypto blockchain, you know, metaverse stuff here, just in
this small little town that I live in.
Wow. That's, that's incredible.
When so, when a company really wants to innovate, I mean they
come to you pretty often as well.
But how did they find you? How did they get to your
doorstep? Is a lot of networking.
Some of it is, I mean usually it's Word of Mouth other people
that that refer me from projects that I've done.
So I've been really lucky in the last 34 years.
I've only gotten Projects through referrals.
Well which is, you know, I don't really have very up-to-date
websites or anything like that because of usually we're very
small, right? And we're pretty, pretty booked
out for quite a while. So we usually have like only one
larger project that we do and then at the same time that the
other projects we do is just smaller things.
So we would take on like, let's say one startup where we really
help them with their technology and their idea of what they want
to do overall, where we help. I'm with the production of the
software, the applications that we want to do and then we take
on in parallel a couple of smaller projects, like maybe
helping the people with the storyline or only with the
concept of what they want to do or you know it's certain
workshops or doing some quality assurance but really just like
punctual Consulting where we're good at and then one larger
project. So that way, you know it really
is, it's nice, we get to see still a lot of stuff that's
going on and a lot of different new managers and at the same
time, we have some security Tea with one of our bigger project.
So this is the current one where on probably runs through to at
least end of next year. Yeah.
And then you know, apart from that I just take on stuff that I
find is. It's just interesting and that,
our team can bite its teeth into that's pretty cool.
That's pretty cool. Can you give an example of one
of the kind of longer projects that have been running or that?
Maybe it's ready the larger one that we did in the last couple
of years with a an application or game called Shadows Edge?
Each and it was a serious game, meaning that the game, had a
purpose Beyond, just entertainment.
Yeah. So that was a mental health game
where we took contents from a book that an offer had written.
And then we digitize those and turn that into an actual game of
a city that's been hit by a storm.
Just like, you know, when something bad has happened in
your life and with different types of psychological
influences and exercises in the game, we then helped players
Realize you know what was happening to them help them
build tools for resilience to be able to understand what they're
going through and how they're doing things and to be able to
then to handle those basically. And so, in the game you had
artistic expression, exercises cognitive behavioral therapy
exercises, as well as also expression, through journaling,
and through prompted general questions, if you will.
Yeah, that's a lot. Did the client.
So I'm assuming a client has an idea before they come to you to
kind of execute it. Did they already have this in
mind or did it kind of grow organically in that way?
This one grew kind of organically.
I mean, they be asked, was, can you help us digitize the book
that we have? And, yeah, we have our general
audiences kids. Because they had a really cool
book that use prompted journaling questions to help
kids understand what they were going through when they're
dealing with a chronic illness and they Wanted to reach an
audience, that was more in the teen young adults face.
And so, therefore, we then looked at, you know, what were
the options? Can we use like audio books or,
you know, Kindle books or things like that, or do we want to
really make it more interactive? And as soon as we knew we wanted
to make it interactive, then we popped up with the idea of well,
why don't you try and make a game of it?
Because that's where the kids are.
Let's see if we can get the psychological content to a
medium that they like doing that provides some stickiness and
that Helps them adhere to a longer-term program.
And so that's that's why we came up with the game.
So it was kind of a team effort. Yeah.
That's pretty cool. And then, I mean the game
creating a game is very specialized work.
I would assume I've never done it and I built all the software
but never in a game sense is that also?
What you what you specialize in or like, what your team
specializing in? Yeah, so with my team, what we
do is we look at what is around and we see we try to help the
customer. Figure out what is the best
medium that they could use? Sometimes that is a gamified
application. Sometimes we take mechanisms
from gaming or storytelling parts from gaming and just build
it into an application. Sometimes it's really a game, a
full-on game. So at the moment, for example,
I'm Consulting on a weight-loss application where we use
gamified elements to help people understand why they're not
losing weight and help them really understand.
How wait. This happens and also then give
them exercises. So one of the things about
weight loss, for example, is that a lot of that happens in
your brain and it happens already before you even know it
happens. And what you can do is you can
help retrain your brain and we use a our exercises or vented
reality exercises to help people.
Let's say desensitize against food, right?
It's the same methods that are used for addiction because
eating is also some kind of addiction.
And so therefore that kind of mechanism from gaming to really
use the Technologies and to build up different levels,
basically, right to make it from easy, going to look through
learning to make it more interesting and more, and more
challenging. That's all mechanisms that we
use from gaming, but it is a proper application with
psychological content, you know, verified by doctors, we're doing
clinical trials. And they're basically what my
company does is really advises on how structurally, how we
could build this up. How you can create the levels,
the content making the Content from taking it from a
psychological perspective and making it more user-friendly, if
you will, you know? Yeah.
It said before for people to understand and really divide
them up into small design Loops so that you can have a little
bit of a, a feeling of having achieved something in smaller
steps before you then take the next step.
And those are mechanisms from gaming that we bring in, but we
don't develop the game or that the application, there's a
different company that does that we just advise on, you know, the
methods. Puts from gaming and inputs from
storytelling that you can do. And that's that's what I mean
with you know the smaller projects that we take on on the
side whereas with shadows Edge. For example, we did all of it,
right? The whole production, we were
the ones that hired the get the development Studio, oversaw the
development. Yeah.
Also do the whole project management bringing the game to
market doing all the interviews and and the pr for it and
marketing for it gets etcetera. That's incredible.
Because just for my idea and also for the audience's idea,
when it comes to your team, how many people are we talking
about? Kind of with, in this case it
goes, it scales up in the scales down, six, we only have three
people. Okay, B, we have.
I have a about 20 Freelancers that I work with on a regular
basis and that come in depending on expertise and what you have
to think about there is if you go into a project like this, a
lot of times companies, don't know how big the project is
going to get until they understand what their needs are
and what they want to do, right? And so, Don't want a full-on
team yet with everything going on.
So what we do is basically we have this sort of ascent
mechanism of doing a workshop that gets them through this idea
finding into like a base concept and those base concept.
Usually we have like two or three varieties that's Workshop
that takes about two to three days of with the client and then
about two weeks work to prepare the concept ideas so that they
can visualize it so that they know what kind of a budget is
there at cetera. That's one of my my core team
and I that's what we what we started on what we do and then
within that we pull in people from, let's say development.
So we have people that really know how to code very well, we
have front-end coders back and coders we know people in AR and
VR that we pull in, you know, for a very specific advice.
For example, I also work with psychologists and user research
people, so that we understand what we're trying to achieve in
that we know how to set up the measurements because it's one,
Thing to build a game for mental health.
But how do you measure that, right?
How do you know that the game is successful?
And you have to think of that before you actually build the
game you can't just build it and then afterwards saying, let's
look at this one. Exactly.
Especially since a lot of times these larger projects have a big
budget and so therefore the I think the reason why clients
come to me is because they don't have to lock into a full project
at the beginning. We can do this kind of concept
work with, you know, getting various specialists in for a
very very short periods of time to really nail things down.
And then from there, sometimes they do things in house.
Like I did a concept for a beverage company that had the
issue in Latin America that they had these kiosks, and Mom and
Pop shops, these little cafes come up with young people,
starting their own little company and of course they had
no education or anything. So they didn't really know how
to handle those. And then they basically go
bankrupt within a couple of months and that's not good for
the People obviously, but it's also not good for the beverage
company because they lose inventory, they have a new
customer, they have to, you know, go after again, then again
and again and again. And so we came up with this sort
of SimCity like game, but really for a small kiosk in a small
business to simulate, how they would run inventory, how, you
know, to simulate managing their money, for example, and how they
would get customers in. And if they played that game and
leveled up, they would get real life benefits from the beverage
company. Like these Council drinks free.
Merchandise, for example, you know, free furniture, B, those
kind of things just to help them get through.
So, this is again, a serious game.
The idea is to help people get a little bit of an education
around being an entrepreneur and what they're doing.
But it also brings benefits to the company because their losses
went down and having to come up with new customers.
Every like two to three months basically, and so there, we only
help with the concept and then they decided to build the thing
in house. And we just periodically, you
know, Steering committee to work to check our progress is going.
Yeah, I think that that flexibility is worth a lot for,
I mean, customers or clients, whatever you want to call them,
right. If they want to do it in-house
and they have the capabilities to do so they can and otherwise
scaling up with people that you trust people within your
network. Probably people you've worked
with before is a huge benefit because when it actually has to
ramp up when you know, a lot of things need to get done and you
just need to do it. It.
That's when you actually need people that do that work and
before that, it's a lot of ideation and that has to do with
okay, talking with the stakeholders also, knowing,
probably what technically is possible and what is not
possible and be able to challenge the ideas.
But when you want to ramp up the option to do, so I think is, is
very valuable. My question there is I mean, it
takes a lot of trust right to work with a lot of Freelancers
people that you trust people that you've worked with before,
but before you can work with people that you've worked with
before, there's always that first time in building up that
trust or having that first dialogue, getting to know each
other. How did you get your network to
a point where you confidently can say we can ramp up whenever
we need to because I have a network of people that I trust
and that can get this done. Yeah, I think that's that's just
happening over time. I mean, that's not something.
Can rush into you have to have done a few projects with people,
you know, I mean for for some of the games we did we did rfps and
we really reached out and saw what those people can do and we
looked at what they've done in other other customer projects
and reach out to those those customer projects.
Yeah but a lot of it is really is really again word of mouth,
right? If I work with some Freelancers
and they want to pull somebody in then I know that that's
somebody they trust otherwise they wouldn't bring them into
the project and so Therefore, a lot of the network that we have
comes through working with people who then again, work with
people Etc. And that's just something you
build up over time. The idea to do this was not
really born as a business concept saying, okay, I want to,
you know, only work with freelances from now on, but it
was actually really more personally for me because I've
been in startups and I'd actually just, you know, given
18 hours a day to those startups, and I was quite tired
and I said, look, I want to downsize a little bit.
And so I wanted to Take some time off and really kind of feed
my the creative side, again, the creative, passive passion, and
therefore, I eat, I scaled down basically, right?
And luckily, I was able to put some of the team that I had into
other projects, which is great, right?
And then some of the team I knew I wanted to get back or retain
and and basically hired them out for certain projects for a
limited time. And then I notice, well while I
was taking some time off for myself, I actually kept Being
involved in some Concepts and some concept work and some
ideation as you say and I started seeing that that's
actually something that people need.
And I don't really, you know, after 30 years in this kind of
business, I don't really feel the need to build up huge
company anymore. I just want to do work, that's
fun, right? Yeah.
People always ask for hauling, you know, are you successful?
And what is success for you? All success for me is having to
wake up, being able to wake up every morning, do something that
you think is really fun and being able to make Good, living
off its right now. Does that mean I need to have
100 employees or 200 or 500? Because that's for me, more of a
status symbol than actually doing a good job.
And I really love being able to be involved in all these kinds
of different projects and learning something new every
single time. And that's why, you know, this
balance works for us to do to bring a little bit of security
because if you have employees, they want some security to.
So bring a little bit security with longer-term projects right
now. For example, I'm working on an
Esports. Any where I'm getting into the
company, also on an investment level, if you will, and we're
doing some activations in the Esports industry and that's,
that's a very early start up, but that's a longer-term.
You know, there's we're going to look for for larger investment
and really build that company up.
So I'm staying involved with that and that gives us a little
bit of long-term leeway for the people in my team.
And it allows me to do applications on the side that
Just really interesting and helpful.
Also, for serious gaming such as the weight loss app, or, you
know, simulation applications in smart, CD areas, for example.
Yeah, I love that. I love that.
I can be exactly, but it doesn't have to be complex, right?
A lot of people make, whatever success means make a very
complex, but it can be. I mean, smaller, kind of can
give it this Justice. I guess I wouldn't call it
smaller in a negative sense but it can be simpler, right?
It doesn't have to be complex if you wake up, and You love what
you're doing? You can make a good living off
of it. Then why can't that be enough,
right? That should be enough.
I mean, it doesn't have to be depends on your yourself
obviously, but if that's enough, that's really great.
So I love ya. She has a different meaning of
success, I think for them and for me, it's really being able
to, you know, if I feel like the weather is nice and I live 20
minutes from the mountains, and I want to take an afternoon off,
yeah, Frank because I know that everything is sorted and and I
have a great team behind me and I Do those kind of things and I
offer that also to the people that work with me.
You know, we always take care of each other.
We always make sure that if we need to do something privately,
always make sure that that's possible.
And we always make sure that everybody is happy with the work
that we're jointly doing. And that's just for me a lot
more fun, you know, I get up now and it's every day is just
really a fun day and we figure out what we can do and we figure
out what's possible with technology.
I mean that's that's awesome to be able to say that and to be
able to experiment with that. Yeah.
For sure, one of the one of the questions I still had was I mean
when a client comes to you and they have a certain problem with
the have a certain domain. I'm assuming you don't really
are specialized in that domain yet but you feel confident
enough to take ownership of that.
Right? Whether it's the psychological
aspect in the empathy of the game that you mentioned before
or it's kind of the Esports kind of venture you're going into.
Now those are very opposites in domain and sure they might have
gamified Elements which kind of a line there but still you have
Have to be confident enough to say.
Okay, we can do this. How do you get that confidence
up there to where you can say okay we can do this and when a
client comes to you, maybe you can also say we can't really do
this. How do you go about up?
Yeah, it's sometimes you do say we can't do this or we say, you
know, this is possible. However, we might need a partner
for that because we don't do that, or we sometimes even say,
well, you know, probably it's not even possible and we have to
actually figure out, is it possible which I have one of
those cases? The moment that I'm working on,
We're just trying to see. Is it even really possible that
they want to do yet, right? At some point.
Everything will be possible anyways, because it's
technology, but, but, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, the first thing that I, that, that I do, when I customer
comes to me with a, with a problem or with with a fun
challenge, that they want to want to do, is I just listened
to them and I tell them. Okay, that's your domain, you
know, exactly what works there. Here's the ideas of what we can
add to it, and how we could add to that.
So, an example, we have a music customer that were working with
now to see how can we turn their meeting grades with musicians
into the metaverse into a fun environment and attach like
gaming areas with it. Yeah.
So that's kind of Esports and Jason because they're same
mechanisms in there, but I'm not, you know, I don't know,
music except from consuming it, right?
And so therefore we need their specialist but the the part I
think that's really We sometimes difficult for people who are
more in the coding side is to translate other people's
business into what is possible. Technology from a technology
perspective and I think that's why we're really good.
And that's why customers come to us.
Because we don't say, we know everything, every single thing,
like the psychology of weight loss, I didn't know anything
before I started with this application, right?
But the doctor that wants to make that application.
He's been doing that feel and he's been working in that field
for 35 years. So he knows how to do this.
So then it's a matter of taking his content and translating that
into different smaller stories and helping him, kind of make it
into chunks that are understandable and from those
chunks and also helping him see what technologically is
possible. And then we have the discussion,
you know, like, for example, one of the exercises that that will
go in, there is about food and restraint being able to handle,
you know. Having to put in front of you
and say no to it or stop after a couple of bites, it's a very
tricky thing for somebody to do just like, you know, if you put
a pack of smokes in front of somebody and then tell them what
you don't have to take it. I mean it's not really it's not
really an option for exactly. And so you know, then we looked
at okay, how can we do that? Would a our help because you're
putting them exactly into that situation where they are, you
can put them into their own living room with the foods.
They like right? Yeah.
Except in the first step, it's not real.
So it's a little bit easier to resist, right?
But you can train, you can see what can be done and things like
that and so helping them understand helping a doctor
understand. You know what the potential of
it is? Usually I find that that
expertise of what can actually really be done with it.
That comes from the business themselves, we just need to be
able to really take all that out of them asking the right
questions and usually the businesses don't know where this
start and asking those questions, right?
What do they really want to achieve?
Where is the pain Point really of A customer.
And why do they want to do this? So that's I think is the I think
that's the little the unfair Advantage if you will, you know,
we've done. We've been in so many different
types of projects that we know the questions to ask to
understand the project. Yeah, I can imagine, I mean,
finding out what is actually going to be valuable down the
long run, or how this is going to be in a practical sense.
It takes a lot of good listening and asking the right questions
before you can get that from the stakeholder side, right?
And then you still have kind of these chunks of works and they
might be digestible, but they're still assumptions, right?
Do you then test them with users or do you implement them?
And then give them to the users as fast as possible?
Or what is the next step there? Absolutely getting feedback.
Is that starts from day one? I mean, yes, starts from just
even, you know, if we had a conversation I then go back to
my network and say okay is anybody have or if I already
know obviously that I know who to ask but even if Don't know
how to ask, I go back to my network and said, well here's a
case. Yeah do it.
Does anybody have expertise in this area?
Can they give us a second opinion?
And then once we create the concept with the customer, we
already then asked test test users as well after the concert
like which of these Concepts will work for you.
What are the things that work and don't work?
And then we have a list of questions depending on what we
want to know about the outcome. There's different types of
questions as an example, for Shadows, Edge, for the mental
health game. We did an impact study with that
last At six weeks, when we had the first proof of concept and
we will even before that, we already had people look at
drawings at the concept that everything, but then we did like
a proper design study after the first proof of concept after
version 1. If you will, where we looked at
6 weeks, we did a baseline study and study what we asked them.
How playing the game made me feel?
We looked with a university, we develop with the university and
with the, actually, the Dutch government for him for health
for digital health, We developed a questionnaire that looked at
what makes a person more resilient and how do you, how do
you ask the right questions? And then we turned that into a
baseline study that we asked before they started playing the
game. We asked them to play the game
for six weeks, 20 minutes, three times a week and then we did the
study again at the end we asked them to fill in the survey
again. We also did interviews with
psychologists in the meantime and we asked them to create what
we call it player diary to really after after a session of
played just right now. Now, how did playing make you
feel based? Yeah.
Like a little journal and that's, that's pretty early on
in the project already. So that's after a few months
already, right? And then ideally, the way that
you develop things is to take shorter chunks.
Make something small and then slowly, but surely turn it into
a bigger project over time. While each step is being tested
so that you can really get to the the, the errors if you will
very early on, yeah, I can imagine That if it comes to.
So there's a lot of ideas packed in there and some actually made
it into the game as well, but it starts with ideas, right?
Even the part of journaling and creating that empathy mean, it
probably has some psychological theory behind it.
Why that is effective. But wait, which ideas get picked
up and which get actually implemented because I'm assuming
it starts with a lot of ideas. Then you you pick a few and I
don't know based on which requirements may be like a
foundation within the theory behind it.
It. But then you actually Implement
them and you test them. How do you get from that?
Ideation step to actually, that's a good question and
everything comes back. I think from the, what we call
the design question. So what do you want to achieve
with the product and that's in that case, you know, was how do
we build a product that will help people mentally improve or
improve, how they deal with their mental health patients,
right? How they build resilience?
And everything goes back to that.
And so we looked You up with our psychologists we checked, what
are the things that help with resilience?
One of them is narrative therapy, for example, right?
So that's where the journaling idea came from.
One of them is artistic expression, which is where art
comes from because it uses different sides of the brain
different inputs, you know, plus also art, can be a way to vent,
right? Yeah.
And then with those two combined we looked at, okay, well, how
can we then combine that into something that makes sense?
And so the idea was born to create a world, a city called
Shadows Edge, Where, in the city you can paint and you can write.
So you have to find the pages of a missing journal and answer the
questions that are on them. That's the prompted journaling.
And those questions would be about sort of the stage of the
of grieving, or of reworking your issues that you're in.
So the game's levels actually follow a psychological process.
That happens when something bad happens in your life and each of
those levels. Bowles has different types of
questions associated with it, that you would also get in
therapy. And so we use those and
reformulate them to fit into the world.
But with that same kind of content, like for example it
will ask you one of the, my favorite questions is, have you
ever thought that you you're wearing a mask and people only
see that mask? They don't see the real you.
Okay, what's that? Like, how does that make you
feel? What does the mask look like?
And what's the difference between the mask and the I'll
youth, for example, right? So, there's follow-up questions
that we can ask. That's, that's one of the
prompted questions that we have in there that people Journal
about, and the artistic expression can be great to vent
and because it was a city, we then, use graffiti has artistic
method of expression because it doesn't have to be pretty, you
know, people don't have to know how to paint, beautiful murals.
They can just add text, they can add, you know, anything, because
it doesn't matter. Right?
Still looks cool. And so that's how you kind of
narrow. These ideas down, you take the
big Sexual things that work in the application for weight loss.
It's a it's a tested and proven method that this particular
doctor has used over the last 30 years and then we see how can we
visualize that, how can we really make sure that people can
internalize it and make it playful enough?
That it turns into practicing this method over time and that's
I think where gaming can help as well.
That's pretty cool. I mean, you mentioned this kind
of design question which is This is my assumption basic kind of
the emphasis of what your problem statement is or pretty
much pretty much, right? Yeah, it's pretty much you take
the problem. And then you say, okay, how
Wordperfect. What is the perfect outcome?
If I were to solve this problem. What do I want?
What I want to happen afterwards, right?
We want, we want, for example. Let's take the Esports world.
We want people to have a more interactive experience when they
go watch Esports. Yeah.
And feel more connected to that Esports events afterwards, even
when they leave, have more of a community around it and family
around it, if you can so that it becomes less Spectators thing,
but more of an interactive event for them that lasts longer.
So the design question is, then how do we make that status
happen, right? What do we what can we design to
create a situation and an events that people will want to belong
to wants to keep alive for longer and can feel that they
are active, actively participating in knots?
That would be your design question.
That's really Because I think, I mean, from talking to a lot of
people, when you really have a dedicated team is also, when
your purpose is really crystal clear, right?
This is our team. We aim to solve this, or we work
to contribute towards this, and when you have that, you kind of
have that step on the horizon. And any kind of question or any
ideas you can challenge with that step of the Horizon, right?
With the example of Esports, right?
Gaining a better sense of connectivity and interaction
whatever you implement needs to. Contribute towards that goal.
If it doesn't yet, then it's not really discussable in this
sense. So then the things that actually
contribute to those, those are the things you work on.
Thanks. Yeah.
There's the ideas that automatically the other ideas
are automatically filter out if it doesn't meet the criteria of
interactive and we also have the word positive in there
somewhere. You know, because we wanted a
positive Community like a sense of belonging.
Yeah. And so anything that doesn't
serve that then has to go. Right?
Yeah. Yeah that's pretty cool.
Earlier you mentioned this kind of three.
He's has a client project, might fit into right things, you can
do things you've done, which are two and things that have never
been done before, which means you are really really
trailblazing that way as well. And I mean, from talking to you
earlier, I know you do projects like that as well.
And it's really, I mean, from a business sense, you need to know
what's possible. But then from a technological
perspective you don't know what's been established yet.
So how do you bring those two then together?
Because when the technology is established, you know what's
possible and what's not, but Your trailblazing.
It's kind of a whole different story there.
Yeah, it is. And again, that takes a lot of
trust, you have to find the customer that's willing to to
try something out and then that understands that they're not
coming to you because, you know everything because if it's
trailblazing, you don't write. But they have to understand that
that you are somebody that can guide them, and that can help
them make decisions on that trail, that your blazing, and
that has your best interest at heart.
And so there becomes Much more about the relationship and, and
seeing how far you want to go, you have to also be very clear
than in setting boundaries and say, okay, here's what we're
willing to experiment on. Here's what?
We're not. So ideally, those kind of
trailblazing projects would have a baseline of things that we can
do so that it could still be successful and then you have
like, sort of these these yeah, that these these how can you
call them is out Liars, if you will, you know, that could be
the ones that are making things spectacular versus just good.
And so, therefore, it has again, be a little bit of a balance so
that the client can still get a good solid project from it.
And then there are certain things that we say, okay look,
that's what we aim for. And again, this is why certain
process is actually help because if you start with the Prototype
and then already start testing things, you can see doesn't even
make sense, for example, that's number one, right?
Yeah. But then also technologically
you start seeing okay, where the Or the issues, you know what,
other things we can do? What are the things that we that
we just can't solve, right Ami? Let's take an example from From
Shadows Edge. Again, one of the things at the
beginning, that that we knew was going to be a little bit.
Tricky, was creating graffiti on a mobile phone in a game and
really also make that meaningful.
And so those are the things that you have to really be careful
for what we wanted to trailblaze.
Also was to be able for people to share things.
There aren't with other people. So they felt in a community that
they're not alone. Alone.
So, in the game you have something called Shadow G, which
is kind of like an Instagram, but we also knew that just from
an organization perspective. Technologically, there's a lot
more that's possible than what we did.
But from an organizational perspective, we have to be
careful because depending on what you can share, that also
means you have to monitor. It has to, you have to have
processes in place for like suicide, prevention and things
like that. And so we just had to make sure
that we limit some of the things that are technologically
possible to Sure, that the environment and the project
still really remained that Baseline remain.
Something that is really positive for the community and
for the users. So it's not always about
technology sometimes sometimes. Yes, the technology is new and
we don't know what we can do with it.
I love those kind of things because it's fun to experiment
with, right? But you have to find the right
customer. That's willing to try that out
and a lot of times it takes money, so it's not always easy.
Yeah, but also, you have to really keep in mind that if you
are trailblazing, are you just doing it to show?
Something cool? Or are you doing it?
Because that which is cool is actually trying to solve
something. Yeah, I can imagine it can be
quite challenging when there's a really cool idea, but it doesn't
actually deliver that value that you think it will, or it's kind
of opposed to kind of the goal, or the mission that you're going
for, and being like, okay, we know this is really cool, we
know, we can do a lot of things with this, but it's either going
to be, we're going to put a pin on this and we're gonna do it
later or we can't do it because of these reasons, right, if it
doesn't make sense, don't do it. Even though it's a really cool
idea, I think you can actually lose yourself and just focus on
really neat ideas and cool ideas but then you won't be as
effective as when you focus on what you actually want to
achieve. Yeah, very true.
Very true. And there, I mean, there's no
easy solution for that, right? We'll still, I mean, we also
still do stuff where then think, well, it was really cool, but
part of doing business, you know?
You make mistakes. Hopefully.
You make mistakes quick. I mean they always say feel
fast-fill often, right? Yes.
And we learn from those and it gives us a little bit more
expertise for the next time. And that also does mean that I
as an entrepreneur take risks because I can't always have the
customer stick up for things. We want to try out so So I take
risks to with that but you know, as long as I can afford to do
that, it can still be a lot of fun too.
Yeah. How difficult is it from from
your position to say, no to clients in either ideas they
have or wishes they have and be like, Oh either we can't do this
or this is not possible or I don't think we should do it
because of X y&z. Yeah, it's very difficult
especially because, you know, I really some of the ideas that
come up I love those ideas and I really want to do them.
I think you know there's we just have this case just like a week
or so ago as a new customers coming to us with the project
that would be just so amazing but I know technologically, it's
just not really going to turn out the way that they expect
because that what they expect is not really possible yet.
And so now it's about, you know, what can we do?
So in that first meeting we had to have a conversation with them
and say, well here's what's possible, here's what we think
is possible is, what could be possible but there is no
guarantee Guarantee. Right?
We can we can try but there's no guarantee and that's just
something we have to work through and see you know see
what we can do that happens regularly you know I mean
there's several several customers where that happens
with oftentimes we then settle on as we said before you know we
take like sort of the what's the what's a good solid base that
that has like a nice stretch goal that works and then you
know can we set aside like some kind of a risk?
Jet to see if that other thing is possible.
And if we can do it and then over time, you know, we figure
out if because the other thing is also this, the audience one,
that right, is the customers customer, is that the person
they're doing this for? Is that wanted?
Yeah, needed. If you are exactly.
I mean, that's the, that's the end user in that sense, but I
like that you mention, right? You don't just say no, that's
that, that's final. Give the customer in this case,
the kind of project older, I guess.
Us give them options. You say well these are these are
some of the options and we're going to we're going to figure
out which option. We liked the most which few of
the options we liked the most and we're going to pick and
choose and either we're going to deviate from them and pick
another option. But at least you get to choose,
right? Because the worst thing you have
is to have one option because then you you have to do that one
choosing allows allows people to think about whatever options
they have and then pick accordingly And sometimes that
means referring them to somebody else, you know, because we just
really can't do it but we can at least help them still then
figure out, you know, who is the best to refer it to who has done
this, or who is doing it, or who could do it, basically, and then
referring them, and sometimes it does mean that there's no
business in it for me. But it also means that again, as
we, as we said really early on, you know, that there's a network
that I'm building up of knowing who can do which parts.
And building that Collective Network to be able to involve
the right people and projects. Yeah, yeah.
Really cool. I really enjoyed this
conversation. Rosemary.
I'm going to round it off here. Is there anything you'd still
like to share with our audience? I think.
Maybe just just one thing, you know, I know I'm kind of an odd
one out because I'm not trying to build a huge business.
I'm consciously very consciously, staying small.
So, I maybe just want to say, you know, success is what you
make it to be, what you think works for.
Or you. And that's something to figure
out and really go after I can honestly say that, you know, I'm
happier now that I'm doing small stuff than I've ever been.
When I was doing large, super, large projects and so therefore,
it just depends on what people want to do, right.
What do you want to wake up doing?
Because if you're an entrepreneur, it out odds.
Are that you're going to spend 10 to 12 hours a day doing it.
So you may as well do something that's really fun.
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. I mean the only way you can
realize that is with time and experience right here.
It's in the past kind of allowed you to realize.
This is actually what you want to do and this is what brings
you happiness. And the only way to do that is
to stay experience, a trying figure out, okay?
What do you like? And what don't you like and
eventually you'll end up in a happy place as well.
Awesome. I'm going to round it off here.
Rosemary, look horse. I'm going to put all her socials
in the description below. Check her out.
Let her know you came from our show.
And with that being said, thank you for listening.
See you on the next one. Thank you very much.