"The Next Big Thing" (was RE: [MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN} Who to design for?)

[Sean Howard]

"Mike Sellers" <mike at onlinealchemy.com> wrote:

>> You can't predict with 100% accuracy, no, but I think you can definitely
>> make pretty good predictions on the next big thing.
>
> Man, that's incredibly wishful thinking.
>
> Right now there are thousands of incredibly smart, dedicated, thoughtful,
> creative, talented individuals and teams hard at work on what they hope
> and believe will be the Next Big Thing across a variety of industries.

And many of them are obviously deluded. It only takes one look at their
project to realize that it is more arrogance than actual talent. I mean,
anybody who heard Brad McQuaid's Vision about how online gaming should
work realized that it was a bunch of crap and that Vanguard was doomed
from the start. He was charismatic, but he was wrong.

> Some of them might even be right, but we'll never know because they'll
> lose out due to luck, undercapitalization, timing, etc.  Others will be
> close but won't quite get it.

And that's why you can't predict it with 100% effectiveness. Look at Xerox
PARC. You look at the stuff they created and they literally invented
modern computing. But that inspiration wasn't enough by itself. Luckily
(for us, not them) Steve Jobs visited and saw the Next Big Thing (if
anybody can predict the Next Big Thing, it's that guy). So, it was
absolutely the Next Big Thing (the Biggest Thing, perhaps), but it didn't
come from the people who originally came up with it.

That's the thing about the Next Big Thing. It's an idea. It's not an
implementation. Because we are stupid and short sighted, we give credit to
the first implementer, not the first one to have the idea. But I'm not
going to get started on the "ideas are a dime a dozen" crap or we'll be
here for a year arguing about it :)


>> At the very least, you can say what WON'T be the Next Big Thing. Just
>> work backwards. :)
>
> Again, wishful thinking.  I'm not saying it's entirely hit-or-miss, but
> there are so many factors that go into what catches on that have little
> to do with the idea or even the team -- timing and execution make an
> enormous difference -- that saying you can predict what will or won't be
> a big hit is just silly.

Nonsense. I can say that the Next Big Thing will be something that comes
from a smaller team with a charismatic leader with a singular vision that
energizes the team under a single forward thinking concept. It's going to
be a new paradigm rather than a small twist on an old idea (why Mosaic was
the Next Big Thing but tabbed browsing in Internet Explorer isn't).

You find the vision, you've found the future.

Here, I'll tell you what a Next Big Thing is going to be. Procedurally
generated content. And I'm not talking Spore. I'm talking about the
ability to type "build random scifi rpg" and it does. Because if we can
design a way to define patterns and their relationship to each other, it
will completely change how we view design. It's already happened with A
Timeless Way of Building / A Pattern Language, but it didn't go far
enough. By the time we can randomly generate a game from start to finish,
EVERYTHING about design will change for EVERYBODY. That's going to come
from gaming, and it's going to change the world.

The problem is that the solution is non-obvious. It will take some very
smart people with a very odd way of looking at the world. Hell, I'd love
for it to be me, but I don't think I'm up to it. But man, I'd love to be
the guy who wrote a videogame that ended up changing the world. As it is,
I doubt PGC is going to happen in my lifetime. I mean, they were still
called "random dungeons" until about a year ago.

> Very smart, experienced, perceptive, talented people thought The Sims was
> crap, that Majestic was going to be great, that the Segway would change
> how we live, that the electron was a useless oddity, that TV would never
> catch on, that you couldn't sell books online, that search would never be
> profitable, etc., etc.

Talent doesn't have anything to do with. Perhaps smart doesn't. And
experience definitely doesn't. They bought into a vision, but only part of
it. The visions that will change the world are the complete visions.
Majestic could've been great and the Segway could've changed how we live,
but those visions just didn't go far enough. They got you through the
door, but the bathroom is still down the hall on the left.

> The one thing about the Next Big Thing is that it's almost *impossible*
> to predict -- except in retrospect, when everyone is suddenly much more
> perceptive.

Be perceptive now, I say. Just because hindsight is 20/20 doesn't mean
foresight can't be on occasion.

-- 
Sean Howard