The Business: One Way To Shoot Yourself In The Foot (A Mammon Mob Story)

Today in "Why you never let the moneymen run the show."

Jagex's management is, like most companies, comprised of people that don't know the business they're in. The late Steve Jobs said it best when he mentioned the reason that Apple thrived under his rule is because he was an engineer and thus knew what his business was about. Videogame publishers are notorious for having senior management that is utterly out of touch with the realities of the business that they're in--see Bobby Kotick for example--and this story is another such manifestation of it.

The reality is that you had someone solve your problem for you, but because it Wasn't Invented Here, it's discarded. Instead, the smart move would be to buy it outright--source code, legal rights, etc.--from the fan developer, credit him for his work and give him a respectable residual for its use (that you can easily afford because your game is a license to print money) and implement it with the stamp of Officialdom right away.

Oh, and if he keeps solving your problems, keep cutting the checks. He's worth it.

The ego of these moneymen is what keeps them constantly making unforced errors like this. Rather than keep calm, dispassionate, and focused on the objective they let their need for self-aggrandizement and status-signalling run rampant and thus create stupid and costly mistakes like this. I guess it's time for the RetroBlasting video to be mentioned yet again.

Moneymen need to be kept on a tight leash and given no say whatsoever in how things are run. You bring them in to tell you what your logistics look like. You give them orders, you punt them from the room, and then you resume operations. Treat them like you would a fire at a campsite: necessary for vital functions, but put out as soon as you're done with it lest it break containment and start a conflagaration.

This is one way a company can go broke without being compliant with the Death Cult. The Mammon Mob is also out there, and Corporate is their domain by default; it is the Death Cult that is trespasing there. Decisions like this? Totally Mammon Mob behavior, because it's not enough to be and remain profitable, but to accomplish growth quarter-on-quarter year-on-year indefinitely. "I want it all, and I want it now" is their creed, and part of it means irrational obession with control all possible means of gain- hence decisions like this.