Major FUN and Mattel

Dear e-WE,

I have very recently accepted a full- and real-time, year-round salaried as a matter of fact job. My true and paid-for purpose: to help people make their games more fun.

They call me Staff Designer.

I'll be getting to use practically everything I've learned about collaboration and facilitation along with practically everything I've learned about creativity and play. I'll be facilitating meetings, leading games, playing games, designing games, evaluating games, improving games, making things more fun. Practically speaking, I'll be helping to create the very synthesis I built my life and website to describe: collaborative work and cooperative play.

This is very neat.

I'll be doing this at Mattel. Owners and marketers of Hot Wheels and Barbie and Polly Pocket and Cabbage Patch Kids and Frisbee, for gosh sake. Makers of toys people have actually loved.

Specifically, Mattel Media, makers of Barbie Fashion Designer, a soon-to-be-released CD-ROM that lets kids design and produce their own Barbie clothes, proving once and for all that "computers are cool for girls," designed by my actual boss and even more actual friend, whom I met almost 20 years ago when we were both working at Ideal Toys.

This is also very neat.

I'll be a position of influence in an organization that has proven itself to be such a highly profitable and canny enabler of play that its toys and games have become cultural icons. A truly profit-making organization which, just like us, honestly wants to make the world a little more fun, for everyone.

This is especially very neat.

I'll be beginning this job and ending a decade of nominally independent consulting in the name of the Institute for Better Meetings, after fifteen years in Palo genuinely Alto in the veritable Vale of Silicon.

This seems a little sloppy.

I can now tell you that yes, definitely, along with all the glee and promise, one feels a certain fear and trembling.

Yours in the game

Major Fun

 

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Living in Silicon Valley, I got to make friends with some very deep and very successful technologists. It didn't take much dialog to discover the reason most of them got into technology, and the reason they are still into technology: they are having so much fun.

I myself know at least a couple such, and I can tell you that the best of them have become true gurus in the art of fun. They have dedicated some their finest energies to the exploration of the true nature of fun, and frequently have genuinely good, healthy, fun times.

My friend Dave Winer (dwiner@well.com), for example, is such a character. Dave developed and popularized the use of the electronic outliner. His ThinkTank software product led to the development of MORE, which led to the development of desktop presentation software. Any product where you can "collapse" or "expand" headings and subheadings (in word processors, information managers, presentation packages) pays homage to Dave's innovation and influence.

Today, Dave has undoubtedly reached a point in his life where money is no longer the object. Though not as rich as Bill Gates, he no longer has to work for a living or a life. Yet he is still developing new applications for his outlining technology, and is already having major influence on the evolution of the Internet.

He writes a very well-written and well-read e-letter, called "DaveNet." Sprinkled liberally through out his edge-cutting insights into the future of technology is his personal testimony to his conviction that fun is what it is all about, still, and always.

Over the years, he and I have explored this very deeply shared conviction, and in finding fun together, found love.

The following is from a recent issue of his DaveNet e-letter:

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Amusing Rants from Dave Winer's Desktop (dwiner@well.com)

Released on 7/12/96; 10:02:51 AM PST

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***A Sad Note, for Me

Friendship is a great thing, I don't know how to live without it, nor do

I want to try. A few months ago I said something very real to my friend

Bernie. I said, Bernie we're getting into best friends

territory here. Someone had tried to enter my space through Bernie, when

the appropriate thing to do was to come straight to me. Bernie said

what I hope all my friends would say -- no. I thanked him. And I realized

that I could trust him to protect me, even if I wasn't there to protect

myself. Real trust, that's one of the things that turns a normal

friend into a best friend.

So many friendships in Silicon Valley are based on what one person can

do for another. I am lucky because I have friends who just like hanging

out and playing and sharing what we can create together. These are the

best kinds of friendships. Best friends! Cooool. I'm lucky to have a

friend like Bernie.

I love hanging out with him, we get giddy together. We rant in Texas

accents. It's funny! Bernie is a funny dude, a game designer at birth.

An open and vulnerable man. I can relax with him. We've been taking

twice-weekly walks for the last couple of years. I imagine we look

funny, laughing and talking loudly as we walk through the woods. But who

cares cause we have fun!

Well, there's sad news, but not bad news. Bernie is moving to Los

Angeles, to become a full-time game designer for Mattel. This is good

news, because it's what he wants. I know, because I listen to him. He

wants a steady job. And he's tried lots of other venues for his loving

fun, and game design seems to be the best fit.

So look for some great new concepts built around Barbie, Hot Wheels

and Cabbage Patch Kids and other Mattel properties. The fun will be

deep and profound, no doubt! And subtle. Listen for the Texas twang.

I wish the best for him, because I know that's totally what he

deserves. He puts so much of himself into his creations. That's what

makes them so coool. It's just sad because he's moving so far away, so

no more walks.

I will miss Bernie, in fact, I already do.

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It may be a truth too obvious to acknowledge and too painful to embrace. And for you my brothers in fun, it may be an awakening that is just too damn rude. But awaken we must.

I have learned from some of my new associates at Mattel that Ken, the Ken doll of Ken and Barbie, is considered, get this, an accessory!

It turns out that when you are little girl and you want a Ken doll, it's so you can play Barbie. For Mattel, and for girlhood worldwide, Barbie is the name of the game. Ken is another piece.

I've been playing a lot with Barbie lately. It's my job. You might say that I, too, have become a piece in the Barbie game. And I tell you, now that I'm old enough to appreciate it, and lucky enough to get paid for it, I'm getting to like playing Barbie. I have a Ballerina Barbie on my desk. Her toes can point.

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Of late, it seems, what with this new job and all, I've been doing a lot of learning and a lot of playing. And I've been having a lot actual fun regardless.

What, you may ask, is it like when learning a new job is fun? It's like playing:

You feel powerful, capable, intelligent, attuned, responsive.

You are focused and open. Unselfconscious. You are beyond time.

You are where and who you want to be.

You redefine reality.

What you may also ask is it like when learning anything is really fun? It's like when playing anything is really fun:

Discovery. Newness. Delight. Surprise. Enlightenment. Aha.

You become extraordinary.

So why do you think they're different? Why is learning something, and play something else? Why draw the distinction?

By the time we are in first grade, most of us have been forced to draw this very distinction indelibly. Most of us have repeatedly and consistently learned that play belongs in play corners, playgrounds, play fields, stadiums; that play is something to be fenced, walled, barricaded in and out.

And learning is something else. Something we do in classrooms, sitting still, following the teacher's instructions.

And so we make play trivial, and learning joyless. We drill and practice when we could learn as much from playing and playing again. We supervise playgrounds when we could be teaching as much by playing together.

So this must be the big learning I've been playing with, the grand conclusion to which I'm apparently coming:

There's a lot to be learned from playing with Barbie. Yes, of course, learning and play are different. Different as Ken and Barbie. And, yes, of course Ken is an accessory. But ultimately, Barbie is, too. Learning and playing are each to be found in the other. And both better when they're fun.

Your friend and mine,

Major FUN
 

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10/9/98: Bernie's last day at Mattel. He writes his poem on Becoming Gifted.