We’re back home in Berlin — something that I dreaded during our last days in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. This is very rare for me: I usually love to dive back into work and regular life after the holidays. But it feels like we just escaped the crowded city, and with it at least some of the troubles and pains of the pandemic (at our time of arriving in MV there were only a handful of active COVID cases), only to return to a reality that is in a considerably worse state than when we left it. Now that schools and day-cares are about to return from holidays our regular life will return with them, but nothing about this feels normal — or right — as cases are already on the rise again throughout Germany.
The egoism and carelessness of some people puts everything that we gained during the first months of lockdown at risk. If I learned one thing about humans during this time it’s that many clearly lack any kind of foresight: It seems unbelievable hard for people to weight the inconveniences of today (i.e. wearing a mask, keeping a distance, not organising a family reunion or going to a party) against the risks that come if you simply carry on as always (risks like loosing loved ones to Covid, loosing your job as the economy fully crashes in the next lockdown, denying your kids from going to school due to quarantine, etc.).
Yes, I know, this shouldn’t come as a surprise: Many psychological experiments show exactly that. But it still baffles me, especially as the risks are not hypothetical: We have already seen all of the effects play out – during our own lockdown and the tragic losses endured elsewhere in the world.
Peter Bihr with a proposal for how to continue with stricter, but more targeted enforcement of the COVID-19 rules.
“Stop the blanket lockdowns for sectors (i.e. all schools, all restaurants, etc.), so that those business owners and other orgs that take appropriate precautions can go about their business. Simultaneously, check and enforce compliance with those rules ruthlessly. 3 strikes or 1, if a restaurant allows for large parties without appropriate spacing that’s not an oversight, it’s a conscious decision. If they don’t register their customers as legally required, this isn’t an oversight, it’s by design. In cases of flagrant disregard for the safety of others like this, immediately shut down the restaurant — for 3 months or for good, I’m not sure.”
“We need to align incentives — both positive and negative — so that violators are punished and those who by and large respect the rules do not get punished for the others’ irresponsibility. Equally, it cannot — must not — be that our kid isn’t allowed to learn and play with his peer group in day care because some irresponsible egoists enable crowded, unsafe, illegal parties in and for their business.”
Great overview by Matthew Ball of what makes Nintendo as a company so special. Must read for anyone interested in company culture (and video games, obviously).
“Nintendo deeply loves and wants to be a hardware company. The business case for this approach hasn’t really existed for years, but it makes the company happy, it is often great at it, and it hasn’t needed to change. In addition, hardware inspires the company and, in many instances, is why a sequel or title is greenlit in the first place. I’ll get back to this idea in a bit.”
“Not only does Nintendo not believe in #content, it staunchly refuses the idea and even the need. A game won’t release because hardware depends on it, there won’t be a sequel because it has “been three years,” because shareholders require it or even to keep mindshare among players in a fast-moving industry.”
“Nintendo only makes games and sequels when they believe there is a sufficiently new and ambitious idea. This is why most AAA releases are tied to consoles — new hardware that unlocks new functionality — and why franchises like Super Mario will go from water-based play on GameCube to space-based play on Wii to hat-based play on the Switch. Lessons are only applied via remix.”