In early 2008, my co-founder Mahesh and I were attending the Games Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco.
One of the sessions was conducted by this rather short, energetic man called Mark Pincus whose company was called Zynga.
The presentation was nice and I really liked the logo of Zynga (named after Mark Pincus’s dog) amongst other things.
Post the PPT, we were crowded out of the hall and got a chance to speak to Mark. He had actually heard of games2win and remembered our Monkey (chimpoo). That week, both Mahesh and I visited the Zynga office and even discussed sending them a couple of our games to launch on their network.
While nothing much happened between our Companies, as the months went by, we began to hear stories of the ‘micro payments’ and ‘virtual goods’ sales of Zynga. Some journal reported that in Texas Hold Em, Zynga had sold 1+ million dollar worth of ‘virtual beers’. Mafia Wars began to earn similar ‘millions’ in Virtual Goods sales etc.
In 2010, my investor Sumant Mandal told me that Zynga was doing over 1 million dollars a MONTH in virtual goods sales and that number was doubling almost every quarter.
All this while – I was hearing, seeing all this and even witnessing some real evidence of all these data points and YET very conveniently PACKING this entire business revolution into MENTAL CONTAINERS of my mind and SHIPPING them to what I call DENIAL COUNTRY.
Simply put, I was in a State of Denial.
I just didn’t want to believe that normal people like you and me would open up their wallets, take out their credit cards and then load them into a currency that was used to buy pink tractors and farming seeds.
I DON’T KNOW WHY I was in a state of denial, but I guess it was:
– Laziness in really doing serious research on this new revolution.
– A Mental BLOCK to believe in NEW things that sounded SUPER GOOD.
– Taking ‘myself’ out if the equation and believing that OTHERS could and would do what I DID NOT want to.
Circa 2011 – Zynga will list at 20 BILLION DOLLARS valuation with the credibility of having invented something of a new Steam Engine in the land of Gaming. Just Farmville alone is worth 5 BILLION dollars in my view.
So this post is dedicated to making YOU examine what you are in DENIAL OF…???
I am now regularly coming across folks who:
– DON’T believe that the Internet or New Media is a media and something here to stay!
– That E-COMMERCE really happens in India (the argument is that ‘Indians like to touch and feel’)
– That some people under 40 can earn 10 lacs a month if they are really talented
etc etc
My plea – DO NOT VISIT DENIAL COUNTRY
What you MUST DO:
– If there are even murmurs of things happening in your trade; business of work domain – CHECK THEM OUT. ASAP.
– If some things are too good to be true – MAY BE THEY ARE – do not toss your head and say ‘impossible’…
– Believe in BUSINESS MODEL MIRACLES. I mean what young people do today (example – buy fashion and shoes and dresses online) and their other actions will shock you.
Listen to the railway tracks and hear the train coming before it runs over you.
You should be ON THE TRAIN – NOT UNDERNEATH IT.
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Please share examples of what you may have experience in your line of work or profession that highlights DENIAL and the consequences…