The 4-Hour Chef Launch — Marketing/PR Summary of Week One

What a whirlwind of a week!

For those of you interested in how I sequence launches, or how punishing the last 7 days have been, or what’s required if you want a shot at #1 New York Times or BookScan, below is a very partial list of media coverage and partnerships. They are in rough chronological order. If I missed anyone, please let me know in the comments!

I’ve done more here than in my last two book launches combined, and reader results (Twitter examples here) have made it all worth it.

I was pleasantly surprised by how many bookstores are now stocking The 4-Hour Chef, which sat at Amazon #2 for most of this week (Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a juggernaut, but Ina Garten is my real competition).  According to my readers on Facebook, stocking stores now include Tattered Cover, Copperfields, Powell’s, Elliot Bay, Vroman’s, Prairie Lights, Changing Hands, Boulder Bookstore, and even some Books Inc. (my local fave).  Barnes & Noble continues to boycott nationwide, but indies are picking it up, which makes me very happy, of course.  It’s exactly where I want a 600+-page full-color book!

Last but not least, sincere thanks to everyone who’s left Amazon reviews!

If you have read the book (or are reading), pretty please take 30 seconds to leave a short review — it would really mean the world to me.  Just click here.  I have read every review and commented on many of them.  At the very least, if you take a look here, there are some great conspiracy theories in the 1-star reviews.  Many folks don’t seem to grasp the idea of ADVANCED copies of books, which all authors send out, often in the hundreds. Doing the same doesn’t make me a Scooby-Doo villain or clever mastermind, alas.

Now, to an incomplete list of media from the past 168 hours or so, excluding national advertising…

USA Today – ’4-Hour’ author Timothy Ferriss returns as a chef
The New York Times - Fête Accompli | 4-Hour Feasting
The Wall Street Journal - ’4-Hour’ Man Masters Food, The Good Life
Bon Appetit - A Bird in the Pan: Testing “The 4-Hour Chef”
Outside Magazine – From Modern to Mallman (one of three online, also a print piece)
Wired Magazine – “Better, Faster, Smarter” (Tim Ferriss tests smart drugs) — not yet online but in Dec print.
CBS This Morning (Charlie Rose, Gayle King) – Timothy Ferriss talks food, life lessons
WNYC - The 4-Hour Chef: Lengthy Book Offers Short Cut to Kitchen Excellence
Fox & Friends – ‘Recipe’ for Success
The New York Post – Required Reading
Dr. Oz (almost an hour total on TV, plus online) – Health-boosting Secrets From The 4-Hour Chef Tim Ferriss
Dr. Oz – Tim Ferriss’ Plan to Master Cooking in 4 Hours, Pt 1
Dr. Oz – Tim Ferriss’ Plan to Master Cooking in 4 Hours, Pt 2
Dr. Oz – Tim Ferriss’ Vitamin-Rich Recipes

BitTorrent (160 million+ users — more coming on this)
Panera Bread (1,500+ locations)
TaskRabbit (1,000s of hours saved)
Rally (1,000+ books sold)
Samovar Tea Lounges (SF) (1000s of people relaxed!) –  Signed copies at every location!

PaidContent – Ferriss: Even if I sell a million Kindle books, some people will call it a failure
PaleoHacks – If you could become world-class in anything in 2013, what would it be?
BoingBoing – Tim Ferriss’s new book about learning
The Huffington Post – New Timothy Ferriss Book, ’4-Hour Chef’, Has A Great Trailer (VIDEO)
Small Business Trends – Retailers Fight Amazon with Ferriss Boycott
Seeking Alpha – Amazon Is Crushing It
Digital Journal – Review: ‘The 4-Hour Chef’ is more than just a cookbook
TechCrunch – With Amazon Publishing Stonewalled By Retailers, Tim Ferriss Taps BitTorrent To Market His New Book (and more press here)
The Huffington Post – “4-Hour Chef” Tim Ferriss Reveals Secrets of Meta-Learning and Living the Good Life
Ramit Sethi - Live webcast w/ Tim Ferriss this Wednesday, 9PM EST
Danny Roddy – My Interview With Bad Ass Mother Fucker Tim Ferriss
Livestrong – Make Better Meals In Less Time
TubeFilter – With Help Of YouTube, Tim Ferriss Makes Book Trailers Go Viral
Metro – The art of learning
Goins Writer – How to Become World-class at Anything: An Interview with Tim Ferriss
Entrepreneurs-Journey – Tim Ferriss Talks About His Latest Book “The 4-Hour Chef”, How To Learn Anything In Half The Time And Why He Went To Sniper School
99U – Tim Ferriss: On The Creative Process And Getting Your Work Noticed
The Art of Manliness – How to Make the Best Beef Jerky in the World
Cooking for Engineers – Crunchy Bloody Mary
InsideHook – Culinary Design
Man Vs. Debt – Rapidly Learn Any Skill (Including Cooking): An Interview with Tim Ferriss about “The 4-Hour Chef”
Greatist – The 4-Hour Chef: Tim Ferriss’ Crazy, Brilliant Cookbook
Personal Branding Blog – Personal Branding Interview: Tim Ferriss on The 4-Hour Chef
5 Minutes for Mom – An Interview with Tim Ferriss- Author of The 4-Hour Chef
Slashfilm – Author Tim Ferriss Lists His Favorite Cooking TV Shows and Movies
AskMen – Tim Ferriss On The 4-Hour Chef
AppSumo – The 4-Hour Chef launches and we got exclusives for you
Forbes – What Cooking Can Teach You About Learning
Chronicles of Strength – How to Learn Anything: Pat Flynn Interviews Tim Ferriss on The 4-Hour Chef
Runkeeper – We’re giving away 20 copies of Tim Ferriss’s new book!
Lifehacker – I’m Tim Ferriss, and This Is How I Work
Shira Lazar: What’s Trending – How to Complete All Your Facebook Tasks in Just 4 Hours: A Tim Ferriss Presentation
Gothamist – After Thanksgiving, Go On A Manhattan Food Marathon
Refinery29 – How To Get Into Every Resto In Town, A Primer By Tim Ferriss
The Grindstone – Tim Ferriss Will Teach You How To Cook In 4 Hours And Conquer The World
Food Babe – The 4-Hour Chef – The Coolest Cookbook I’ve Ever Read
KrisKris – The 4-Hour Chef – Interview With Bestselling Author Tim Ferriss
Wellness Mama – How to Cook Like A Pro and Learn Anything
BoingBoing – Timothy Ferriss: Cheat Sheets for Everything
Cracked – 8 Cheap Ways to Fake Being a Pro Chef
The Huffington Post – The Anti-Hunter’s First Hunt (Exclusive Excerpt)
Gear Patrol – Interview: Tim Ferriss on Steak, Kitchen Tools and the Return of the Polymath
AskMen - The 4-Hour Chef: Exclusive Look: Tim Ferriss’ New Book
Wall Street Cheat Sheet – Tim Ferriss: The 4-Hour Chef Controversy Displays the Future of Publishing
Social Triggers – The simple path to becoming a highly-paid expert (new podcast with Tim Ferriss)
AllFacebook – Humor: How To Complete All Of Your Daily Facebook Tasks In Just Four Hours
Business Insider – The 4-Step Process For Mastering Any Skill
Lifehacker – Use Tim Ferriss’ Four-Step Process to Master New Skills
Cook Taste Eat – Pork Loin with Walnut Purée, Poached Carrots and Bacon Frisée Salad
Evernote Blog – How Tim Ferriss Used Evernote to Write His New Book, The 4-Hour Chef
Yelp! Blog – Tim Ferriss, author of “The 4-Hour Chef,” talks Yelp, favorite San Francisco restaurants and eating brains

Andrew Zimmern: Go Fork Yourself Podcast – Go Fork Yourself: Tim Ferriss & The Four-Hour Chef
creativeLIVE – The 4-Hour™ Life: Healthy, Wealthy and Wise
The Joe Rogan Experience – JRE #285 – Tim Ferriss, Brian Redban
The Robb Wolf Podcast – Episode 159
Firepole Marketing - 4-Hour Book Launch Advice from Tim Ferriss
Shira Lazar: What’s Trending – “4-Hour Chef” Tim Ferriss Reveals Secrets Of Meta-Learning And Living The Good Life
Samovar Tea – Samovar Tea Talks with Tim Ferriss
Mixergy – Tim’s Rapid Learning Method And The Four-Hour Chef – with Tim Ferriss
The Art of Charm: Pickup Podcast – Episode #178: Tim Ferriss, FourHourChef.com (FourHourWorkWeek.com)
The New Man Podcast – TNM 125: Tim Ferriss – How to Be Kickass Fast
SiteVisibility – Tim Ferriss – Podcast Episode #189
SourceFed – Greatest Day Ever: a Guide
SimplePickup – How To Make a Sexy Steak with Tim Ferriss
Sources of Insight – Tim Ferriss Interview on The 4-Hour Chef
The Rise to the Top – Tim Ferriss on How to Become World Class in Anything in 6 Months or Less
Radio-TV Interview Report – Steve Harrison Interviews Bestselling Author Tim Ferriss About Book Writing, Promotion and Ways to Learn Any Skill Faster
Alex Day – Unrealistic Goals and Tim Ferriss
New Media Rockstars – Author & Internet Entrepreneur Tim Ferriss Talks to NMR About His New Book The 4-Hour Chef and More! [Interview]
Zen Habits – How to Learn Anything
Big Think – Tim Ferriss: Cooking to Learn Like a Pro (in 4 Hours)
Wall Street Cheat Sheet – Tim Ferris: The 4-Hour Chef Controversy Displays the Future of Publishing
Six Pixels of Separation – SPOS #333 – Learn To Do Anything With Tim Ferriss

Posted on November 24th, 2012

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Behind today’s TED-Ed launch

TED’s Curator, Chris Anderson, writes this personal note on his blog:

Today marks a big new chapter in the TED story, as we unveil the first part of our TED-Ed initiative. Viewed one way, it’s just the release on YouTube of a dozen short videos created for high school students and lifelong learners. But we’re committed to growing this archive to hundreds of videos within a year, and I thought it would be helpful to jot down a few personal notes on why we’re doing this …

Teachers are heroes. That’s pretty much the founding principle of TED-Ed. TED’s core mission is to spread great ideas, and teachers are right there at the deep end. They’ve dedicated their lives to helping shape the minds of the next generation. There is no more noble or important work. TED-Ed is our way of reaching out to teachers and saying: Can we help?

Because the question we’ve been asking with increasing urgency the past couple years is: Could we do something similar to TED Talks that would work better in schools? Something that would give teachers a useful new tool to spark curiosity — shorter than 18 minutes, and targeted to the curriculum they teach. And more than that, could we create a platform that would allow teachers to share their best lesson to a much wider audience?

Read Chris’ full note >>

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“A world without love is a deadly place”: Celebrating Valentine’s Day with the launch of TED Quotes

Everyone loves a good quote. They challenge us. They change us. They make us think and make us laugh. They are — in their most compressed and contagious form — ideas. So today, we’re launching TED Quotes, a new initiative that collects memorable quotes from TEDTalks, groups them by category, and makes them as easy to share as our talks themselves.

To celebrate our Valentine’s Day launch, we offer you these heart-fluttering favorites:

“A world without love is a deadly place.” — Helen Fisher

“[You need] eight hugs a day. You’ll be happier and the world will be a better place.” — Paul Zak

“People live for love. They kill for love. They die for love. They have songs, poems, novels, sculptures, paintings, myths, legends. It’s one of the most powerful brain systems on Earth for both great joy and great sorrow.” — Helen Fisher

“My wife could turn to me and she may say, ‘Why do you love me?’ And I can with all honesty look her in the eye and say, ‘Because our pheromones matched our olfactory receptors.’” — Robin Ince

Designed to make TEDTalks even more accessible, digestible and shareable, the TED Quotes section of TED.com serves as a resource for both discovering new TEDTalks and finding culturally relevant quotes for any purpose, from a boardroom pitch to a wedding toast. We’ve sorted hundreds of the best quotes into TED-like topics, from technology, entertainment and design, to collaboration, DNA, and, yes, love.

But this isn’t just about a greeting-card quips. In today’s social-media driven world, quotes have a new power: They’ve emerged as one of the most widely shared content forms online. So with this initiative, we’re now treating individual quotes within TEDTalks as shareable media objects.

When you share a quote, you’re linked back to a page that allows you to either watch the full talk, or jump straight to the moment the quote was uttered. Viewers can then, if so inspired, re-share the same quote on Twitter, Facebook, email and other channels. By making the ideas within a talk even more findable and shareable, we hope to spread ideas even farther …

Explore ted.com/quotes >>

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5 Things You May Learn From Google+ Launch

It’s been less than a month since Google+, the latest and brightest social network was launched. It’s way too early to give any diagnostic as whether this may take off or flop. But it’s also pretty clear that this new digital service got a lot of momentum.

As one of its earliest adopters, I must say I enjoy being there, at least for now. It may be just the novelty or the fact that it’s still comfortably not crowded. But it’s also a fact that the entire launch was pretty impressive. So impressive, that I thought it would be fun to isolate at least 5 things everyone can learn form Google+ launch.

By far the most impressive and striking addition of Google+ is the “Circles” feature. Based on a real life metaphor, where you organize your life in circles of friends, this feature instantly filled a gap in social conversation that neither twitter or Facebook (despite their somehow similar “lists”) were able to cover.

Using circles is stupendously easy. Not only you get a visual interface where you can just drag and drop avatars of your friends into various circles (something that was never present in other mainstream social networks) but it’s also very conveniently arranged when you actually share something. Making your entire social interaction easier and comfortably granular.

So, just because things are in a certain way it doesn’t mean you can’t bring your own touch. Challenging the status-quo may look difficult, but, as long as you keep an eye of what’s need to be done, you’ll see your spot. And it will be much easier than you think it is.

The “invitation only” launch system, made famous a few years ago by Google’s second most popular service (Gmail, that is) worked very well this time too. So well, that at some point Google had to stop the invitations flow, in order to maintain a working infrastructure.

During the invitation “blackout”, the public service continued to work as expected. In line with other Google services reliability, I must add. But it is very easy to see how Google+ could have become the victim of its own success. Happened before with Twitter and it’s famous “fail whale”, and we all know that.

So, whenever you start a new project, expect the best. But be aware of the fact that the “best” may come with many unforseen expenses. Take them into account and don’t let yourself become the victim of your own success.

Google was quiet about this. It didn’t set up great expectations (if you don’t take into account their fantastic presence in other digital areas) so nobody would have expect something out of the ordinary. Especially since they had their blunders before with Orkut and Wave. (Yes, it’s my personal opinion that those two services where just flops).

But what they delivered was very good stuff indeed. The contrast between the user expectations and the delivered product is always a good thing. And this time Google hit the nail in the head with this new social network. Many were already so wired up in Twitter and Facebook that they simply couldn’t believe something new may be possible.

Whether it’s business or personal, I found that underpromising and overdelivering is incredibly fulfilling. Just don’t be so loud about your strengths, goals or ambitions, but when it comes to put them to work, just do your best. It will not only make your social interactions smoother, but it will also add a certain taste to your life. A “success” taste, that is.

Google+ uses Gmail, which, apart from being very popular, is also controlled by them. It also uses a bar in the Google search page where it displays notifications. And it integrates many of the company features at almost any thinkable level: for instance, the +1 button may have a much powerful effect on search engines than the “likes” on Facebook, or “retweets” on Twitter.

Apart from innovation, good preparation and the element of surprise, Google also leveraged their traditional strengths in a very impressive way. The feeling of “completeness” comes exactly from this integration of all their familiar services in a simple, yet very easy to use interface.

So, whenever you’d wanna go on fresh territories, remember that you still have a personal history. And many things from this personal history may prove extremely useful in those future journeys. Something we may tend to forget, especially when the thrill of a new venture or relationship is firing up on our adrenaline.

They say showing up is 80% of success and I tend to very much agree with that. If you want to do something, just do it. If you want to go somewhere, just go. If you want to play, just be in the playground and start doing your moves.

That’s exactly what Google did with Google+. They could have just acknowledge the failure of their previous attempts in this filed (among them Orkut or Wave) and call it a day. But instead, they continued the game. They stayed there.

You can’t win a game if you’re not playing. As simple and as dumb as it may sound, this rule is the one that gets ignored most of the time. You can’t live an entire life on wishful thinking, it’s just  not possible. You gotta be out there and play your role.

***

So, are you on Google+? How do you find it? Do you have anything to add to these 5 things? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

Dragos Roua is a serial online entrepreneur, personal development fanatic, blogger, father, dreamer, and risk taker. Maker of the iAdd iPhone / iPad app. Author of Natural Productivity - Assess, Decide, Do productivity book (also available on Amazon, Kindle and iBookStore). Full time blogger at DragosRoua.com. Think happiness is a process, not a goal.

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Games that launch companies, games that heal: Q&A with Jane McGonigal

Jane McGonigal is a game designer with an apparently simple idea: some of the billions of hours we spend playing games can be used to solve real world problems, and it can be done by playing games. Her new book, Reality Is Broken, explores the power of games to change people’s lives. It’s just out this week. The TED Blog caught up with her in the middle of the release to talk about games, saving the world, and the simple power of Angry Birds.

Since your TEDTalk, you’ve managed a full run of Evoke, you social entrepreneurship game.

It was really exciting! We were just formally announcing Evoke at TED. That was our first glimpse to see if people would be interested in it, excited about it. We were able to run the game a few months later, a ten-week crash course in changing the world. Our original goals were to try to enroll a thousand students in the game, and we wound up enrolling just under 20,000. We had them from over a 130 countries, all playing the same game and collaborating with each other, which was really amazing.

The most eye-opening outcomes were how many real-world businesses, real-world social enterprises were founded by players of the game over the course of the ten weeks, and then actually launched in the summer following the game. We have more than fifty social enterprises started by gamers. Companies that were designed to deal locally with issues like food security, clean water access, women’s education. That was pretty much a first; the idea that you could come play a game and ten weeks later wind up with a real social enterprise.

One example is this great project called Libraries Across Africa. The idea is basically, what if there were a McDonalds of libraries? What if you could have a franchise for libraries and that the people who would implement and start a library in a village, or anywhere, that it would be a money-making venture, a self-supporting venture, and that other enterprises could pop up around the act of lending books to people: selling them food, selling them phone service or internet access. What a super-creative, novel idea to try to franchise libraries. That came out of the game, and it’s actually in development now. They have their first library prototype in the field.

That’s fantastic. It sounds like you’ve gotten a great reception.

Yeah, when I talk to the media they really sink their teeth into these problem-solving games, but I want to say, the first half of the book is about the way that games integrate into our real life, to improve our health and happiness. What you would call ordinary video games. When I talk to readers that’s the part they’re interested about, but when I talk to media we almost never get to that.

The subtitle is “Why games make us better, and how they can change the world.” I’m really interested in not just these world-saving problem-solving games, but also in how games like Angry Birds, Farmville and World of Warcraft can actually make our lives better. So, the first half of the book is full of science, looking at things like the fact that people who play Rock Band and Guitar Hero are more likely to learn how to play a guitar. This is fascinating, to see that games, rather than distracting us from our real-life goals, seem to be a springboard to real-life goals. There’s science that shows that when we play cooperative games we’re more likely to help strangers, friends, family members in real life. Thirty minutes of playing a co-op game changes for an entire week how cooperative we are in real life. We’re more likely to see opportunities to help someone, and more likely to act on them.

Playing with avatars that are powerful in a game world, or avatars that we find attractive, makes us more confident and optimistic, so that we’re more likely to successfully flirt with strangers or negotiate in a workplace meeting. Just ninety seconds of playing with an avatar can change your odds for success in a real-world situation for 24 hours.

So, there’s all these ways we’re starting to see that the line between the games we play and the lives we lead is much more porous than we imagined. I think this is really great news. It shows that we don’t have to play fewer video games in order to lead the lives that we want to lead. There are all kinds of games that can actually support our real-life goals, strengthen our real-life relationships. That’s such a transformative way to look at games, to realize that they’re not distracting us from our lives. They’re filling our lives with more strength and better relationships. Even the tiniest game, like Angry Birds, can power us with optimism and resilience throughout the day. It’s really remarkable.

Why do you think the default assumption is the exact opposite?

I think it’s two things, one is very old and one is very new. There’s this old, old sense that there’s a divide between productivity and play, and that playing games is somehow not productive. In fact, my research shows that playing games literally produces some very good things. It produces positive emotion. It produces social bonds. It produces more ambitious goals. Yes, it doesn’t produce economic capital; it doesn’t produce consumer goods. But we should ask ourselves, why does “productive” mean producing economic or consumer things? Why isn’t productive producing things that really matter, like improving quality of life? But that’s an old thing, that goes back before video games — games were seen as not productive.

Then, for the last twenty years there’s the idea that the virtual is somehow removed from real life, that we have avatars that are “alternate identities,” and that’s not who we are really are, we get to be somebody else. Of course, we are the same person when we play games. It’s not like we dissociate and become somebody else; it is us. The games increasingly are real in physical ways. Like the X-Box 360 Connect, and how amazingly physical that is, and how real the dancing is. It’s not fake dancing, it’s real dancing. You look at how many people are playing games on Facebook with their real-life friends and families. I’m playing Cityville with people I know in real life, people I really like. it’s not like playing with “strangers on the internet.”

We have this misguided notion that somehow games are just totally virtual. At the very least, the feelings they produce in us are real. The science shows that it doesn’t matter where you get your positive emotions; if you feel a positive emotion it has the same impact on your health and happiness regardless of where it comes from. We need to stop thinking that just because something is digital that it doesn’t have a real impact on our minds and bodies and hearts.

You had a very personal experience with that, designing a game to help yourself recover from a severe concussion.

When I first decided to make this game, I had a very epic, important meeting with my doctor. It had been about a month, and I was having very slow recovery from the concussion, so they diagnosed post-concussion recovery syndrome. She said that if I was feeling stress and anxiety or depression or loneliness — that these emotions get in the way of the brain healing itself. They see in a lot of patients this vicious cycle. You get depressed because you’re not getting well, and then that depression slows you down even more. You have to break that cycle. If you miss the first month of recovery, then on average it’s three months, and if you miss that window then it’s six months, and if you miss that then it’s a year. I was looking forward to possibly a year of not being able to think straight, of not being able to be in public spaces. It made me so depressed and anxious and despairing that I thought there was no way I was going to break the cycle.

It just came to me, coming home from the doctor, I have to make this a game. If I don’t make this a game I will never get out of depression. I’d already written the first few chapters of the book, and those are largely about the idea that gameplay is the opposite of depression. Clinically speaking, depression is a pessimistic sense of your own capabilities, and despondent lack of energy. The opposite of that, an optimistic sense of your own capabilities and an invigorating rush of activity, is the perfect textbook definition of gameplay.

So if I could just make this a game, I could do it. I couldn’t play regular video games because it was aggravating my concussion symptoms. So I was still in this mental fog, and there are these crazy videos of me from that day online on YouTube where I’m trying to design the game out loud, and you can see how much of a fog I’m in, and how much joy.

It was interesting even in that state to be able to reach into game design and design my way out, but it wasn’t until after I’d been playing for quite a while and was better that I was able to redesign it for other people to play. I started having friends test it for things like asthma, diabetes, knee surgery, chemotherapy. I started to get a lot of anecdotal and subjective feedback about how it was working.

The main point is to take the despair out of a diagnosis. You can use the strength of positive emotions and social connectivity to make the process of trying to get better, much, much better and faster.

I’m actually developing a personal version of this game that will be available to the public this summer. And we’re working right now on clinical trials to demonstrate the scientific medical validity of this game. That’s very exciting because there aren’t many games that have been through clinical trials.

There’s a lot of research now on the placebo effect, and how to harness it. It sounds like this is a way.

It’s interesting, somebody was asking me, “Isn’t it just a delusion? In games, to fly, or have an avatar with magic powers coming out their fingers? It’s just a fantasy, it’s an illusion of power.” But what the science shows is something very similar to the placebo effect, that having this imaginative capacity, that you somehow have this power, activates in us that we feel the positive. When the placebo effect is working, people are looking for positive outcomes, and that’s what they see. I think games — hopefully they have real impact — but even if we are just tapping into the power of people’s imaginations to imagine themselves better, that seems like a really good way to go.

Well, even if you are worried about the social transformation part, getting people used to using games to do things is a first step.

Exactly. The social transformation is a 10- to 25-year project. So, in the meantime we’re building these competencies and these skills.

Back to Evoke, with twenty thousand players, thousands interested in mentoring, it sounds like there’s been a good reception.

The reception was great. That’s the thing. When people ask me, “What’s different about the gamer generation?” I say it’s a sense of wanting to rise to the occasion, a sense of heroic purpose: If there’s a heroic mission and I could be the one who’s destined to fill it, I want to do that; I want to be that person. I want to be on a journey; I want to be on an adventure, or part of an adventure. And when we reach out to people, particularly in that gamer generation, and give somebody an opportunity to do something heroic — and it’s something authentically challenging. We weren’t asking people to donate five dollars. There’s nothing challenging about that other than if you don’t have five dollars — but actually to do something, they do rise to the occasion. That’s where a lot of my optimism comes from. We’re still in very early days of trying to harness what’s amazing about games and gamers, and so there’s a lot we really haven’t figured out yet.

The thing that evokes the most skepticism in the comments on the talk is, how do you translate solutions in the game to solutions in the real world?

That’s a great question. I should really take a lot of responsibility for this misconception. I didn’t really talk about my games in the TEDTalk very much.

The great thing about these games is that you don’t have to translate the solutions in the game to solutions in the real world. The game is all about doing things in the real world. So, in World Without Oil, you’re living your life as if there were an oil shortage. You are doing the things that would be the solution; you’re changing the way you eat and cook food, you’re changing the way you get to work. In Evoke you’re going out and you’re actually starting a community garden. You’re transforming how your laptop is powered from regular electricity to solar, or your iPod is getting powered by riding on your bike. You’re actually doing stuff, and it feeds back into the game.

I’m not a fan of simulations. Where, ‘Oh, we’ll go play a simulation of world peace and figure out how to make peace’ and then somehow magically that will get translated into the real world. No, that’s not the kind of games that I make. The games that we make, if it’s going to be a game about world peace, it’s going to be a game in which people go out and actually make friends with people that they’ve had disagreements with; they’re going to go out and do something to actually make a difference.

So, it’s not about simulation, but more about attaching the things about gaming that give people this sense of accomplishment to real-world activities.

Right. Real-world activities needs to be at the core of it.

– Interview by Ben Lillie

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