How technical constraints inspired a video game developer to create a new genre

Originally posted on Proof of Concept

In the 1960s, there was a kid growing up in the neighborhood of Setagaya in Tokyo. His father, a pharmacist, spent a lot of time away at work, which was common among Japanese men in Tokyo. The child would pass time waiting for his dad to get home by watching television, movies, and create figurines to play with. With an upbringing immersed in stories, media, and entertainment, it’s not a surprise he grew up aspiring film production as a career. It didn’t pan out as he expected. Instead, to his friends’ chagrin, the now-grown-up child went into video game development. In the 1980s, Nintendo was the hot craze, and games developers wanted to work there. The kid from Setagaya, known as Hideo Kojima, ended up at a different publisher…Konami. 

Kojima’s first opportunity was working in the home computer gaming division, where he would be responsible for developing games for the computer architecture known as the MSX2. One of Kojima’s first projects was delegated to him by a senior developer; shipping an action game on the MSX2. Kojima was ecstatic; the opportunity to create an epic action game. He took the childhood inspiration of film and base the direction on the popular 80s action movie Rambo. There was a problem. The technical limitations of the MSX would result in an underwhelming action game experience.

The technical capability of game development was not what we know now. What seems like an infinite resource today, game developers had to consider graphical limitations and typically were built with sprites, two-dimensional bitmaps that would be added on a scene. This allowed game designers to create characters, maps, and other elements players would interact with created in pixels.

The capabilities of the MSX2 allowed a few character sprites at once, which is drastically different from the one-man army action narratives of a single hero taking on the opposing military. Kojima had to ship something, and he explored different pathways.

Kojima took another approach. Why not create a game based on escaping from enemies instead? It would require fewer sprites and would be achievable. He loved the movie The Great Escape, the popular film starring Steve McQueen. After another iteration, Kojima realized an action game based on running away the entire time would be boring. In the next iteration, Kojima decided to blend the two: a game that would have action but focused on stealth and infiltration, using the sprite constraints as a way to create tension in sneaking, avoiding getting caught.

The game starred a special forces operative named Snake. His mission is to infiltrate a fortified state known as Outer Heaven. It was believed that Outer Heaven stored a very dangerous weapon, a bipedal tank with the capability of launching nuclear missiles. This super weapon was called Metal Gear.

With never-seen experiences such as the overhead camera perception and stealth mechanics, the game was a big hit in Japan. For five months it was the Top 20 best-selling MSX. Two more Metal Gear games were created after the original. Snake’s Revenge was one produced without Kojima, and it was a disaster. It was the “Thor: The Dark World” of Metal Gear games. In 1998, 11 years later after shipping the original, Kojima, now directing his games, revolutionized the series with the release of Metal Gear Solid, a sequel to the stealth action game on the Sony Playstation.

In his keynote talk a the Game Developer Conference (GDC) in 2009. Kojima talked about these constraints he faced and how it fostered innovation instead of impeding it. The talk, Making the Impossible Possible, covers his challenge with Metal Gear and how he sought tech constraints as opportunities.

“Simply put, Metal Gear was born out of hardware limitations, advancing together with hardware to reach new heights.”

The story of Hideo Kojima is as much about video game development as is about creative innovation. Kojima is one of my greatest inspirations and I believe design is about creating solutions with current constraints and technology in order to push them forward.

Kojima is known as one of the greatest innovators in the gaming industry. If it wasn’t for the technological constraints of the MSX with Metal Gear, history could look differently. The full-blown action game Konami wanted to make would not have been well-received as the new high-tension stealth genre born from technological constraints. The iconic Solid Snake may never have existed.

We can look to the skies, waiting for perfect conditions and a rocket ship to take us there, or we can start building on the ground we stand to start climbing. By disregarding preconceived notions through design, we invent and innovate. Along the way we’ll get closer to our objective, discovering new perspectives along the way.

As the pure dreamers remain grounded, innovators find a way to make the impossible possible.

This week we had a wonderful dinner and conversation with designers from Anthropic, Replit, Webflow, Airtable, Perplexity, Chroma, Airbnb, GitHub, and Notion about using AI for design and designing for AI.

The vibe might not be what you expected—optimistic, human, and curious. Many of us are working on sentient tooling that elevates the human experience. The arrival of AI in the design space is like when the camera obscura was introduced to artists.

We covert topics such as re-skilling ourselves, the importance of taste/intention being a differentiator, and where we’re spending our time when the effort and cost to make software is nearly zero.

Instead of constantly talking about AI, perhaps explore the material and understand the implications.

It was nice to break to enjoy Omakase with incredible humans.

Today marks three years since we said goodbye to my cat Wilson, who lived with us for all 19 years of his life. I know people who are pet lovers say it’ll get better over time and encourage adopting another pet. I don’t know if I ever can. We miss you so much, Wilson.

Managing towards outcomes

Originally posted on Proof of Concept

Outcome: A final product or end results.

“Manage towards outcomes,” a VP of Engineering I worked with always says. It’s something the EPD group I worked with would keep as a mantra. This framing, while tiny in detail, is crucial to remember in the midst of the chaos of work. As a manager, you want to avoid the resource management trap—thinking about how time is used vs. what needs to get done. This applies to both overseeing your team and how you as a manager prioritized your own time.

Many people’s first role as a manager starts with direct line management—overseeing a specific team with no layers. It’s natural for line managers to think about resource management. That was the intention of the role of managers overseeing people in an assembly line—less relevant in building a tech company. Managing towards outcomes is focusing on the intended results and affecting change towards that. This sounds obvious, but is easier said than done. Instead of thinking about the time needed to achieve a result, focus on what needs to get done and the inputs required to achieve it.

As important as being people-centric as a leader is, you are a leader of the outcome. A Head of Product is responsible for the outcomes of the product, not only the people on their team doing the work. There are other factors such as operations on how the work is delivered, the quality of the work, and balancing financial resources in order to achieve it.

The input/output exercise

When forced with complex challenges, I try to distill it to the simplest form of it. The input/output exercise can help you map what you need and are doing to the desired outcome. This exercise has three components:

  1. Left: Inputs you need from the company to achieve your goals
  2. Middle: Your team’s purpose in how they contribute to the desired outcomes the company (and how your team is responsible for delivering it)
  3. Right: Outputs and artifacts your team will deliver to inform the outcomes

Outcomes

Though it’s out of order from left-to-right, start in the center with the desired outcome. Reflect on your team’s purpose and how they contribute to the company vision. How you determine the desired outcome varies on the maturity of your company. If you’re at an earlier stage company, you may not have any benchmarks to move any metrics. It’s better to have a task-oriented desired outcome that’s clear than realize a metric you set can’t be measured. Keep in mind the following are important factors but not outcomes: effort, process, motion, status, and intent.

Inputs

Inputs are what your team needs in order to achieve the desired outcome. This may be resources needed, information, or something unblocked in order for your team to do their work. A few examples of inputs are: data, headcount, dependencies with other teams, etc.

Outputs

What is delivered to inform the outcome. The outputs are artifacts—proof of work what your team made happen independently of the inputs. The outputs either directly contribute to the outcome such as a product shipped or go-to-market campaign launched. However, they can also be artifacts that inform a desired outcome. For example, a research team’s value is not building and shipping the product but deliver an artifact of insights that inform what is built.

The outcome of outputs vary on timeline. Because designs are delivered recently for a new feature doesn’t mean ARR will skyrocket. However, it may be the blueprint of a missing customer need that results in it down the road.

Here’s what a recap of your input/output exercise might look like::

  • Our product quality has been eroding. A root cause of it is because of a fragmented design system. We’d like to hire two designers to initialize a team that can support the product teams on consistency and scale of design patterns
  • Growth has sputtered at the company. We need to explore product investments that’ll increase ARR or expand our Total Addressable Market (TAM). We need input on Strategic Finance to help us understand if there is a demand people will pay for in the market
  • In a recent company survey, 60% of team members indicated they did not see career growth at the company. We’d like increase our L&D budget to invest in areas where team members want to grow

How you spend your time depends on the desired outcome

I describe management in three core aspects: operator, strategist, and coach. It’s not a perfect distribution across everything you do. Where you prioritize your involvement varies on each direct report, priority, and how things are progressing. It’s not set it and forget it. It’s being constantly heads up over heads down. One of my favorite frameworks is Hersey-Blanchard’s Situation Leadership. It’s a great exercise to help you think about how you prioritize your involvement across the team.

Depending on the desired outcome and how it’s staffed, you may be hands on or hands off. There are areas of responsibility where there might be more maturity that you can be hands off. While you’ve delegated that area, there might be a new team you’re building that requires you to initialize the work as you hire the team. This is my recommendation on how you balance your time—allocation based on every work stream vs. a catch-all across the entire organization.

Outcomes evolve—iterate

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” —Mike Tyson

Managing towards outcomes will need to be balanced with reality. Don’t be surprised that once you set desired outcomes with lovely inputs/outputs that things change. This happens frequently in organizations with rapid change. The speed in moving to a different direction is crucial to stay alive—the difference between navigating a speedboat vs. turning an aircraft carrier around.

A former manager once told me you have to choose which fires requires your attention most because there will be multiple fires. Re-balance your focal area weekly, if not daily.

Managing towards outcomes is difficult to prioritize and think about. It’s why many companies don’t do it. As you fight the fires, stay focused on the desired outcomes—something you should be able to fit on an index card and repeatedly articulate.

Avoid the resource management trap and manage towards outcomes.