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Ear Candy 2024.02 – The Zeigarnik Effect

Helene Beland

First, the music! This month’s playlist opens with some strong bass and closes with one of my favourite drum-driven songs (and no, the title has nothing to do with the conspiracy theory which shares its name). I was reminded of it while swimming down in Coogee one evening as planes flew overhead – a very dark song about the beauty which can come from otherwise horrid things.

Light Rails, Spare Me the Decision, Football and Takeaguess are other standouts. That 1999 WTF album is chaotic in its style and I think I like it. I’ll need another listen.

It’s a new year and thoughts of time and change are on the mind. People make resolutions hoping that an arbitrary date in a calendar can deliver results which couldn’t be achieved by the days and months which preceded.

According to When by Daniel Pink, it turns out that a date in a calendar does have the power to make change – but it’s not arbitrary, and nor is 1 January the only date where this can be achieved. Christmas, birthdays, a new month, engagement parties, public holidays, and time away from work are some of the other occasions which can serve as effective motivators for change. And the last two months have featured all of the above.

Pink explores the power of timing and how we can use it to our advantage – arguing that typically we are more concerned with the “what” and “how” of decision-making, and the “when” is often an afterthought. Neglecting this can have a dramatic difference on outcomes and overall life satisfaction.

He explores the field of chronobiology – the idea that our cognitive abilities and decision-making skills fluctuate throughout the day, and vary from person to person.

For example, whether you are a morning person (a “lark”, like me) or an evening person (an “owl”), should guide when you schedule tasks that suit your best performance. Got a big decision and think you should sleep on it to tackle it first thing in the morning? Well, this only works for larks. Owls should make big decisions after lunch. For creative and abstract thought, these times are reversed. Each will function better at those tasks when they are less sharp.

The book cites data showing how big an impact this can have on experience. He shows how results from high school examinations correlate to the time of day the tests were conducted; how job interviews are typically more successful when held in the morning or after lunch; and how prison sentences followed a similar pattern, where guilty verdicts strongly occur more frequently at the end of the day.

I thoroughly loved When. It made for a fascinating and easy read, hitting several of my usual interests – most notably psychology and popular science. It also expanded my thoughts on leadership, business and productivity – all of which have been front of mind at work lately.

One standout aspect is Pink’s exploration of the peak-end rule, a psychological phenomenon that influences how we perceive and remember experiences. Through compelling examples, such as medical procedures and vacations, Pink illustrates how the endings of events disproportionately impact our overall feelings about them.

The peak for this tree was towering over a nest of presents. Its end is decomposing on a nature strip.
Chop it up and use the green bin ya lazy bums (you can see another three houses up!)

Thinking back to old jobs and places I’ve called home, this rule rings true for me. My memories of four months living in Melbourne and three in Wellington are consumed by being overworked and my desire to get out of there as soon as I could. When I think of my experience in Canada, the first two things which come to mind are the incredible travel experiences on the road, and the immense stress and desperation to leave mid-pandemic. My first job in visual effects is remembered as my first opportunity to lead working on Prometheus, and the closure of the company a year later. Meanwhile, memories from the jobs which found softer endings feel more fully formed.

But back to resolutions…

I didn’t make any “resolutions” as such this year. But I do have a list of goals and hopes for the year. One (run club) is off to a roaring start. I also tried pilates. I’ll try again once I’ve recovered from the physical and emotional pain of writhing awkwardly in a room full of incredibly fit eastern suburbs women first thing in the morning, like a flailing giraffe in a field of gazelles.

Travel plans are looking unlikely to be a big feature this year – a focus on a new work opportunity will fill that void – but perhaps the accumulated leave and additional savings can ensure an even longer two- or three-month travel break in 2025. This year’s focus and hard work will be next year’s bliss.

It’s all about getting the timing right.

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Books: The Past & The Future of Australia & Hollywood

Some words that have travelled past my eyes lately…

This Time | Benjamin T Jones

A republic has been on the national to-do list for over 160 years. Questions about it 'being the right time' are predictable but deceptively partisan: when places in a historical context, they are exposed as a delaying tactic. The republican moment will not fall into the lap of a nation that has nothing better to do that day. It must be seized.

This was a really easy read covering a brief (and under-appreciated) history of republicanism in Australia, from the goldfields of Eureka to the push leading up to the centenary of Federation in 2001, and beyond. Many great Australians fought peacefully to achieve their goal of making this country fully independent, all the while being overlooked for English elites. Why is the Queen still on our coins? Why do we still name streets after these people? Why do we reserve the highest position on our flag for the flag of a country which invaded our own and slaughtered our first inhabitants?

Jones gives his thoughts on the symbols and structures which could replace and build on what we have now. I was particularly fond of his proposed title for a head of state – Beanna Elder – which draws from Australia’s oldest culture.

I was sadly not old enough to vote at the 1999 referendum. There really is no argument for keeping a foreign hereditary head of state (even though some creepy royal sycophants still try their best). Australia is a country which values egalitarianism, meritocracy and community (more apparent to me after spending time overseas). The crown has been out place in our unique culture for some time now and I look forward to having a chance to rectify it, hopefully within the next ten decade.

The Big Picture | Ben Fritz

Are they still movies, though, if more than 99 percent of the people who watch them don't do so in a movie theatre? Who cares. Take out the commercial breaks and "previously on"s, and Breaking Bad is a forty-five-hour movie that's better than anything most movie studios have made this century. And no matter how many billions they earn at the box office, no one can convince me that the third Avengers offering and the fourth Captain America film aren't super-expensive episodes in the most successful television series of our era.

The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies was a great read. Fritz tracks the trends and events within the film and television world over the last twenty years. He uses information found in leaked emails from the Sony hack of 2014 as the bones of his book, which is fitting for the time period covered. Twenty years ago, Sony ruled the box office and Disney was languishing. In a very short time they switched places. One of these players saw the future and made it happen. Like many other products, movies became brands. An actor no longer gets bums on seats. A franchise does. A character does.

Why doesn’t Hollywood offer anything original any more? Simple – people just don’t pay to see original movies at the theatre like the once did. In the meantime the quality of television has increased exponentially. In many ways the two have switched places.

The lines have blurred between what defines a movie and what defines a television episode. This will blur further in the years to come. An episode of a series was once determined by the half-hour slots offered by a broadcast station, a movie limited by a film reel (and bladder capacity). There really isn’t a need for this any more, as is already being witnessed in a show like The Mandalorian, where an episode is “as long as it needs to be”. It’s no longer television or movies, but “content”.

Film content is also being driven by the money of an increasingly international market. Comedy doesn’t cross-cultures, so it doesn’t happen. There’s no Chinese money in American humour. On the flip side, services like Prime and Apple are emerging where profit is not a concern, so creativity can flourish with little concern to whether it finds an audience. The primary goal is to give users content to keep them within the larger tech ecosystem.

This book was only published in 2018, yet already feels out of date, such is the speed at which the movie world is changing. The pandemic has only exacerbated this. Some movies are being released to stream the same day at their theatrical release, and even the ones that aren’t are having their theatrical window shortened. It’s changing so quickly that the landscape will be unrecognisable in another few years.

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Books: Sierra On-Line Retrospectives

Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings | Ken Williams
The Sierra Adventure: The Story of Sierra On-Line | Shawn Mills
The Art of Point-and-Click Adventure Games | Bitmap Books

My collection of PC games which still lives at my parents’ home and I can’t bring myself to get rid of them

As I’ve mentioned previously, when I think back to my childhood, two images come to mind – riding my bike around the endless suburban streets of western Sydney, and playing computer games as much as I was allowed. Name a PC game from 1983 to around 1998 and chances are I’ve played it. From Commander Keen to Command and Conquer; Castle Adventure, Descent, Prince of Persia, Scorched Earth, Eye of the Beholder, Lemmings, Supaplex, JetPack, Earthsiege, Alone in the Dark. The list goes on.

But most of all I loved Sierra games. In the 80s and early 90s, Sierra On-Line dominated the PC gaming market. I loved them so much that I had dreams of one day working there. But in the late 90s, as the company deteriorated and eventually closed down, so too my interest in gaming dwindled.

At this time, every other game seemed to be another shooter with little-to-no story nor characters with whom to interact. Funnily enough, one of the last Sierra-published-games I got into was Half Life (which I loved). But mostly all I saw was a sea of sameness and as such I switched my attention to teaching myself 3D animation, website design and coding – all of which revolved around making fan content for my favourite series Space Quest. My goal switched from playing to creating.

Two books (the first two listed above) have been released in the last few months which have given some insight into the history of Sierra On-Line – how it began, how it thrived, and how it spectacularly fell apart. I devoured both books in only a couple of sessions.

  • At 8 years of age I tried to win over girls as Larry
  • King’s Quest was always their crown
  • Police Quest keeping it gritty
  • Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist
  • Space Quest. There’s nothing like it.

The Sierra Adventure is a work of love, written by a fan with the backing of a number of other fans via Kickstarter. It chronicles the company from its early days to its unfortunate end, highlighting the key games, designers and technologies along the way. Sierra’s success was found in its designer-driven approach and its technological boundary-pushing. No great work of art is designed by committee. As a Sierra fan, you always felt like part of a club or family, and got to know the game designers in the same way you would the author of a book. In the early days you could even call the designer to talk to them directly when you got stuck.

Unfortunately this approach was also expensive. An adventure game requires, story, dialogue, and characters. A successful game would sell around 250,000 copies and require a budget of around a quarter of the expected revenue. By the mid-nineties these numbers just weren’t competitive. Shawn Mills says it best:

A cultural change occurred in the early nineties that saw computers become a staple in most homes. They were no longer just for the tech-savvy, and as more and more people began using them throughout the decade, games and software were simplified to reach a broader audience.

More importantly, the technological advancement to 3D would become one of the major downfalls of the point-and-click adventure. While fast-paced, action-oriented games increased in popularity, the more cerebral adventure genre no longer dominated the market.

Shawn Mills, The Sierra Adventure
Sierra pushed the boundaries of what was possible in a PC game by embracing new technology. Soundcards changed everything and enhanced the experience. I still listen to these regularly.

Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings – written by Sierra’s co-founder and CEO for most of the company’s life, Ken Williams – covers similar ground from the perspective of the ultimate insider. It’s far more business-oriented, which becomes fascinating when considering what led to both the successes and failures of the company.

A few highlights:

  • Sierra made an offer to purchase id Software following the release of Wolfenstein 3D, which failed mostly due to stubbornness. Pride can be a bitch. Imagine the future which might have followed.
  • Ken Williams was adamant about games being driven by the singular vision of an individual designer – a belief I strongly agree with for any decent creative endeavour (“if you were to take the two greatest book authors in the world and have them collaborate on a book, the result would not be as strong as their producing two independent books“). When new management took over, they used numbers and spreadsheets to assign people to projects. Original game designers were placed on games for which they had no passion while others were placed in charge of their original creation with little to no understanding of the world which had been created over fifteen years.
  • Sierra (and Microsoft) benefited from IBM’s fear of government anti-trust laws. IBM wrote into their contracts that each company must make their product available elsewhere. As such, when IBM caught a cold it hit them harder and allowed Sierra to sail off with other manufacturers.
  • The concept of a game “engine” which could be repurposed for new games without having to be coded from the ground up was pioneered by Sierra’s SCI. It’s what allowed them to push out ten times more titles than their competitors. It was also amusing the see the parallels with my own experience in the VFX industry as creatives would become frustrated with updates under the hood.
  • It struck me how much the experience of working in the gaming industry at that time lines up with my own experience working in the film industry. Bill Gates is paraphrased in the book: “when you are in a business that depends entirely on having a series of hits, it’s just a matter of time until you fail“.
What other game besides Space Quest III tasks the player with rescuing its own designers from their bosses who whip them as they work

Invariably, in a company that grows the way Sierra grew, innovation gives way to emulation. Whereas Sierra’s management once strove to make it solid, profitable, and yet fun, they now strive to dominate other companies, force annual growth in the double digits, and (Like so many other companies) cut jobs mercilessly to improve the bottom line and thrill the stockholders.

Josh Mandel, echoing a sentiment true of any company

Not All Fairy Tales was written thanks to Ken being trapped indoors during the pandemic. In a similar way, my desire to explore again the possibility of creating my own game has risen with all the time I’ve had stuck indoors this year. I’ve been learning Unreal Engine and making my own digital art again and my mind has exploded with ideas of how one might tackle an adventure game in 2020. I’ll save that for another time.