(Professional) Life Lessons I Learned from Galaga – Part 1: Teaming, Reading, and Baking

As some of you know already and I guess more will now, I love playing video games. They’ve been a big part of my life and without a doubt served as a catalyst, shaping my love of both technology and art. At some point and in some way I may eventually get around to sharing that journey, but right now, I thought I’d share across a couple of posts a handful of life lessons that I’ve gleaned at least in part by virtue of playing one of my favorite video games, Galaga, over the past 40+ years.?

Start working as a team as soon as possible – and a team can be just two

One of the relatively novel video game concepts that Galaga popularized if not introduced is the concept of “upgrading” your offensive capability live, in game, by joining two of your spaceships together, side by side. The result is a much more effective fighter, with double the firepower across a doubled field of fire - greatly increasing your odds of winning each successive round of battle. There is so, so very much more to this elegantly-designed game mechanic that I’m not going to do justice to here, but suffice it to say that anyone who spends any time playing the game learns very quickly that you generally want to spend more time teamed than not – so it follows that teaming sooner is better.

The author enjoying a currywurst lunch in Berlin while repping Galaga, Circa 2015. Photo Credit: Stacey Fletcher

To connect this lesson to everyday work life, consider how many explicit and implicit expectations are at least initially, framed within an individual context – in search of simplicity, motivation, and accountability. Now contrast that with how few, how very few truly sustainable outcomes are purely the result of an individual. I’m not saying that individuals can’t “change the world” because they certainly have and do, but I am saying that we should similarly work to initially consider the impact of the collective because the spectrum of challenges we face demands both.

It’s never too late to Read The...Manual?

Now I didn’t need Galaga to teach me to value and review documentation before using something, but it did remind me - embarrassingly recently - that reviewing documentation, watching a tutorial, or some similar instruction even on a subject you may feel you’ve mastered is usually worth your while. For those not familiar with video games from the arcade cabinet era, these games in their hunt for coins would cycle into an “attract” mode in-between games. It’s in this attract mode where the game typically cycles between the game’s title, credits, high scores and such, but most importantly it is when the game communicates how to play the game itself (a manual of sorts). Character roles, point values, demonstrations of the game in play, and even sometimes explicit instructions would be displayed – all with the aim of lowering the perceived risk of having an unsatisfying experience.

It was just a couple of years ago while in-between games on my Arcade1UP replica Galaga cabinet that I just zoned out while the attract mode rolled along. It was during the same demo I’ve been seeing for literally decades, that I finally, consciously, saw and applied the (on reflection, obvious) strategy of enabling and prioritizing the enemy attack pattern that yields the absolute maximum points. I had gotten the basics from viewing the demo countless times and playing the game even more, but even so, I had not fully divined how I could play the game very differently to obtain a very different result. I played in this different style for awhile, marveling at it playing out so consistently, and while it’s still not the style that I gravitate to, I love knowing it’s there and wondering what else I have yet to discover.

Bake continuous learning into your product experience

Now that’s neat and all, but what’s a perhaps more interesting takeaway that connects to our work? Bake continuous learning into your product experience. Product Managers and generally anyone putting together an offering would do well to take lessons from the video game industry that has come a long way from basic demos in attract mode to seamlessly weaving interactive learning into the game experience itself. The very best of these experiences are those that if they are noticed at all, are recognized after value realization from applying the learning. Similar to the thinking behind Product-led Growth’s emphasis on getting to product usage as quickly as possible, it’s this post-reward realization scenario that cements the association between value and the product experience that is key to expanding usage.

Another reason to bake continuous learning into your product experience is perhaps more practical - you can’t possibly presume to know all of the different times and ways your “guidance” may be needed or helpful, but if it’s holistically part of your product experience, the odds go significantly up that it will be there when it matters.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where we’ll look at what Galaga can teach us about Iteration, Success, and the Periphery….

*Important Disclaimer: I am simply a fan/player of video games, I’m not an expert on Galaga or any videogame for that matter, I just like ‘em and think they can be incredible art.