Lately I’ve been thinking about how we can make game development itself even more fun. As a rule, we are experts in taking something which is not inherently fun or even interesting (e.g. pushing a bunch of buttons) and making that a joyful experience. Over the years, both individually and as an industry, we have learned a lot of lessons on how to motivate and inspire people. So much so that the “gamification” of various processes outside the game industry has become a really hot business topic lately.
See for example, Seth Priebatsch’s TED presentation on “The game layer on top of the world” -
I am also inspired by Volkswagon’s FunTheory project where they have done some small, but very interesting, experiments on adjusting behavior by making the mundane and tedious tasks of life a little more fun.
For example:
Side note on the video above: One of our Engine Programmer’s made the observation that the most effective way of getting people to take the stairs would probably just be to remove the escalator. 
The idea is to take our understanding of games, motivation, creativity and joy and apply that back on ourselves. And of course this doesn’t just apply to game development. Ask yourself: How could you make your job more fun? How could you make it a game? What kind of difference would that make?
Here’s an example from our team: Lately we’ve been experimenting with a “5-minute Show and Tell.” Every week in our Core team meeting, one person is given 5 minutes to share anything they think is interesting. It doesn’t have to be related to games or development. It’s a little bit of fun, a whole lot of just plain interesting and you just never know what you’re going to pick up and what’s going to have some relevance for people.
Mike.
PS: You can follow me @mike_acton on Twitter
