Gaming

Lessons from BBC TV’s “The Apprentice” – Series 16. 5. Gaming

I’m pretty sure that most of today’s blockbuster games are big productions much like a major movie. So making one in a couple of days is a big ask.

Episode 5 of series 16 in BBC TV’s “The Apprentice” appeared to ask just this of its inexperienced candidates. Or did it?

If they listened clearly to the challenge what it was really was to sell their concept to some industry experts in order to elicit (hypothetical?) investment into developing the game. In my view, that changes everything. Because suddenly you’re no longer reaching for the impossible – produce a game in a couple of days – but instead have the much more feasible task of hooking investors into developing your concept. It’s a different challenge. You’re selling a concept.

I don’t know if either team understood this but only one presented a central character with real Lara Croft potential (vs Sam the Scientist from the other team – what? Give us Bob the Builder at least, please) and went on to win. There was a possibility in their game of levels, tasks, perils and elements the players could pick up to help them, as well as a character: the elements of a game. Of course these were the winners, and, whether by luck or judgement it was because they presented that possibility and potential of something investable-in – and because they were the more credible investable people as a result – that won it.

As ever, the losing team was happy to help the winners to their victory by hardly competing. A nonsense ‘environmental’ game about rescuing penguins from the Artic (sic) – though you can’t even rescue them from the actual Arctic in real life, ’cause they ain’t there – by apparently killing people who stood in your way. This was what Bob the Builder or Fireman Sam or whatever his silly name was had to do. One has to have doubts about the capacities of a team of people without spelling nor geography – and our investors did. For their information, no, the solution to the climate crisis is not to go get the animals from the Arctic, Antarctic nor even the Artic.

So, yes, once again it’s understand the nature of the task and common sense. And there were two other interesting lessons as well.

Sophie finds herself back in the boardroom as a potential for firing for ‘not contributing anything’. Ah, failing to contribute, once again. That old chestnut. It keeps being used and the reason is it works. Yet poor Navid, who went out first, and now Sophie, facing the same accusation, in fact – as we all saw – continually made positive suggestions and were continually shut down by a domineering team/sub-team lead. Shame to see Navid go for that; happy to see Sophie not go down for that; happier still to see the domineering Francesca get called a taxi instead. The first really correct firing of the series. Nobody wants to work with someone like that. What really, though, is the answer for you if all your contributions are shut down? It’s either resign or outlive your oppressors, I think. Happily, the wait for a verdict is not long on The Apprentice.

Almost at the other end of the spectrum we saw winning PM Akeem seem to bend to each and every new suggestion made by his team – for which he was somewhat criticised by Lord Sugar and his Advisors. And this is unusual in The Apprentice — to see a PM so open to team input. The norm is the PM with their autocratic vision that they impose. Well, it worked, and, although he seemed rather a pushover, Akeem’s approach of incorporating team members’ suggestions is, I think, by far the better one. Don’t be autocratic, involve team members by incorporating their ideas joins my list of Lessons from The Apprentice.