hckrnws

There was this great YouTube video on Ace Combat Series. How they optimised for the feel instead of being a realistic fighter.

The feel of being a badass pilot, the hero that saves the day, to feel cool whilst flying and dogfighting.

I do wonder what some software would look like if they optimised for some feel angle. Better or worse? Would it even be feasible given the global nature of software usage and the requirement of targeting the lowest common denominator.

Genuinely of two minds about this piece - on the one hand, the cynical hand, it feels (to me) like one of the second-tier pitches you see in Mad Men that's meant to contrast with a top-tier Don Draper pitch...

... but on the other hand, the optimistic hand, it's compelling to consider what "optimizing for feeling in software" could mean, beyond just an impressive-sounding mission statement for The Browser Company.

... of course, back to the cynical hand for a moment, it's hard to read something like this:

> You see — if software is to have soul, it must feel more like the world around it. Which is the biggest clue of all that feeling is what’s missing from today’s software.

and just take it for granted. Really? The thing that software should have is soul, and that means it should feel like the world around it(?) and that's a clue(??) that feeling is missing?

... but back to the optimistic hand for a second, who cares how the piece is written if it's making you think about how to make software, writ large, radically better? Or even just making you think, as it made me think, that software, writ large, CAN be radically better than it is? Because the piece is right! OKR culture feels crappy! Down with KPIs!

And back and forth I could go. I upvoted this piece because I think it could spark some interesting discussion here - anybody else of two (or three, or...) minds about this?

> it's hard to read something like this: […] and just take it for granted. Really? The thing that software should have is soul, and that means it should feel like the world around it(?) and that's a clue(??) that feeling is missing?

I agree it’s not the best writing, but it’s still clear to me what they mean. The restaurant is an example of a thing in the real world that is valuable because it has a “soul” and evokes certain feelings. If software generally lacks soul, but other things are valuable to us partly because they are soulful, that is a clue that software might be more valuable if it were more soulful too.

How do you know the feeling(s) you are optimizing for are the right ones? A murderer is also optimizing for a feeling.