For the past few years, I have been following gaming industry news: mostly news about Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft—the Big Three that rule the gaming platform with their Wii, PlayStation 3, and XBOX 360, respectively. I thought I was following their news because of the technologies and innovations involved: What is the alternative for Wii’s motion control scheme and what is the next big thing?

But back when there were only Nintendo and Sony, I didn’t care about the gaming industry at all. It was only after Microsoft entered the picture that I started reading gaming news coverage on daily basis. What happened? (1) more stimulating news came out because of accelerated innovations, and (2) a survival game touch was added to the competition.

The third person stimulates innovations

When two companies rule an industry, they are in a safe equilibrium. There are tensions between them, but the structure of that microcosm is fundamentally stable. Innovations or changes occur in one dimension (do something faster or cheaper than the opponent) or two dimensions (do the opposite of the opponent). In a word, they are predictable. When a third player joins, innovation goes wild because the newcomer cannot survive by playing according to the existing rules.

When Microsoft and Apple dominated the computer industry, we did not know who will ultimately win, but we never questioned that a computer is a black box ruled by the OS. But then Google stepped into the computer industry and they introduced us with a new idea: the black box can exist somewhere (in a remote server), channeled by the browser. They started introducing Google Mail, Map, Calendar, and even office applications, all online. Google did so because they were great at building web applications, but also because they couldn’t compete with the BIG 2 on their turf.

In the gaming industry, if Microsoft did not join the console war, Nintendo and Sony would have played the clock speed race forever: trying to build faster but affordable gaming machines while alienating common people. But Nintendo saw that the market was getting too crowded, and decided to create a new market based on motion control. And here we are getting a daily dose of technical innovations, from motion controlling to glassless 3D to controller-less controlling.

The third person ignites a survival game

If we are perfectly happy with having three players in general, our lives will be much more peaceful (and boring). But in many cases “two” is the optimal number, like in our personal relationships. A perfect couple has its Good and Bad but is fundamentally stable (and boring, at least from the outsider’s point of view). It is when the Ugly—the third person—enters the picture, things get dramatic. We know it won’t last long, and someone must exit the stage sooner or later.

Maybe dualism is embedded in our mind, especially as an audience. For the parties concerned, the world might be big enough to accept many rooms. But as bystanders, we might always be looking for things to “settle down” into two: man and woman, heaven and hell, the hero and the villain, ying and yang.

I have applied the “two as the optimum number” theory to check my motivation for following the gaming news, and found out that there is a hidden agenda behind the ear-pleasing innovation-following: I want to know who gets booted/butchered. Is this how people feel when they watch bullfighting in Spain to enjoy the “elegant movement of the fighters”?

* An example of an industry with only two players is large-scale airplane manufacturing. I have a hunch that as long as there are only Boeing and Airbus, we might keep having faster or more comfortable airplanes, but we might never have a new transportation system that solves our imminent and largest problem: reliance on fossil fuels. It requires an out-of-the-box innovation rather than straightforward competition

I practice qi-gong and attend a meditation group on weekly basis. There is a Q&A session in which we ask questions such as “What is zen?” to a teacher. In the beginning, I used to think it was the answer that mattered so I listened carefully to what the teacher said but did not pay much attention to the original question. *

But recently I realized that good questions are as memorable as good answers. Answers and questions stay in my memory in different ways. (Good) answers get digested. I can take in the information and feel how it dissolves in my mind. On the other hand, (good) questions stay. Like a piece of gum, they hold fixed positions in my mind. I get mentally constipated.

Once a question sticks in my mind, I enter into an automatic search mode: I start picking information relevant to that question from all inputs (see, feel, listen) and also outputs (talk and write). A good example of the latter is my blog posts. Most of my blog posts start from a question that pops into my head: “Is iPad really designed for paying customers?” “Does confrontation lead to mutual understanding?”. I then start describing my question, and along the way, try to articulate my own answer to that question, borrowing quotes and putting links in. **

In the end,the majority of a blog post, especially the second half of it, gets constructed from scratch; it does not exist at all when I start writing a post. For the links and quotes, sometimes they are googled, and sometimes they re-emerge from my pool of memory (I call it my junkyard), as if attracted by a huge magnet plate temporarily energized by the original question.

In this sense, questions are mental antennas, or radio tuners, that catch useful information that comes through our heads. Questions allow us to tune into a specific topic or narrow the range of interest, sometimes even unconsciously. A good question lets us tune into the right mental frequency so that the music (the answer) is heard loud and clearly. If the question is bad (not tuned), the answer becomes murky as well.

Okay then, so what makes a question “good”?

I think the answer in the antenna analogy: Resonance.*** A good question vibrates inside our mind, letting us find resonating elements (answers). That also explains why asking a good question is hard, because resonance, or empathy, does not generate on its own. Empathy arises with regard to the context of communication, whether it is between two people, a group of people, or a person and an object (such as a book).

To generate a good question, we need to find both good content and a matching context. We can generate smart-ass questions out of nowhere (which I frequently do), but those usually aren’t good at all.

Recently I found out that the teacher gives different levels of answers to the same question, depending on the student. No wonder some answers did not register in my memory smoothly. It was another instance where I realized the context (question) is what matters, more than the content (answer).

** In this post’s case, only the first two paragraphs are what originally existed in my mind.

*** I got the keyword resonance from Nintendo’s mastermind, Shigeru Miyamoto (again). In his recent interview, he mentions that after 30 years of game design, he finally realized he has been making games that resonate with the audience, when he was forced to provide the reason why he rejected some seemingly good ideas while developing the latest Mario game.

(Miyamoto) Whether or not the game world resonates with you as you're playing the game is what's most important. For example, when you watch a big-budget movie, you may be amazed by all the pyrotechnics, but at the same time, something isn't quite striking home with you.

(Iwata) Because it's not resonating.

P.S. A Note from my editor, to which I should reply in a different post..

What about the unasked question?  A few weeks ago my son bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee and now, suddenly, I see them everywhere.  I suppose they were there before, but I never had the question..or is it not a question, but just something that generates a specific awareness, to which observation then provides “answers” (or some other kind of contextual response ?