Hey guys, we’re going to be making cookies!
Awesome, I love ice cream.
Uh, sure? I’m really excited about these cookies.
What, don’t you like ice cream?
Sure, I love ice cream, but we’re making cookies.
Why can’t you make ice cream? It would be really popular.
If we were opening an ice cream store, that would be brilliant. But we’re selling cookies. We’ve built this whole business plan and bought all this equipment for cookies. You would need totally different equipment to make and store ice cream. We don’t have the room or the money or the time. So, about these cookies…
Ice cream sandwiches.
What?
Ice cream sandwiches. Ice cream AND cookies. You’re just making excuses not to make ice cream.
That’s not the kind of cookies we’re making, and ice cream sandwiches are bland as hell. We’re making really good cookies. Someone else might make really good ice cream and make you happy, but we cannot make you happy. I’m sorry. If you want a cookie, though -
An ice cream sandwich doesn’t have to be bland, if you hand made the cookies and used special ice cream.
And that would scale how well?
You’re awfully greedy, you know that?
I’m not greedy, I want to make cookies. And that reminds me, there’s the equipment issue.
You don’t need special equipment.
We’d need freezers.
Nah, man, ice cream is better when it’s a little melty.
No, it’s not. And why am I even talking about this? We’re making cookies.
But I want ice cream.
Go next door!
They aren’t making the kind of ice cream I want.
Make your own ice cream.
I want you to do it.
/headdesk
This is really funny and mostly true on gamers.
Only problem is 2 things. The first being most “cookie” stores tend to encourage the ice cream people they should come into their store because they covet the next door ice cream store’s customers. The 2nd problem and more unfortunate is that no body is or has been making “really good” Cookies or Ice Cream in over 6 years. They’re making cookies with an old bland recipe that people grew tired of a half a decade ago. =(
The first problem can be solved just by saying NO ICE CREAM over and over. The second… I can’t explain that one, actually, because I know some complete nimrods getting enough VC to make three different kinds of ice cream. The world is a funny place, that’s all.
I strongly suspect that raising capital has less to do with being able to make good ice cream, and more to do with being able to create Powerpoint slides that show how THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF CHINA wants ice cream, and is willing to pay US prices for it, with a straight face.
Help, I\’ve been ifnormed and I can\’t become ignorant.
You forgot the next step:
Executive: The people are demanding ice cream, we need to sell ice cream!
I didn’t forget, I tried to block it out
Ice Cream > Cookies
but I like cake so doesn’t matter to me. If I whine hard enough can I get cake ?
Give me Cake
/wrists
Pie > cake
(!)
icecream sandwich cake on a pie.
In my case, the person championing the making of ice cream was/still is on the design team, and periodically still tries to steer the cookie shop towards making ice cream.
To the Cookie Maker’s Support Group!
LOLOL!!! Now…WHY does this remind me of something….?
http://www.itsiticecream.com/
Ice cream sandwiches scale just fine!
haha, some days….are just like this!
“Fine, I give up. We’ll make ice cream. Here!”
“This ice cream sucks. I’m going to buy some next door.”
Too bad there are so few good ice cream shops in town …
I’m sure you’ll make awesome cookies though.
And, of course, after upper management forces you to start making ice cream without increasing your budget, the cookies end up the worse for it, and the ice cream wanters taste it and then go back to Baskin Robbins.
Brilliant.
Luckily, some of us do want to see what you can do with cookies.
They better be damn good though or it’s straight back to the Ice Cream Store.
I’m shocked that pie wasn’t mentioned!!!
/storms out of room
Pie goes pretty well with ice cream … errrm … unless that’s a steak and kidney pie. Then they’d need to be kept separate.
Cookies and pie? There are a lot of other things that go better with pie … like punch, and …. ice cream … and ….
Yeah, pretty much back to that old adage you can only please some of the people, some of the time. So you have to decide who you are going to please and stick to it, and tell the rest to bugger off.
Don’t listen to the Ice Cream Carebears. What we really need is Pie!
History suggests that while you trumpet cookies now (pre-release), swearing off all other treats to cater to just the cookie niche, a few weeks/months after release, when the thread about icecream sandwiches has 1000 votes and it sounds like “everyone wants it”, you sacrifice cookie quality to make the sandwich possible, and end up with an NGE-flavored icecream sandwich with Trammel sprinkles on top.
Then you go F2P.
Why isn’t this blog about open source software? People really like open source software. I’m just saying. Not that anyone’s going to listen of course because it’s obvious that you guys hate open source software, especially OpenLDAP. Seriously, when was the last time you wrote about OpenLDAP? There’s nothing wrong with OpenLDAP and LITERALLY millions of people across the planet are using OpenLDAP so I really don’t understand why you guys hate Linus Torvalds so much.
Also, nerf Salents.
Frustrated much?
My solution is to nod and smile and walk away, while enjoying my cookie. Easy for me, since I’m not running the cookie store.
Not frustrated at all, but highly entertained
Nothing ever changes, here on the internet.
And why should it? It’s the same set of electrons going around and around and around and around …
Maybe the solution is to give “recognition” to people who insist on ice cream. Can you hand out custom forum titles such as “Cloth Ears”, “Grand Master Misser Of The Point” or “Guy Who Would Be Happier PLaying A Different Game” ?
I think people forget that specialization is a good thing. Certainly, it feels like less of a positive when it’s specialized away from our own interests, but the practice in general leads to better, deeper products, and allows more room for different approaches that please larger varieties of consumers.
Even if I don’t like cookies, I’d rather there were an excellent new cookie store in my neighborhood than a “good enough” cookie store that sold “good enough” ice cream. It raises the profile of the area, and is more likely to attract an excellent new ice cream shop to fill the remaining demand.
There IS a time and a place for the Walmart approach, but the time isn’t “always” and the place isn’t “everywhere.” Sometimes you want the bar set a little higher, and specialization is the most efficient method of achieving that.
THAT.
Where I work we’re just entering into our third round in five years of “do we stick to cookies should we sell ice-cream too? “. This round we’re going “cookies” only.
As an employee I really don’t trust just cookies to pay my mortgage. “Good enough” cookies and “good enough” ice cream will keep the doors open longer than “great cookies but we don’t sell ice-cream”. Our town is full of empty stores with “For Rent” signs in the windows where they used to sell “great cookies”. Most of the “good enough” stores are still there, getting by.
I’m not talking about MMOs though. I’ll take all the specialization you want to give me in that field. That’s talking as a customer. Customers always get what they want in the end.
That was f-ing brilliant. 30 or 40 folks above me already said that, so not very good feedback. But really, great!
My grandmother used to make these really good cookies named “mondel bread.” Half moon shaped slices of a cookie loaf, hard like mini biscotti, with chocolate chips. Will you have those? How about the kind like Pepperidge farm makes that stay moist and chewy for weeks, but with all natural ingredients? Oh and don’t forget ladyfingers. Those are basically cookies.
Donuts! And brownies! Way more cookie-like than ice cream.
Also, you should serve coffee. I can’t eat a cookie without a cup of coffee.
I agree though, leave the ice cream to specialty ice cream places. It’s always better there anyway. Have you ever had the ice cream at a diner? The one near my house — ew. Awesome burgers, great fries, a decent salad, delicious sweet iced tea, but … their ice cream… it’s hard to swallow (literally)
Um… MMOs… I’m afraid I can’t even quite figure out what cookies and ice cream represent in this rant. Sci Fi vs High Fantasy? Soloing vs Raiding? FPS style play vs RPG style play? It could be just about anything.. and which was which is also opaque =D
Well the biggest and most common argument I see, which this relates to, is the ‘hardcore vs casual’ argument. Sometimes that is basically a kind of old school EQ/UO, vs modern WoW style mmo’s. But really the article is pretty universally funny because it relates to pretty much every argument ever
Gamers are very opinionated and often have a decent educated and often very passionate about the games they play, and especially with MMO’s, they seem to have very clear ideas about what they want. It must be a nightmare for designers because there are 100 major decisions that need to be made, what happens when you die, will it be skill based or class based, will it be high fantasy or medieval style, will it be PVE, PVP, or both, etc..etc..etc.. And the weird thing is that whenever one of these topics comes up, everyone goes ape trying to insist that their point of view is the best option, and there are several or more completely different demands going in completely different directions. At the end of the day you have to just accept that you “can’t please everyone”, but then, if you are anything like me, you must also wonder who exactly ARE you going to please? And will there be enough of those people to make it worthwhile?
Not that I think even matters with most of these MMO’s. It’s my guess that the budget to make an mmo is so gigantic, there isn’t even much of a choice with most of these decisions. Whoever is providing the money isn’t going to be putting millions down on something that ‘might’ not be very popular. They are only interested in putting it towards something that is tried and true and popular. Hence the endless stream of sequels we get these days.