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Tailored Education Models and Video Games

In a recent webinar hosted by Austin-based middle school Esports Academy, industry experts discussed how tailored and personalized education can benefit students - helping them learn 2x-5x faster than traditional schools.

One such expert was Harvard-trained psychiatrist Dr. Alok Kanojia, who explained how video games are inherently designed to match the player's skill level and pace of learning - just like Esports Academy's 2hr Learning model.

Just as video games start players at level 1 and allow them to progress at their own pace, tailored education meets students precisely with where they are currently, and then adapts based on performance. Games provide immediate feedback when you make a mistake, allowing you to quickly learn from errors and try again until you master a skill. Similarly, personalized learning platforms and assessments give students real-time feedback so they can course-correct and fully grasp concepts before moving forward.

Whereas traditional schooling often teaches to the middle and fails to adequately challenge gifted students or support struggling students, tailored education like 2hr Learning accelerates or remediates based on the individual. This prevents boredom at the top and frustration at the bottom. Research shows learning is most optimized when material is presented at the appropriate level, pushing students just beyond their comfort zone. Mastering skills before advancing also builds a strong foundation.

The "respawn" mechanic in video games enables players to immediately retry after failing. This persistence pays off, rewarding grit and tenacity. Likewise, a personalized learning system gives students multiple attempts to demonstrate mastery. This growth mindset says skills can be developed through effort. Setbacks are reframed as opportunities for improvement, rather than being permanent labels like "C student."

Gameplay and tailored education both track progress and performance, allowing self-pacing. Online ranking systems constantly match you with opponents of the same skill level, creating uniquely engaging experiences that push you to become better.

Today's students are accustomed to receiving tailored content from digital platforms in their personal lives. It makes sense to align education with this effective method of engagement and skill building.

Esports Academy's co-founder MacKenzie Price highlighted that with such adaptive learning models, students only need to spend 2 hours a day with core subjects like Math, Reading, Science, and Language. This gives them 4 hours a day to spend on their passions with dedicated coaches who help them unlock their potential and "find their fire" even beyond esports, forging students into producers, event planners, content creators, and leaders, preparing them for high school and beyond.

Esports Academy is set to launch in January 2024 in Austin, TX. Its sister school, Alpha, uses the same 2hr Learning model and has seen students who previously struggled in school reach the top 10% of students nationally within just 2 years.

Many gifted students turn to video games when school bores them - so if you have a student who wants to avoid school, he or she may just be in the wrong learning environment. You should consider Esports Academy - your child prodigy will go above and beyond what you might ever expect.

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Learn more about Esports Academy by visiting esports.school or find us online by our social media handles esportsacademyofficial and EsportsAcademyW.

[davidvkimball]

A Note About Project M 3.6 Content Integrity & Legacy TE

[originally posted on 5/9/2018, posting here for posterity]

Last night we tweeted a tease for the next version of Legacy TE, something we've been very excited about for a very long time. We're happy to finally break the silence!

​Before we reveal anything about it, however, we'd like to visit a topic of recent interest. Specifically around modifying tournament legal stages in Project M 3.6 builds.

Our stance has never changed from Legacy TE's conception: characters and stages from 3.6 are the only acceptable versions of Project M content for tournament use. TE was made with this ethos in mind, and has never wavered, despite numerous attempts by the community to use unfinished leaked Project M content or community-modified deviations. We'll continue to make sure the integrity of Project M 3.6's content is intact.

In some discussions on the Project M subreddit and other places, there has been some confusion over what types of changes you can make to the game, and what kinds of changes should be considered acceptable. To help clarify this issue, we'd like to supply a few key definitions that will help distinguish between the many different kinds of "modifications" one can possibly make to Project M:

Aesthetic changes: visual or audio changes that don't affect gameplay, but can sometimes adjust players' perceptions and at worst be deceptive or distracting. This is a gray area, as some players use particular audio or visual cues when playing that can potentially be disrupted.

Net-new inclusions: additions to the game that simply give more of the same in a careful way, as to never replace key tournament content or result in any kind of gameplay change. i.e. Kirby's 9th and 10th costume options, alt stages

Quality of Life feature additions: net-new additions to the game that enhance non-gameplay changing features. ie. working replays, edit controls from the CSS.

Crash fixes: file edits that don't necessarily change aesthetics, nor in-game behavior, but simply correct potential game crashes. Examples are memory leak fixes, or Kart ROB’s Clear Mode edit.

Hardware-viability balance change: Changes to the game that only directly affect hardware-related aspects of the game to make the experience more consistent across every type of hardware i.e. UCF

Gameplay-changing modifications: any edit that would result in gameplay changes, including but limited to: character moveset changes, some PSA adjustments, some animation tweaks, stage collision changes, blast zone changes, etc

It's our belief that of the 6 possible types of changes above, only definitions 1-5 are worth considering. Changes as defined by definition #6 are never permissible, and have no place in a PM 3.6 build.

Why, you might ask? What's wrong with "balancing" a stage's blast zone or "improving" a collision? Well the first question to ask is, who truly has the authority to make that call? The Project M Development Team have been disbanded since December of 2015, so there is no true authority to be making these changes. In light of this reality, no matter how "good" the change might be, no gameplay-changing modifications should be made.

Let's ignore that for a second, and assume a group comes together and assumes the role of "authority" of the game's development and get away with it. Let's also assume the group came to a consensus where all parties were satisfied over what changes to implement. A push improperly executed will leave the community split, frustrated, and confused. There's a branding issue there, too. What "version" are each of these edited stages? They can't be called 3.6 stages. They can't be called 3.61 stages either. So there really is no good title for them. Good luck explaining this all to new players or less involved community members.

Not to mention this opens the floodgates to variety of other possible changes that can be argued to be made, including character balance changes, or additional characters on the roster.

This only scratches the surface of potentially problematic outcomes that could result from such a change.

The "gameplay update" debate has been a contentious topic since the PMDT disbanded in 2015. There's been a desire to correct mistakes left in 3.6, and not for no reason: it's not a perfect game. But what Smash game is perfect? Is disrupting a healthy meta 3 years in the making really worth a few little tweaks?

Since this is a longer post, we'll give you a TL;DR summary: ​ Legacy TE is committed to being faithful to Project M 3.6 as always. This means we will reject any non-3.6 variations of PM content and will not include them in any build.

[davidvkimball]

N64 logo from Ridge Racer 64

[davidvkimball]

Infected Lewa

[davidvkimball]

Exo-Tahu vs. the Bohrok Queens

[davidvkimball]

Zune Software 1.0.

[davidvkimball]

A few colors of the Nintendo 64 controllers.

[davidvkimball]

Zune visual style for Windows XP

[davidvkimball]

Thank you for sharing!

Was servicing my old devices and decided to take some pictures.

[davidvkimball]

Updated my theme

Now it's a Zune HD.

😍

[davidvkimball]

Free Trials: The Trick to Never Paying After They End

Virtual cards will become your new best friend.

Most of us have fallen into the “Subscription Trap” where a service will offer a free trial over some time — 7 days, 30 days, etc., but we forget and start paying for a service after the free trial ends.

After reading this article, this should never happen to you ever again.

Here’s how to never pay after a free trial ends:

Sign up for Privacy.com. Privacy.com is a free service that allows you to create virtual payment cards that connect to your bank.

Create a virtual card. You can set a lifetime limit of $2 to validate an initial check by the service you’re signing up for.

Use that virtual card information when you sign up for free trials. After the trial period ends and it tries to charge you, Privacy.com will alert you via email and you can close the account or card.

For someone as cheap as me, this has worked wonders. I’ve used this method for years and haven’t fallen into the subscription trap even one time since I started using it.

Enjoy saving money?

You might enjoy my video course, CheapMarketing.io. It’s for content creators who want the cheapest possible way to grow their brand and reach their audience.

Or you can check out my guide on setting up a custom website with zero hosting costs.

What ways have you found to save money? Please share them in the comments below. 🙏

[davidvkimball]

Content Creators — the Champions of DIY Marketing

Turns out the most successful marketers are the scrappiest.

I recently wrote about how many industry practitioners overcomplicate marketing.

In this blog post, I’d like to suggest that content creators are the best marketers.

They’re scrappy, experimental, early adopters, and know how to work the social platform algorithms in their favor. To be successful in their highly competitive space, they have to be.

Usually, though, content creators don’t have the budget to hire an agency or spend money on advertising to get their names out there. Instead, they rely on bootstrapping — leveraging all of their current resources and making the most out of them.

Whether you’re a cooking YouTuber who wants to share your recipes with the world or a software developer who wants to live stream your work, you’ll find yourself engaging in some DIY marketing to be successful.

Regardless of what kind of content creator you are — you have to touch marketing at some point. You’ll need to figure out how online platforms work, be comfortable with tech and software, and be bold to set yourself apart from the competition.

This kind of DIY marketing is what helps content creators understand not just the digital landscape they’re a part of, but their target audience and the value their content can bring them.

Why Content Creators are Inherently DIY Marketers

As a self-starting, independent endeavor, the practice of becoming a content creator itself is DIY. Creating content is only valuable insofar as an audience can consume it — which necessitates the ability to market yourself or your content.

The most successful content creators are demand generation experts without fully realizing it. They are creating value for an audience that can’t get enough of what they’re offering.

Key Examples

Some of YouTube’s most recognizable creators — Ryan Higa, PewDiePie, and Mr. Beast — these creators had incredibly humble beginnings using whatever equipment they had on them at the time.

Since then, creators like them own their own companies, hire their own production teams, and outsource lots of talent. But each of them started by putting in the work themselves and understanding how YouTube worked.

Even YOU Can Become a Marketer

You may be thinking you don’t have what it takes — but you do! Many marketing tools and platforms out there have inexpensive or even free options to get started.

The beauty of digital marketing is how accessible it is. Anyone with access to a phone or PC can become a marketer — they just have to find out where all of the tools and best deals are.

I recently published CheapMarketing.io — a video course specifically for content creators who want to get started with building their brand, finding their audience, and launching their own website within 1 week.

You will learn a lot of the practical DIY marketing tips the most successful content creators have used to build, grow, measure, and win within their niche.

Use the promo code SAVE25 to get 25% off — this offer expires next week.

Get the video course now! 👉 CheapMarketing.io

[davidvkimball]

Bullcr*p Marketing Doesn't Work Anymore

Shady practices lose, authenticity wins.

Marketing is getting attention from the right eyeballs at the right time. No need to overcomplicate the concept itself; it's surprisingly simple.

Throughout the years, marketing has gained a negative connotation. For some, marketing is manipulative, materialistic, or misleading. However, while that description may fit some marketing practices done in the past, it's no longer effective in the modern world: consumers can easily see it's bullcrap.

Listen to this article's audio transcript here.

In "David's Bullcr*p Marketing Video" above, I feature a few surface-level forms of this deceptive practice we've all seen and can easily point to and laugh at: cheesy stock music, overly fancy transition filler, businessy-looking icons and generic stock video (the corporate jargon is just a bonus).

But why do those things bother us? In a word, they're inauthentic. They feel fake - which puts them in a categorically different type of marketing altogether: bullcr*p marketing.

What is bullcr*p marketing?

Here's the definition:

Bullcr*p marketing is the practice of employing disingenuous and manipulative marketing strategies for short-term gain.

Why am I starring out the "a" in "bullcr*p marketing"? It's a bit of a jest, but also to illustrate that even the term itself isn't fully transparent, much like the tactics it describes.

Effective marketing doesn't involve grandstanding or deception, it's authentic messaging targeting the right audience. Ideally, you're solving a need for someone and offering it to them directly.

History shows us that trust between business and consumer wins over the short-term benefits of deceitful self-fluff.

Marketing: ruining mass communication since the 1600s

Marketing as a practice has existed since the dawn of man, but scholars tend to agree that mass marketing started with Gutenberg's printing press in 1450.

From there, a pattern arose in which each new form of mass communication was hijacked by some form of marketing or advertising. Around the 1600s, paid advertising began in Italy, England, and Germany across flyers, brochures, and newspaper advertisements. As print became more scalable, marketing tactics followed.

In London during the 1730s, more than half of the space in newspapers was devoted to advertising. In 1864, the telegraph was used for unsolicited spam for the first time. Radio advertising began in the 1920s, just 20 years after radio itself was invented. It didn't take long for ads to creep into television (1941), phone calls (systemized telemarketing in the 1950s), email (the 1970s), and the rest of the early web (starting in the 1980s).

Finally, we've seen how marketers have dominated social media with display ads, utilizing influencers, and with branded social profiles in the last 15 years or so.

Or as Gary Vaynerchuk puts it:

"Marketers ruin everything."

Effective marketing is authentic

Thankfully, we know that despite the proliferation of advertising and marketing messages in our lives, getting a targeted, relevant message is a more pleasant experience, especially if it helps solve an immediate need or want.

A study by Marketing Dive suggests 71% of consumers prefer personalized advertising, a product of the modern era. Havard Business Review finds targeted marketing messages are more effective than traditional advertising.

Therefore, marketing has gotten better, but only as a consequence of more faithfully serving the needs of the recipients of its intended audience. This means authenticity, transparency, and adding value should be at the top of the list for any marketing strategy. Just blowing hot smoke won't cut it anymore.

Generation Z in particular can't stomach fakeness. Research suggests that Gen Z specifically values authenticity and transparency in the companies they support, more than previous generations. They're also less loyal to brands. Gen Z is currently one of the most powerful consumer forces, spending $44 billion currently or $600 billion if you count the influence they have on their parents. Needless to say, businesses should be paying attention.

Case Study: Discord's launch campaign

One of my favorite examples of marketing done right was the launch of the instant messaging social platform Discord in 2015. Their growth and adoption were insane, with 11 million registered users in the first year, and a projected 200 million monthly active users today.

What did they do right? They spoke directly to their target audience, which was mostly younger users who enjoy video games as a hobby. Discord HQ identified their audience's main pain point, which was the need for a simple, easy-to-use voice and chat tool to communicate with their friends when they played games together.

This video encapsulates it perfectly:

Their brand voice was fun, punchy, and spoke in plain English.

I got to talk directly to the Discord marketing team at PAX West 2017 (shout out to Zac Citron!) and it turns out every video they made up to that point was mostly just 2 people - one to do the video direction and voice over, and the other to do the video editing and graphics. Shows you how a small but mighty team can help drive impressive growth.

Although their branding has changed significantly since 2020, I will never forget the initial impression they made, and their success today can be attributed in part to their authentic, laser-focused marketing efforts. I even ran a partnered 10,000-member Discord server myself for several years.

How to avoid inauthenticity in marketing

Even though we know it doesn't work long-term, it's easy to get swept up in marketing nonsense. It's a competitive enterprise and there's a lot of pressure to be viewed in the best possible light expediently. Achieving so-called "quick wins" in this area over authenticity can be tempting. So here's a quick list of how to avoid being inauthentic:

Don't lie. Even the smallest embellishment should be avoided. There may be short-term positive effects from deceitfully fluffing up your image, but lies come back to bite eventually, no matter how practiced you might be.

Don't exploit. As we've seen with keyword stuffing, link farms, and fake reviews, trying to bend the rules in your favor inevitably ends with platforms and services penalizing its abusers (more on this later).

Focus on problem-solving for your target audience. It should be well understood that a single business, brand, product, or service can't be all things to all people. If you begin to lose focus on who you're serving, you start to enter bull territory by casting your net too wide and saying nothing at all.

Don't virtue signal. One PR tactic is to try taking a stand on a socio-political issue for public karma. If your business or brand truly aligns with it, then that can work as a strategy. However, too often, decisions are made to have a public stance that doesn't truly reflect the core values of that business or brand - or worse, it's even inconsistent with how they operate. Anyone familiar with whatever the particular issue may be can smell virtue signaling from a mile away.

A history of bullcr*p marketing trends

Old-school marketing methodology doesn't work well in today's world.

Here's a timeline of bullcrap ways marketers have tried to fluff up their chances to be noticed, which inevitably end in being penalized (also see: black hat SEO).

The 1990s: Keyword stuffing and invisible text

In the early days of search engines, websites would stuff their pages full of keywords, often to the point of making the text unreadable, to boost their visibility in search results. Some even took to using invisible text or placing white words on a white background to deceive search engine algorithms. Thankfully, Google's algorithms evolved and started penalizing these tactics, promoting the idea of high quality content over keyword manipulation.

Early 2000s: Pop-up ads and spam emails

Around the turn of the millennium, the internet was besieged by a torrent of pop-up ads ("Congratulations, you've won!" - does this sound familiar?). These intrusive messages were seen as a clever way to capture attention, but they rapidly became one of the most despised forms of advertising. Similarly, email inboxes were flooded with spam messages, often of dubious legitimacy. The backlash was significant, leading to legislation like the CAN-SPAM Act in the U.S. and more sophisticated ad-blocking tools.

Mid-2000s: Link farms and doorway pages

Link farms, which are websites created purely to link to other websites, and doorway pages, low-quality pages filled with keywords designed to trick search engines, were other practices that came to prominence in the mid-2000s. These schemes sought to exploit search engine algorithms and were ultimately detrimental to the user experience. Like with earlier tricks, the response from search engines was clear: anyone who used these tactics would be penalized, further emphasizing the importance of genuine, valuable content.

2010s: Fake reviews and clickbait

With the rise of social media and online shopping, the 2010s saw an increase in fake reviews and clickbait titles. Companies started paying for positive reviews, while sensationalist headlines or "clickbait" were used to drive traffic. However, these tactics resulted in widespread mistrust and dissatisfaction among consumers, forcing platforms like Facebook and Amazon to crack down on these practices.

2020s: Misleading influencers and "deepfake" advertising

In recent years, influencer marketing has taken off, but it's not immune to deceptive practices. Some brands have been accused of not marking sponsored content clearly, while others have used deepfake technology to create misleading advertisements. Both these tactics have drawn criticism for their lack of transparency and authenticity. As a response, social media platforms are developing stricter guidelines to promote clearer advertising.

So, what's next?

While it's difficult to predict exactly what the future holds for marketing, it's safe to say that authentic, transparent, and targeted messaging will always outperform gimmicky, misleading tactics. Anything that compromises a good user experience will likely be penalized. There's no doubt that companies will have to work harder than ever to win the trust and loyalty of their customers.

Natural language processing models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's LaMDA are powerful tools with lots of potential, however they shouldn't be relied on exclusively for content creation. Anti-cheat education software Turnitin has developed tech that can already identify whether or not text was generated with ChatGPT, and they're not alone. Princeton computer science student Edward Tian has already built something similar himself, GPTZero.

As user adoption continues to climb for AI chatbots, and sophistication increases in spotting when language learning models are used in content, it will become easier and easier to spot in the wild. Don't think copywriters will be out of a job any time soon.

Conclusion

In the modern world of marketing, most attempts to trick the system, exploit loopholes, or deceive the market are destined to fail. Instead, the focus should be on creating value for your audience through relevant, high-quality content that addresses their needs and wants. Only then can you steer clear of the bullcr*p marketing trends of the past and ensure your marketing strategy is effective.

Marketing Tips for Content Creators

I'll be writing more on the topic of marketing - specifically for content creators who want to up their online presence game.

If you fit that description, you can subscribe to my newsletter to get new posts sent to your inbox directly.

Topics I'm considering are tips for effective personal branding, choosing the ideal online username, profile best practices, social platform-specific tips, and growing your own community, just to name a few.

Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment with any thoughts. 🙏

[davidvkimball]

David's Bullcr*p Marketing Video

This video is bullcr*p, but at least it's in the right aspect ratio. 👍

[davidvkimball]

New website.

[davidvkimball]

Super Smash Bros. Melee 20th Anniversary

On November 21, 2001, Super Smash Bros. Melee released in Japan on Nintendo GameCube.

20 years later, it remains my favorite video game of all time.

I created a tribute and released it today to celebrate the game and its community:

Last week, I created an animated concept video for what the opening movie from the game may have looked like if it had included all of the playable characters:

Earlier this year, I also created a documentary about the development story of the game you can view here:

If you’re interested in other videos I’ve created about the game, check out my entire Super Smash Bros. Melee YouTube playlist! There’s a lot more content to explore.

If you’ve been impacted by this game, and would like to post in celebration of it as well, #Melee20th is the hashtag we’re using.