Commonwealth Club: Bing Gordon and Chloe Gordon: Everybody Wins

What can the billion-dollar secrets of game design teach people about building products better and making customers happier? Video games are one of the biggest entertainment industry in the world—for a reason. Games tap into human psychology like nothing else. So how can we recreate the satisfaction we feel playing games in day-to-day life? How can we harness that feeling to grow better businesses? These are the questions Bing Gordon has explored over his 40-year career in the technology industry. Affectionately known as the godfather of the video game world, his influence and canonized “gamification checklist” have shaped the games and companies people engage with every day: EA Sports, Farmville, The Sims, Amazon Prime, Zynga, Spotify, Audible, Twitch, Duolingo, and Cameo, to name a few. Now, Bing and Chloe Gordon have published Everybody Wins, in which they dive into each of the eight core elements of his checklist, lessons extracted from a lifetime in games: “wow moments” (lead with unforgettable moments of exaltation); everybody wins (engineer wins to be frequent, evident and earned); invest and express (create opportunities for self-expression and recognition); session economics (make every session feel worth the time it took); social integration (prioritize integrating social connection, always); retention hacking (build “forever franchises” that delight and grow) game loops (design satisfying repetition); and quantify everything (measure achievements at the micro-level). Join the Gordons at Commonwealth Club World Affairs to hear unforgettable stories of Bing’s storied career and hard-earned wisdom they say any business and anyone can implement for creating irresistible products and experiences. About the Speakers Bing Gordon is a video game man. He was the chief product officer for Kleiner Perkins, a consultant to Amazon, and an advisor and mentor to dozens of gaming and social-tech start-ups. Bing was co-founder, chief creative officer and long-time executive at Electronic Arts, from its founding in 1982 until his “retirement” in 2008. Chloe Gordon is an LA-based director, writer and documentarian who explores the intersections of technology, storytelling and culture. Her career spans multiple media forms, including creating and writing Amazon’s first scripted comedy series for Twitch, “Two Joysticks and a Couch,” and working on 108 episodes of “Saturday Night Live,” which earned her a spot on Billboard’s 2015 TV Top Music Power Players list. Her portfolio spans narrative film, nonfiction and journalism, and the occasional viral article (“I Worked at Fyre Festival. It Was Always Going to Be a Disaster”). Chloe frequently collaborates with tech founders and investors to craft essays, investment theses, and narrative pieces for organizations, including Y Combinator, Uptake and Dwarfstar. Our moderator, John Doerr, is an engineer, venture capitalist, and the chair of Kleiner Perkins. He is the author of bestsellers Measure What Matters and Speed and Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now. For over 40 years, John has served entrepreneurs with ingenuity and optimism, helping them build bold teams and disruptive companies. He was an original investor and board member at Google and Amazon and has helped to create more than a million jobs. A pioneer of Silicon Valley’s cleantech movement, he has invested in zero-emissions technologies since 2006. Outside Kleiner Perkins, John works with social entrepreneurs who are tackling systemic issues across climate, public health and education. In 2022, John and his wife Ann collaborated with Stanford University to launch its first new school in 70 years: The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.