Amy Jo Kim: Designers should listen to super fans, not super haters

If you’ve worked in games and technology long enough, you have your super fans, the people who you can turn to when you’re designing a product that is targeted at a certain group of enthusiasts. They are the high value, early customers. And sadly, with the state of the internet, you may also have your super haters. So, who should you listen to when you’re trying to be inspired to create something wonderful?

I talked about this subject with Amy Jo Kim, CEO of Shufflebrain and the leader of a movement that she calls Game Thinking. We spoke to a group of game designers and app creators at the recent Samsung Developers Conference in San Francisco, where the theme focused on connected thinking.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.