We hope you had a terrific Labor Day weekend of burgers and buns. And speaking of quarter pounders, it’s time to focus on hitting your Q3 benchmarks.

You, uh, have Q3 benchmarks, right?

If not, check out our guide for setting up quarterly goals. It’s not just about picking random numbers because they’re huger than your current numbers — that’s a recipe for frustration — but determining achievable, actionable, and affirmative milestones. Goals can be activity-based, process-based, outcome-based or personal as long as they keep you focused on the path to growth.

Video games: Can small studios compete with mega merger?

When Machines Become Customers: B2B, meet M2M.

Strange: Pizza shop rewards employees with free tattoos.

(Source: Shutterstock)

For almost two years, Xbox maker Microsoft has been attempting to acquire Activision Blizzard, which produces World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and other massive franchises. At first the proposed $69 billion merger sparked monopoly concerns from U.S. and European regulators, but after legal proceedings and international lobbying, the deal appears all but sealed.

Microsoft had to make big concessions, such as letting Sony’s PlayStation have Call of Duty for 10 more years and selling off other streaming rights. But independent game developers, an oft-overlooked segment of the small business world — approximately 45,000 of which sell titles on distribution service Steam — are asking: Is that enough?

“The game landscape has gotten increasingly focused on the higher end,” Brandon Sheffield, creative director at Necrosoft Games (currently developing Demonschool), tells b. “When the top 10 video games on your storefront earn enough money to fund your whole operation, there's not a lot of incentive to look outside of that.”

The shift from a single-purchase model to a subscription model like Xbox’s popular Game Pass, in which games of varying budgets are bundled together (the difference between, say, a Blu-ray purchase and a Netflix account), is also a point of concern among indies. As musicians have found with Spotify and other streaming apps, it’s easier than ever to get discovered by audiences but more difficult than ever to make a living afterward.

“The future of indie game development looks a lot like what you see everywhere else: consolidation … and subscriptions represent where the industry is going, because that's where the money is,” Sheffield says. “So for now we indie devs will be begging for scraps at the table. … The difference between now and the Wild West days of indie development 15 years ago is I'm not sure we're going to exit this phase into a new one.”

Dave Proctor, founder and director of indie game studio Mighty Yell — whose game The Big Con is currently on Game Pass — points out that subscription services might actually make gamers more likely to check out those smaller offerings, but agrees, “It's hard to be excited about more consolidation. Honestly, I hope the FTC refiles because competition and separation at this level keeps people innovating… I do not cheer on a future where there's kinda one huge company that does everything.”

While regulatory decisions are out of indie developers’ control, Proctor urges gamers to explore offerings from indies. “Tell your friends about them,” he says. “Recognize that they are smaller by nature and don't be upset if they don't take you 80 hours to beat. … Consolidated bigger offerings are going to seem attractive always but remember that there's an indie that's trying to innovate that is worth your time and your love.”

Read our full Q&A with Brandon Sheffield and Dave Proctor on the state of indie gaming.

Imagine a significant portion of your business’s total annual sales being automated by AI and paid out by … AI.

In the new book When Machines Become Customers, Gartner’s Don Scheibenreif and Mark Raskino argue that the machine-to-machine (M2M) revolution will transform how we run our businesses. In some cases, like with smart printers reordering toner, M2M interactions are already here. But much more is likely to come. 

Scheibenreif and Raskino argue that “custobots” will eliminate the need for humans to make purchasing decisions. Machines in the “Programmable Economy” will find the most affordable and efficient ways to exchange goods and services by interacting with other machines.

Like with the buzz around ChatGPT, only time will tell how far M2M innovations get. For now, at least, your custobot won’t be able to close a deal with a fancy steak dinner.

It's one of the most pressing questions of our lifetime: Should you hire a human or a robot?

(Source: Shutterstock)

Dallas-based Zalat Pizza doesn’t skimp on the toppings or the bennies.

The pizzeria, which also has numerous locations in Houston and Austin, offers all of its employees health insurance plans, a 401(k) match, and even stock options. But if you think it’s generous for fast-casual cashiers and cooks to receive equity in the hope of a Chipotle-size IPO, that’s just for starters.

To motivate staff on a level it dubs “fanatical buy-in,” at the one-year mark employees can receive a Zalat logo tattoo from an artist whom the company keeps on retainer. Also, Zalat publishes a full-on annual comic book starring its workers. (That comic is titled, appropriately, Zealots.)

(Source: Twitter)

Written by Dan Ketchum and Ali Saleh.

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