Recently MetanHegen said the following in the Zaunkoenig Discord:
«theres been a trend of dismissing bleeding edge advancements lately out of 'good enough' … imo the 'good enough' mindset is full of toxic positivity and barely ever true contentment»
This really struck a chord with us. Ever since the Pixart 3360 sensor got released roughly a decade ago, it has become a very common sentiment in the gaming mouse enthusiast scene that gaming mice are good enough these days and it really does not matter which one you choose as long as it does not make your hand hurt.
It is probably not surprising that we do not agree with this line of thinking. At Zaunkoenig we firmly believe that making good gaming mice is not enough. Gaming mice need to be great.
Nevertheless I wondered: where does good enough come from?
There is a centuries old Italian proverb that warns of the dangers of perfectionism:
Il meglio è l’inimico del bene.
Voltaire popularized this Italian proverb in France:
Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.
And from there it spilled over to Germany:
Das Bessere ist des Guten Feind.
These days it is a common proverb in the English language as well:
Perfect is the enemy of good.
This old proverb is warning about the dangers of destructive perfectionism. Making something that is good is better than not making anything because you wanted to make it perfect but never got it to perfect. That project you started but never finished because you thought it was not good enough? Maybe perfectionism got to you. Or within the context of gaming: a gamer that is constantly researching the ideal setup but simply does not play enough to get any better.
There is no doubt: perfectionism can do real harm.
Jim Collins in his 2001 business classic «Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t» however warns of the exact opposite:
Good is the enemy of great.
While Collins book is primarly about business, he explicitly warns that the mindset of good enough can not only keep back companies, but everything else as well. Including your life as a whole:
Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of companies never become great, precisely because the vast majority become quite good – and that is their main problem.
Collins warns off the seductive comfort that good enough promises. Greatness however demands dissatisfaction with the status quo. Collins wants you to never settle and always stay hungry.
So, who is right? The Italians or Collins? Is perfectionism dangerous or necessary?
Whether or not perfectionism is dangerous depends on the situation.
Ten years ago, when we developed the M1K, we were heavily constrained on time and money. It would have been easy to do a 3D-printed shell, instead of one made from carbon fiber, to save a lot of time, money and headaches. But we knew that only with carbon fiber would we get an ultralight shell that could take a beating as well. We did not settle for a material worse than carbon fiber. And we paid for that: it cost us well over a year until we had working carbon fiber shells. It was a similar story with the printed circuit board (PCB) for the M1K: we knew that we had to make a custom PCB in order to save a lot of weight and to achieve low latency. We did not settle for anything less. That leaves us with the most critiqued part of the M1K: the cable.
The M1K cable was not a custom design done just for the M1K. You could buy it off the shelf. We sampled dozens and dozens of cables, and the M1K cable was the clear winner. We knew a custom cable would be even better, but due to lack of time and money we settled on good enough.
Only with the M3K did we first use a custom made cable. And it was significantly better than the M1K cable. We did not stop at good enough. And future Zaunkoenig cables will be better still. We will never settle and will keep pushing the boundaries; not just on cables, but everywhere.
The same applies to you as a gamer. Start with something good enough; a used mouse you can experiment with and understand. The more you use it, the clearer your own requirements become. And when you know exactly what you want, do not settle for good enough. Go for great. Because in the end, good really is the enemy of great.