https://mobile.twitter.com/larsiusprime/status/1412881397375...
I think the challenges in my industry are greater, but I think what you’re doing is part of a growing trend I call the “digital crowbar” model. Supercast is an example of one in your space that has already had some major success stories, though their latest poster child (Breaking Points) piggybacks still off YouTube. And of course Substack and Ghost are doing well with newsletters and blogs.
Curious what you think of my framing and how much it applies to your space or not.
I think this framing exactly applies to our space, down to the term "anti-platform".
Also I'd be deeply interested in how "Instant games" effects game-land, especially with WebGPU + faster internet on the horizon.
Happy to chat about instant games anytime, email me at Lars.doucet@gmail.com and in return you can tell me more about what you’re doing in video.
Specific questions for here on HN comments -
1) how do you feel you contrast with say, supercast?
2) Chicken or the egg problems are tough. What’s your plan for delivering a truckload of one or the other to break the deadlock? (In this case chickens = content creators, and eggs = viewers/subscribers)
I'll absolutely take you up on this! :D Email coming soon!
> how do you feel you contrast with say, supercast?
I think we are using the trappings of supercast in order to advance the goal of an "open video platform". But the core goal is "open video platform", not necessarily to follow that exact playbook.
> Chicken or the egg problems are tough. What’s your plan for delivering a truckload of one or the other to break the deadlock? (In this case chickens = content creators, and eggs = viewers/subscribers)
Two things: - Shrink the eggs required to make an omelette. (forgive me for stretching this metaphor) If you make paid, subscription feeds; you need fewer individual people, and you can use existing platforms (Youtube / Twitch / Tiktok) as a marketing channel for your paid videos on the open platform where you control the business. - Piggyback on the existing channels that podcasts have in place (search rankings, recommendation rings).
If the balance is right, it'll work and we'll have an open video platform! And if not, then at least it's been fun to work on. Or maybe to put it another way, if it doesn't work, it will still have been the right thing to have done.
As an Indie who started way way back in the flash portal era, I think the current situation with Steam and consoles is a vast improvement over what I experienced back then. Sure I had direct contact with players in theory, and no barriers to publishing my game. Except players had zero interest in me and my poorly made games.
Every indie looks at their conversion rate and goes "I would do so much better if my game got more attention" missing on the reality that attention is the gold of the modern age. Given enough attention anything can succeed, hey you can even sell attention to others by putting up ads.
Thus any platform which is both open, and gives attention (discoverability) is creating an unsolveable market issue. The attention is valuable, so giving it to anyone will just push the market into a market for cheapest converter of attention into dollars: porn. We see this already with Steam where the top lists always contain some sort of porn-lite games.
Thus my own take is: I don't want an open market. I want a market which heavily selects for quality. Then I want to develop and polish my game to meet that quality bar: since in such a situation I know my little train game will not need to compete with fake japanese hentai.
This actually makes the attention thing worse. Now you’re competing for the attention of a few people who are sitting under a deluge of games. Established players with an existing relationship get entrenched and you better find a way to build a relationship outside of the official channels if you have no name.
Plus some market wag will be along to tell you that the open market already heavily selects for quality. Which is fairly true and the issue for an individual developer isn’t really the result of the aggregate market.
The actual issue is that there is a very strong power law in terms of actual sales. Success begets larger success as the algorithms take notice, word of mouth hits scale and the developer can afford to reinvest with worthwhile advertising.
Secondary to that is that there is just too much information for players to make a fair assessment of all the games they could buy which further amplifies this issue with the market.
Basically discoverability sucks still
For the developers who would be automatically on a closed platform, yes less games would fix it but they’re probably already riding high in the curve. For developers who wouldn’t you want to be very sure you’ll definitely be one of the anointed. Be careful what you wish for.
I’d like to see instead the Steam open up a bit, curators exist but it’s hard to make that a job as it doesn’t pay. Tackling that and turning Steam into a collection of stores rather than a store might help flatten the curve by allowing niches room to breathe and paying curator businesses to mine for gems. The games press used to be this way but now outside of tiny outlets it’s all pretty homogenised and they all talk about exactly the same games.
Steam, the App Store, the Android stores, now Roblox... they have paid out like hundreds of billions to game developers over the years, more money per year directly to IP creators than any other category ever in all of history. So anything that starts out by characterizing them as the antagonist will fail to attract successful game developers, regardless of how much money you spend acquiring an audience or paying up front for content. See Exhibit A, Epic Games Store.
What is the problem with Roblox? The games suck. So many utterly garbage shitty clones. The shitty stupid mindless microtransactions in their shitty clones. There are no good Roblox titles. I don't care how many 8 year olds play the games, I don't care how much money in spent, they're all complete garbage. If you can't say that, that you and no one you know with a mature brain plays these shitty games, you are going to struggle to communicate with game developers.
What is the greatest threat to Roblox? Apple could start refunding parents on IAP. You're talking about such sophisticated stuff that doesn't matter. A successful Roblox developer tried to convince me the money came from $5/mo Robux subs and look, that's delusional. Even if you ask the developers they are delusional. The money is obviously from whales, because it's always from whales, and like, what does a 8 year old whale look like? An utter menace. Spending money mom and dad would love to get back.
What is the closest platform to achieving the goals you describe? Apple Arcade. It doesn't extract the full value from whales, so it will never be the #1 source of revenue for game developers, but the games are good!
Who is the real antagonist? Ketchapp (https://venturebeat.com/2014/03/30/threes-vs-2048-when-rip-o...). Riot Games. Epic Games. Most of Tencent really. Even Blizzard's last title which I love, Overwatch, is more Team Fortress than it is not.
There is one thing that rings true. It has been characterized as "it is way easier and more personally lucrative to be a money manager than to be someone the money manager invests in." Epic and Roblox are really tales about the power of capital, that they reinvented and cloned and pivoted their way into completely accidental success, being led by chickens with their heads cut off with fundamentally cloned and shitty IP, because they had huge amounts of money. The greatest ingredient of their success is owning the rights to the dice when they roll six, and rolling many, many dice.
I'm very aware of this and it's not something I'm ignoring. It's the central thesis of "So You Want to Compete With Steam" [1] which is background for everything I think about. How to solve the Chicken or the Egg Problem is absolutely fundamental to these issues. Just because I don't have an immediate solution for it in a new space (other than spend truckloads of money) doesn't mean it's not something I'm thinking of constantly.
My answer to "here's how to compete with Roblox" and "here's how to compete with Steam" is literally the word "Don't" in big bold letters right at the beginning of both articles.
Also, I think you give Roblox short shrift. 99% of everything is garbage, that's just Sturgeon's law.
[1] https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-...
