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Agreed, got some good insights in the article and I will be reading more as well.

Also explains the sequelitis of the video game industry: while new ideas/IP can succeed, it's a risk. People really want more of what they know. Consider a random platformer, or the exact same game reskinned as Super Mario.

Like Doki Doki Panic was reskinned to become Super Mario Bros. 2.

Isn’t there also a limited set of genres of games anyway?

Why would you rebrand Starcraft if the players only want a reskinned version of Starcraft 1? There’s probably not much new you can invent by trying a totally new RTS anyway.

We don’t reinvent football for example. Reinventing it would get rid of the whole industry around the watching of football.

I think that is where creativity and imagination come in. I'll give an example I encountered recently. Northgard by Shivo Games. It is absolutely brilliant, thematically and mechanism wise, a re-take on the traditional RTS.

New genres appear reasonably often. For example the “battle royale” genre, e.g. Fortnite, was only developed in the past few years.

You could call that a full genre, but it’s nowhere near the creation of RTS or FPS genres themselves.

“Battle royale” is simply a recent development because up until recently we barely had any 3D shooters which had maps huge enough to allow for this style of play.

> “Battle royale” is simply a recent development because up until recently we barely had any 3D shooters which had maps huge enough to allow for this style of play.

It's often surprising how long it can take for things to become mainstream. The first Battle Royale mod dates from 2013. And Planetside supported hundreds of players in a single match back in 2003.

UT2k4's Onslauth and every Delta Force games disagree. Especially the ARMAs, which this "new genre" had been there for about a decade (even more with Last man standing mod/es).

What really gave birth to BR games was the invention of the "eye of the storm" mechanic. From a technical perspective BR could have been implemented as a mod for Operation Flashpoint as early as 2001 (not coincidentally the genre has its roots in OFP's spiritual successor, ARMA). What was missing was a way to keep the pace of game from fizzling out as the player count dwindled. The blue circle in PUBG was a brilliantly simple and effective solution. It's one of those things that looks blindly obvious in hindsight and makes you wonder how it took so long for someone to think of it.

> It's one of those things that looks blindly obvious in hindsight and makes you wonder how it took so long for someone to think of it.

Particularly since the movie Battle Royale had a mechanic that filled the same role (sectors of the island were declared off limits to force students to encounter each other.) Not quite the same implementation, but I think basically the same idea.

I think it's due to the success of the Hunger Games franchise, which introduced the concept to (Western) pop culture.

You're probably right that Hunger Games was the immediate inspiration for PUBG. I understand Hunger Games to basically be an American adaptation of Battle Royale though (and also derivative of The Running Man.) Battle Royale already had "cult classic" status in America by that time. The naming of the genre seems to support the notion that the public was generally aware of Battle Royale. Before Battle Royale the term was in use, but generally referred to free-for-all boxing matches. The modern use of the term to describe Hunger Games or PUBG seems to closely resemble the premise of the Japanese movie/book.

It's one of those things that looks blindly obvious in hindsight and makes you wonder how it took so long for someone to think of it.

Multiplayer Bomberman had this back in the 90's! I loved that game in high school.

But yeah, combining it with putting 50 people in a FPS deathmatch came much later. In video games a whole lot of innovation is combining a few ideas that already existed somewhere else. Well, not just in video games, really....

Battlefield, Operation Flashpoint, and ARMA (among others) had maps large enough for BR type gameplay almost 20 years ago.

A tangent, but this is one reason Nintendo is so successful; they know the characters sell, while at the same time understanding it’s not the characters but the quality of the game and that really matters and brings customers back for more.

That’s why they first experiment and develop a lot of game ideas looking for the most fun mechanics. Then after something is shaping up into a great game, they look at the IP catalogue and see what skin to put on top.

Edit: In general, but not 100% of the time. The Zelda team is mostly consistently the Zelda team and does set out with intent to make the next Zelda game, for example.

> A tangent, but this is one reason Nintendo is so successful; they know the characters sell, while at the same time understanding it’s not the characters but the quality of the game and that really matters and brings customers back for more.

I think you undersell this comment: it’s far more than a tangent.

Nintendo and Bandai the only companies I’ve worked with who I’ve Consistently heard the term “fun” discussed at the executive suite level, or a level below. Back in the Ken Kutaragi days at Playstation (SCEI in those days) this was true as well.

Hasbro seems to value playfulness, but in my more limited experience The higher up the chain the less relevant it was. Could be that the execs took it as a given?

Never came up in any AAA titles I talked with folks about at the companies (but big disclaimer: I never worked on one!)

You don’t have to be Marvin Acme, but “fun” seems like a pretty basic value, while objectives like “engagement” I’d see as a consequence,not a primary goal. I think understanding this is what has made Nintendo so successful for decades, and has allowed them to survive flops.

Oh, I just meant a tangent in the discussion. It’s definitely critical to Nintendo’s success!

Also, very interesting to hear your experience with the other companies.

I used to love reading those Nintendo Power magazines when I was a kid. I can't believe they actually got people to subscribe to it. Most likely, it was parents who bought a subscription for their kids.

As a kid, I always marveled about video games. The wizardry behind it was always fascinating to me. And Nintendo elevated video games to an art form.

Decades later, I finally built my own basic video game, and I finally unraveled the mysteries behind it all. It's like you finally saw the true structure of the The Matrix in its coded form. And you said to yourself, there is no spoon.

I think this is doing a massive disservice to Nintendo. Certainly, they have their "cash grab" franchises, like Pokemon, "New Super Mario Bros <x>", and arguably, Mario Kart/Mario Party.

However, Nintendo has always done a phenomenal job in reinventing their franchises - sometimes to the dismay of fans of that franchise. For example, take the 3D Mario games. They have continually reinvented the series, from Mario 64, to Mario Sunshine, to Mario Galaxy, to Mario Odyssey.

Or take Zelda. Breath of the Wild is a massive departure from the traditional Zelda formula.

An example where they've reinvented to fans' dismay has been Paper Mario. After Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door, fans just wanted more of the same formula. Unfortunately, they've often take the series in a direction that long time fans don't appreciate.

I recently read Mac B Cracks the Code (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1338594230/donhosek ) to my kids and there's a history of Nintendo as part of the story. They began as a playing card company in 1889, entered into businesses like making instant rice and offering taxi service before getting into toys in 1969 and releasing their first video game in 1973. They've got a long history of reinvention.

Is it insightful? I really don't have the subject knowledge to judge. But I sure frowned on the claim that LEGO has no brand loyalty. Maybe I misunderstand brand loyalty, but not only did I (as a child) and does my own kid now keep going back to LEGO, it's me who infected him. When my kid has some fake LEGO, he sorts them out into a separate pile.

I thought that the article argued that Lego is an exception to the rule in that it does inspire brand loyalty.

Also, what investors mean by brand loyalty is fairly specific: A customer who buys into one brand continues to buy it for years or decades.

Kids are fanatical about the "in" brand of the month, but will drop it without a thought as soon as a new trend is "in".

How many kids are tripping over themselves to get the latest Spin Master toys? Most probably wouldn't even recognize the name. Just a couple years ago, stores couldn't keep their Hatchimals line on the shelves. None of that excitement carried over to their other products.

lego is clever because it locks you into a platform. it's the kid equivalent of buying another cordless power tool of the same brand because you already have the batteries and charger for it

This is true of lots of retail, including clothing too. And many of these companies take on a lot of debt because the cash flows mistakingly seem predictable and stable. Until they’re not.

The best bet for many of these types of firms is to improve processes and systems to shorten the cycle time. (Think lean manufacturing like Toyota)

> The best bet for many of these types of firms is to improve processes and systems to shorten the cycle time.

In clothing retail, Inditex (Zara) [1] is an excellent example of achieving success through shortened cycle time.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inditex

They actually have technical term for it and it's called fast fashion. This is a summarize take on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGF3ObOBbac

I've been buying the exact same jeans for 25 years now. (Did have to go up a size!)

> Since toy trends exist, but don’t last for very long, they have to invent new products every year

Fortunately someone already invented blocks (and construction toys) slime/goo (and science/exploration/messy craft kits) and monopoly (board games.)

Most "new" toys seem like variations in very well-established categories; something like hatchimals combines plush toys, robotics and collectibles (furby DNA apparently) along with the regrettably persistent trends of unboxing videos (youtube) and randomization/gambling (capsule toy machines, etc..)

Subscriber here. I had the same impression as you. It’s the only newsletter I try to read every day.

It’s interesting to me that someone can charge $20/month for a daily post (presumably without ads) and subscribers seem more than happy with the value proposition but the newspaper industry struggles to sell an entire newspaper worth of content for the same price. I wonder if newspapers would have more success “unbundling” their columns. Or at least unbundling the sections of the paper.

I pay for two newspaper subscriptions and it’s a lot like a gym membership where I start to feel guilty if I haven’t had the time or made the effort to use it.

News is a commodity, and one that many newspapers don't even create (essentially just a compilation of re-written wire service publications and corporate/political PR press releases masquerading as "news" (often without attribution)).

The Guardian, Washington Post, and New York Times are likely the closest thing we have to news worth paying for, but I just get most of my news these days from social media sites like Reddit (and their linking directly to wire services in some cases), and find their non-trial prices rather high for very little ORIGINAL content.

Essentially if this was legitimately one high quality post a day, that might be more high quality original content than most newspapers.

New York times has done a great job moving into the web with teams dedicated to making beautiful interactive charts and graphs. That's what sets them apart for me. Even their coronavirus dashboard, which you can find anywhere, is much more elegant than on other websites.

> The Guardian, Washington Post, and New York Times are likely the closest thing we have to news worth paying for

* Only if they allowed comments on articles that disagree with their own biases.

The Verge (Owned by Vox Media) is a great example of this.

> but I just get most of my news these days from social media sites like Reddit (and their linking directly to wire services in some cases), and find their non-trial prices rather high for very little ORIGINAL content.

The same newspaper publishers are also on social media sites as well, but link directly to their own articles and 'select' some social media accounts as sources to include in their articles that fits their narative and their own bias.

Reading multiple articles and sources from other publications will give you some good skeptisim in which either side might have missed or omitted some information in their own reporting.

I'd rather read content from an individual with known qualities that I like than an opaque news machine which optimizes it's coverage of different topics for maximum engagement from a hypothetical average customer, constrained by pressure from advertisers and political forces, and which primarily benefits its owners over the content creators.

It's the topic. I'll gladly pay $20/month for something that will help me improve just one investment decision per year.

Although a few more general purpose pubs like the NYT are doing relatively OK subscription, it’s financial pubs and newsletters that have it easiest. A tab that seems steep for essentially entertainment is nothing in the scheme of investing even relatively modest amounts.

I'm sure most people wouldn't be happy to pay it, but a single author charging $20/mo could make a decent living on just a few hundred subscribers. I'm sure newspapers have more than a few hundred happy customers.

My buddy ran a clothing startup a few years ago. I built a pretty simple inventory management predictive model (linear regression mostly) that would infer how much they'd need to stock up for the next quarter. Surprised that there isn't more work being done here, as a lot of industries are seasonal (from food, to clothing, to toys) and need to predict demand and balance on the knife's edge of "out of stock" and "too much stock."

That’s called Planning and Forecasting and there are plenty of dedicated apps. It’s a sales-heavy market though, where your competitors are the likes of Oracle and SAP, so it’s hard to reach.

Gotcha, makes sense that smaller companies wouldn't have access to it (I'm sure it's quite expensive).

Industrial Engineering / Operations Research studies that kind of problem: https://ieor.berkeley.edu

I used to run a pizza shop, and had the same thought, why not plot some predictions in R? Most of the obvious busy periods the management team was already talking about. It gets really hard to predict when someone is going to solve their hunger with pizza in the next half hour.

The easiest, but maybe the shortest. Movie toys cannot be sold for more than a year. While others can last for decades (think legos or kapla)

How long were Star Wars toys popular in the 70s and 80s?

Basically from 1978 (when they were released; they missed Christmas 1977 which was their goal) until they were discontinued in 1985 (a couple of years after the end of the original trilogy). While each movie added new figures and playsets, a fair number of figures were unchanged during the seven year period.

Movie releases used to be a lot more stretched out. Theatrical release, maybe a year passes then it hits the premium movie channels, another year and they get to make a big deal about it being aired on a regular network. Then finally a few months later you’re seeing ads for the big VHS release.

A blockbuster movie was like a 3-4 year marketing event.

Not every movie is star wars. There were hundreds of low quality movies made last year with toy tie ins. But most are forgotten

While this is generally true, I distinctly remember from my childhood asking for and playing with Star Wars toys for the better part of a decade. (Yeah, there was an on-going franchise, but the toys sold for much, much longer than a year per episode.)

I wonder if there was something fundamentally different about that property or if there were just fewer options?

Harry Potter is probably the current equivalent.

I’d say Minecraft as well

Marvel has been doing quite well for the better part of a decade, too.

Marvel’s got a constant churn of content with their characters though. And not just movies, there’s the comics they started in, there’s kid’s books, video games, etc.

If people are still buying tons of Star Wars stuff, and mostly just Original Trilogy stuff, that’s a very different situation.

Interestingly enough, they've pretty much stopped making any toys for the Star Wars sequel trilogy but are continuing to make original trilogy toys. Some franchises are just that much more ephemeral than others.

Star-wars is kindof an exceptional case. The original was the highest grossing film of all time when it was released. Return of the Jedi came out years before I was born but the toys were still popular when I was a kid, despite them having not made any movies recently.

Star Wars, Harry Potter, any Disney or Pixar movie, etc etc

They can much longer when you merge classic move genre (dc comics, marvel, star wars) with timeless toys and utensils (lego&compatible, flashlights, balls, backpacks, pencils, lunchboxes). Lightsabers will sell now and in 2030 too.

> They also write a post ... double checks ... every day?! For a week straight, sometimes? Wow.

> Sadly, most of their work appears to be locked behind a $20/mo paywall.

I submit that these things are related! There's so much great work because folks are paying for it. And in fact, their subscriptions help fund the public ones you're enjoying too.

Full disclosure: I'm one of the founders of Substack, the platform that this is hosted on, so I'm hopelessly biased :)