I’m sure Candy Crush will put Hotelling over the line for a posthumous Nobel Prize.
In 1931, American economist Harold Hotelling published the seminal paper The Economics of Exhaustible Resources. Harold described a problem many firms face: how much of a non-renewable resource should they sell at any given time? This problem is more apparent when thinking about managing an oil supply but just as relevant when considering how to manage match-3 levels.
Professional sports give us something to aspire too. Players are celebrated as heroes and children grow up wanting to become them. It’s no secret that the internet, and games in particular, have found even more ways to engross us in the world of sports. But the terms of that engrossment are not incidental, they’re crucial. NBA TopShot lets users “own” iconic moments. FIFA Ultimate Team (UT) has players collect star footballers. Fantasy sports gives betters big stakes based on outcomes. These platforms offer us an opportunity to insert ourselves closer to the action. French start-up Sorare fuses these aspects in a way we haven’t seen before; it’s the greatest challenger to UT and fantasy sports in years (sorry PES).
Monetization’s modern paradigm is defined by a direct store and battle pass (BP). After years (and ongoing) criticism of loot boxes, Fortnite re-wrote the rulebook in a way that seems to make both developers and players happy. However, it’s important to consider that at sufficient scale any monetization scheme looks like a winner. It’s unclear if Fortnite is a winner because of the pass or despite it. For instance, the collapse of Clash Royale’s monetization can be partly traced to the introduction of its own pass.
Yes, RTS fans, famous 1960s academics killed Dawn of War.
Modern live-service games have self-segmented in genres: match-3, 4x, collection RPG, battle royale, etc. We know these genres evolve and start to incorporate new mechanics. Over time, these mechanics become standard genre fare. For example, invest-n-express titles like Gardenscapes are an outgrowth of the match-3 genre, adding collection mechanics to the core match base. In HD, we’ve seen innovations like Apex Legends’ revive mechanic modified in Warzone’s Gulag – players fight for revival in a 1v1 mosh pit. But how could we better understand why game genres change rather than simply observing them change? I argue Thomas Kuhn can help.
The “metaverse” discussion seems more about cultural “in-group” signaling then a thorough exploration of an idea. It’s frustrating. Rather than talking about “what the metaverse will look like” instead we should examine the forecast of a “metaverse” altogether.
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