Inflation, ads, and webstores reverse nearly every trend in gaming—and then reverse it again. These aren’t rounding errors either—they’re GDP-level phenomena (literally), and the inability to account for them is warping our perception of reality in the gaming industry.
At 350 million monthly active users (MAU), Roblox boasts a user base rivaling the combined size of Steam, Xbox Live, and PlayStation Network. However, this impressive engagement comes hand in hand with an exorbitant 70-80% platform tax. In any case, Roblox is too big to ignore. Its bigness forces Roblox and non-Roblox developers to grapple…
Apple’s VisionPro rejects gaming, but gaming doesn’t have to care. The game’s industry position has grown so extensive and favorable that it can survive and thrive on any platform, even when initially overlooked. As web3 VCs are jolly to remind everyone, gaming typically serves as the initial use-case for novel technologies. This was undoubtedly Meta’s…
Hypercasual solved a novel problem for *all* mobile titles: marketing. Like web3, hypercasual always seems to be caught in its drama with recurring reports of death or life on top of wash trading driving genre GDP. But beneath all the bullshit, hypercasual discovered something profound: how to get BILLIONS of players to download games at…