Share this page!

Lars
Twitter logo
25 Jun, 4 tweets, 2 min read
RE: "instant games", Former Kongregate CEO Emily Greer presents a really fascinating perspective about Flash Game License. This was an auction site that a developer started. Says it was a huge driver in increasing developers' leverage with portals and raised earnings.

1/X
FGL was a familiar site for those of us who remember the flash scene days, but I never realized how instrumental it was in changing the ecosystem. According to Emily it broke information asymmetry in devs' favor

2/X
Information asymmetry is one of the CHIEF things that platforms use, either passively or actively, to increase their leverage. If you know what something's worth and the person selling it doesn't, you can capture lots more value than you otherwise could.

3/X
Information asymmetry is one of the reasons I run gamedatacrunch.com as a public service (and let's be honest, a lead generator for consulting work)

All it does is aggregate public data, but even that is enough to open people's eyes a lot.

4/X

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Lars "Sweet Leaf" Doucet

Lars

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @larsiusprime

Lars
26 Jun
Gonna riff off of this idea for a sec:

So many investor types are totally blinded by obsessing over "moats" that they can't imagine there's another way to do business

Protip -- vulnerability can be a strength. Try it sometime.
Why are Substack and Ghost and Supercast doing so well?

Because they allow you leave at any moment and take your customers with you, AND you don't have to take their word for it.

This deliberate "weakness" helps them gain creator signups in the first place!
Being so focused on what you're going to do once you already rule the entire world is going to hinder you from getting out of your basement.

Here's an example from game theory -- you're playing a game of chicken. How do you win?

By ostentatiously ripping out your steering wheel
Read 14 tweets
Lars
26 Jun
Here's my current thoughts on everyone trying to be the next "instant games" or "metaverse" platform...

You MUST give something away if you are starting today. You cannot have a closed stack top to bottom unless you already have a captive audience.
Roblox can have a closed stack top to bottom because they started 10 years ago. Giganticorp can maybe put something together because they're Giganticorp, but YOU can't. You need to give people an incentive to use your stuff and that means relinquishing some control
To be perfectly honest I don't like ANY of the closed stacks no matter how cool the stuff people make with them is. But I have to acknowledge the reality that they work and are attractive for a reason. But even with that hat on, startups cannot clone Roblox and succeed
Read 15 tweets
Lars
24 Jun
The Future of Games is an Instant Flash to the Past

fortressofdoors.com/the-future-of-…

cc @Tocelot @EmilyG @TomFulp @ninja_muffin99
@Tocelot @EmilyG @TomFulp @ninja_muffin99 (I'll post this again tomorrow morning for people in the western hemisphere with actually reasonable sleep schedules)
@nerdook @kerissakti I mention y'all a few times in this
Read 4 tweets
Lars
17 Jun
Okay can someone tell me why this old thread from last year is blowing up my mentions today? Did somebody big retweet it or embed it in an article or something?

I get it that Funkin is timely and big people are starting to take notice and we should have a full on Discourse probably starting next week about THE FUTURE OF GAMES IS A FLASH TO THE PAST (I probably need to get an article out on that speaking of...)
Ah what the hell here's a crappy tweet draft of my thoughts, for later articleification:

"Instant Games" as the nice fancy people are calling them, are an emerging niche that is as new as it is old as dirt, but this time might be different for interesting and boring reasons: 1/X
Read 49 tweets
Lars
16 Jun
Can we ditch this ridiculous notion that "Technology is neutral, it's all about how you use it?"

Technology is POWER.
"Neutral" falsely implies inert, passive, safe.

Technology is *volatile*, *dynamic*, *dangerous*. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be useful!
Technology, fundamentally, has intentionality built into it.

Yes you can use a hammer to build a house or kill a man, but honestly we have much better weapons for killing men, we intentionally designed them for that purpose and they're very good at it.
I am not anti-technology, but I think it's fundamentally disrespectful and disingenuous to think of technology in this wishy-washy way.

You're holding an awesome ball of fire in your hands, be mindful what you do with it.
Read 6 tweets
Lars
15 Jun
Debugging Defender's Quest 2 just now, perplexed by "fire" status having NO effect. Pulled my hair out until I discovered:

"Fire" cancels freeze.

However, I recently added logic that makes freeze degrade into "wet" when it terminates.

"Wet" then cancels "Fire"

D'oh
Obviously, what I need to do is make it so that "freeze" only transforms into "wet" if it was naturally terminated by running out of time, not by being cancelled by an elemental interaction.
One thing that might not be clear here --- fire cancelling when touching a wet target actually makes sense!

The behavior I'm describing is a normal, non-wet target gets hit with fire. Fire then "cancels" freeze (which was not present). Then target becomes wet, canceling fire.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @larsiusprime has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @larsiusprime!

Read all threads by @larsiusprime

:(