Roblox and the Dispersal of Creativity | No Mercy / No Malice

The challenge, or opportunity, for companies like Substack is to figure out how to help creators reach new audiences and grow without having to compromise on ownership. The aggregators of the early internet unlocked great power for creators through building central gathering places. We are doing the same with the Substack app and features—like Reco... See more

The more interesting opportunity lies with “community owned games” – where enterprise value is not monopolized by equity holders of a studio but funneled entirely to holders of the community token. It will be very difficult for existing game studios to morph into community-owned ones – for the same reason that Epic can’t just dissolve and “convert”... See more

Usually disruptions create new markets, which generate enormous wealth and value. In the case of aesthetics, much of this value has been soaked up by the existing infrastructure providers: PC manufacturers (hardware), Adobe, (software), advertising networks and aggregators (distribution). We do see vast growth in the number of boutique agencies, de... See more

Roblox, and games/worlds like Minecraft are a huge step forward. Instead of just paying money to game developers, users can actually make money by developing for the ecosystem. It does, however, fall just short of the Bill Gates Line for a platform -- something is a platform if everything built on top of the platform makes more than the platform it... See more