Comment by Seattle3503 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Seattle3503 | Hacker News Reader

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> You don't get $20M budget at the cost of hundreds of other independent films? Yeah, sorry, boo-hoo.

This is the part of the article I don't grasp. The article kept saying things like:

> however, subscription services cannot only cater to niches, they must try to be everything to all people, which places more value on the content platform and its library than the quality of each individual piece of content.

That seems like a more accurate description of the old model. A box office blockbuster film must be everything to everyone. A NYT bestseller must be be everything to everyone.

The subscription model in both visual media and books has unlocked unexplored niches. There is tones of anime all over Netflix. I have read a bunch of "progression fantasy" on Kindle Unlimited, exemplified by the Cradle Series by Will Wight. This sort of media would never have survived under the old model, as it is too niche. Will Wight doesn't care about making NYT bestseller, he is focused on cultivating his 1000(0) followers.

What you say sounds good in theory.

But, for profit-driven businesses like Amazon, the goal isn’t to barely make money, but it is to maximize the amount of money coming in.

It was quite sad for me when "The OA" and "Mozart in the Jungle" were cancelled.

It's not like these companies are okay making less money in some projects, and making more money in a few. They want to _maximize_ money from all projects.

And niche shows are often cancelled.

The OA most likely would never have been made at all ten years ago.

My biggest disappointment was that 1899 was cancelled by Netflix. Shows like that can be watched decades afterwards.

> A box office blockbuster film must be everything to everyone. A NYT bestseller must be be everything to everyone.

Yes, and the more depressing part: to make the model work, there will also be a huge effort to mold everyone into the blockbusters’ public, the bestsellers’ buyer.

Your movies will make a lot more when you have options to nudge people’s tastes.

> subscription services cannot only cater to niches

That's where they lost me. Here's a list of 10:

https://www.cbr.com/niche-streaming-services-what-to-watch-f...

I've been on-and-off curiosity stream(+nebula) and dropout tv, the former for several science/tech/logistics related youtubers' longform content, and the latter for comedy. While I wouldn't call those categories especially niche, but I've grown to enjoyed their content more than current offerings from netflix and amazon prime to be frankly honest, and I'm all for it.

It seems vimeo found their niche(?) of a market providing white-lable OTT service, which I'd assume makes spinning up a streaming provider for a niche market even simpilier.

Had to look up 'progression fantasy'. So it's basically like a niche genre that uses more or less the same structure as Dragon Ball Z (characters getting progressively more powerful over time)? Or am I misunderstanding it?

Yes. I'm not sure about GP's point that it never would have survived under the old model either. It's a pretty common trope in Wuxia, one of the oldest genres of literature still active today.

In a sense, yes. I read a good number of works that overlap with the "progression fantasy" genre, and I'd say they have 3 main characteristics:

1. Fantasy. They have interesting and engaging fantasy worlds. There's a lot of mixed results here, I personally don't think DBZ or Cradle are that interesting.

2. The main characters are empowered to actively participate in events that surround them. The trope here is that they fight back against the latest unfairness of the world, but more creative storytelling can make this very fresh and interesting.

3. The main characters aren't defined by their circumstances. They prove themselves by their work ethic or cleverness, not by being born to a powerful family.

Most works in this category are rehashes of CRPG or Xianxia tropes. I'd personally recommend Mother of Learning as the best progression fantasy I've read.

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