MaximumMadness

So it's Loom, but with Google Doc integrations?

FWIW - Loom was acquired by Atlassian earlier this year

Can you help me understand the value prop of what you're offering? The positioning makes me think this is a just shadcn component product + Next on Vercel, neither of which require paying for an additional platform

Congrats on the launch! A couple small things: When you toggle between light and dark mode the hero section on the homepage ends up selected. Also the padding on the home icon at the top is a little funky. It looks out of line with the rest the titles

More broadly - interesting idea! I worry about there not being much utility in the space that lives between full-fledged documents and quick messages on chat. Including a demo, walkthrough or screenshots on the site would help make that gap more digestable for me.

Does anyone have a good write-up on the history behind Linux gaming? Would love to learn more

Looks super interesting - would love if the homepage had some kind of demo/screenshot built in. I'd rather not have to click any buttons to see what I'm getting myself into here

This is just an incredibly misguided take, particularly from someone who seems to be deep in the games industry.

The developers already legally hold all of the power in these situations - they can literally pick and choose when they want to enforce copyright [1]. How does making creators even more disadvantaged work out for the communities in the long term?

[1] https://pausebutton.substack.com/p/an-infringement-inside-an...

This is a great point - but you have to remember the money is what dictates games that go "mainstream". Companies like Activision, Blizzard, and EA are going to push out something that has low-risk, high reward (Call of Duty, Assassins Creed etc.) rather than push the medium of games forward.

They'll leave the interesting "games as an art form" type idea to indie devs, and once some idea or concept has broken mainstream, they'll snatch it and tag it to a well known IP (see Battle Royale + Call of Duty) and call it a day

What's your take on the potential long-term success of Game Pass?

To expect a company to produce the quality/type of games that they made 20+ years ago is a bit unfair, don't you think? I'd venture to guess that the folks behind those games left the studio along time ago anyway.

I'd disagree here. Would recommend checking out this piece [1] on Nintendo's failure to expand as an IP brand.

https://www.matthewball.vc/all/onnintendo

I still have some trouble around the idea that hardcore consumers will want a bundle that has maybe 2-5 games they would have bought otherwise + 95 more they dont really care about.

Aren't consumers just going to buy what they want anyway? Plus the Sony world just has so many more games worth playing

This is right of nose and defines exactly why MSFT pivoted to the Game Pass strategy - there were no console-moving titles (besides Sea of Thieves, that game rocks)

What we could see now is these games coming to Game Pass early, or even getting Xbox exclusive content. Theres a low chance they dont drop on other platforms (Skyrim on your Windows phone?) but still a big chip for MSFT to have on hand.

From a strategy perspective this is an absolutely massive win for Xbox. Their entire strategy [1] for the next generation of consoles is breadth vs depth, essentially saying they cant beat Sony in exclusives so they'll offer way more value for a lower price.

What this acquisition means is that the gap between potential Xbox exclusives/Day 1 releases and what Sony has is much smaller. Realistically there is a very low chance that any of the IP from this purchase becomes Xbox-exclusive, but even an early launch on Xbox shifts momentum massively.

[1] https://pausebutton.substack.com/p/level-69-the-next-generat...

I swapped my numbers, thanks for the heads up, fixed now.

It certainly has the makings of a good idea.

There are lots of questions around compensation equality (i.e. the big companies get richer, the poor get charged more) but something besides the blanket 30% rule based on some metric sounds feasible to me

Of all the non-FAANG gaming companies Riot is the one that most closely operates like a tech giant to me (with the exception of maybe Epic Games)

They have an incredibly robust M&A division, have mastered land + expand with their esports, are putting down roots in pretty much every major gaming category, and have modern monetization practices down to a tee.

Excluding the clearly egregious cultural issues, I would be fairly confident in betting on Riot in the long term

Commented this in the other thread on this subject, but think it's still relevant here.

Apple is truly doing themselves a disservice here, if Epic wins this battle Apple will undoubtedly be painted as the bad guy, and other major companies will smell blood in the water when it comes taking down a competitor.

Case in point; Tinder, Microsoft, Facebook, Spotify have all openly backed Epic and started to call attention to features that are impacted by this 30% fee. Status quo isn't going to cut it, and it would be in Apple's best interest to make a small concession to look like they're not so evil.

To clarify, these companies are certainly not absolved of doing the same exact thing, but the current news isn't about them, it's about Apple, and they're going to make good use of that

Apple is truly doing themselves a disservice here, if Epic wins this battle Apple will undoubtedly be painted as the bad guy, and other major companies will smell blood in the water when it comes taking down a competitor.

Case in point; Tinder, Microsoft, Facebook, Spotify have all openly backed Epic and started to call attention to features that are impacted by this 30% fee. Status quo isn't going to cut it, and it would be in Apple's best interest to make a small concession to look like they're not so evil.

From the Substack-related interviews/content I've consumed, it seems like the company is more concerned with tools/support [0] [1] for its creators, before it worries about consumer growth.

The idea is that once you have an excess of supply (writers), who are all bringing in their own readers, it's easier to connect the dots for readers to other publications. Whereas if your reader demand outweighs supply, people will not see any value from sticking around.

As a writer on the platform[2] itself, I think the general tools/support for the non-Top 20 creators leaves a ton to be desired, so would love to see them step it up in a number of ways if they're really trying to get behind the average writer.

[0] https://on.substack.com/p/announcing-the-next-substack-fello... [1]https://on.substack.com/p/legal-support-for-substack-writers [2]https://pausebutton.substack.com/

I've been writing about the world of gaming via Substack for the last year or so (https://pausebutton.substack.com/) for somewhat sizable audience, and this is a particularly accurate breakdown.

Links/Round-ups = retention. They make sure your brand stays top of mind for folks, but very rarely are they the thing that makes new subscribers come in. The tradeoff is that this is way more time-efficient that writing your own long-form.

New Long-form Content = Growth. The long-form stuff takes us 10x the time to write, but is consistently responsible for the increase in audience size. If you're going full-time, this is the place to invest. Particularly because Substack is so bad at reader Discovery, you need to invest in getting people onto your publication in your own way (original content), because Substack only really helps the biggest creators drive traffic.

It's why the I think the idea of bundling is going to be so big with newsletters, akin to how traditional newspapers started through a bunch of independent writers coming together. Eventually producing new long-form stuff wont be able to drive sustained growth and there's a cap on how much content a single person can put out.

The core trade-off is ownership vs distribution.

Platforms like Substack & Medium offer you "reach" because they can distribute content at scale. That means less intentionality from your readers, but a higher likelihood some random person finds your work. Reach is great when you're trying to scale your work and get it in front of lots of people. There is no doubt that by virtue of SEO, higher traffic, more organization etc. that platforms like Medium will get your stuff in front of more people.

Personal blogs offer a level of complete ownership and customization. I cannot tell you how often Medium, Mailchimp, Substack etc have disappointed me in how I can monitor the traffic to my publication, or even have a custom URL for SEO purposes.

Personally, I optimize for reach > customization starting out. The benefits of more eyeballs on my work far outweighs my need to customize when building from the ground up. But that's primarily due to the fact that my content is designed for more folks to see it.

(Source: I write about video games every week @ www.pausebutton.news)

Not 100% sure I agree with analysis, for two reasons:

1. While the primary use case of Unity originally may have been game dev, the ubiquity of the software for other use cases (primarily VR/AR and other forms of online media) has been what's propelled it to this level.

2. Epic Games is much much more than the Unreal Engine. Highly recommend looking into Matthew Balls' Epic Primer [1], but Unreal is one corner of the Epic flywheel. Which is probably why they opted to raise a billion [2] in funding recently instead of IPO-ing post-Fortnite

[1]https://www.matthewball.vc/all/epicgamesprimermaster [2] https://venturebeat.com/2020/08/06/epic-games-unveils-1-78-b...

Many newer games are still built on top of that source code to a certain degree as well. I remember recently reading about how Bungie built the engine for Halo 1 and pieces of it have been used in every single game in the series since then.

Lots of what's written here doesn't just apply to PMs.

As someone on the more revenue-focused side of business, having concise comms and definition of responsibilities is the only way we can effectively keep the business running. There's plenty to takeaway here for all types of professionals.

I find that the narrative the author outlines here can apply to lots of things - not only game development. It's the real risk of what happens when hobbies become careers.

That being said, the honesty and directness of this retelling is refreshing. Life is difficult, and sometimes its nice just to know others are struggling too.

Maybe market share isn't the right way to frame it. Much of the success of gaming platform's is built on goodwill. Due to their botched attempts with bans, community guidelines, harassment, toxicity etc. Twitch could certainly use some positive press these days. IMO it would be seen as a great PR move to welcome these newly platform-less streamers will open arms. Facebook is already offered people who move from Mixer to FB Gaming and stay for 90 days somewhere in the range of $2.5K

Will most of them probably move to Twitch anyway? Yes. Will Twitch be losing money in the short-term by giving away value here? Probably. But in the long-term having these ex-Mixer folks happy and feeling welcomed will have positive impact on their fans, communities, and gaming as a whole. Not to mention the revenue potential these folks could bring.

If I'm Twitch the #1 thing I'm thinking about right now is how to extend the olive branch to all of these creators. Favorable partner terms, sponsorship, resources etc.

This is a market share growth opportunity that comes around very infrequently

This is probably the comment that I resonate the most with - what defines "something worth reading" to you? Part of me feels like theres no way to get to the good stuff without sifting through it all a bit first.