Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Kurotowa" data-source="post: 9281878" data-attributes="member: 27957">I'm not sure how viable that is as a growth strategy. For over a decade, video game companies went to great expense to launch a &quot;World of Warcraft killer&quot; that would supplant it at the top of the lucrative MMORPG market. Every single one of them failed. The Network Effect says that people aren't just using the dominant market entry because it's the best, but because everyone else is using it. So being just a little better isn't enough to trigger a mass migration. Especially not when the big dog is offering a buffet of options and most competitors can only manage being better at one thing at the cost of something else.The closest thing that's come to killing WoW is WoW itself. Or rather, the company that makes WoW growing bloated and corrupt and being ruthlessly milked for monetization by a corporate owner that doesn't care about the players. Which is usually how it goes. The big dog grows ill and decrepit, users start to drift away or look into alternatives, and that leaves an opening for a vigorous young rival to move in. The last time I saw a new big dog claim a throne purely on overwhelming merit was when Google first hit the search engine scene 25 years ago. And Google's looking a little unhealthy these days, with the search results junked up by ads and SEO and AI gibberish.It's nice to dream of being king, but it's usually better to plan around the big dog existing than plotting for its downfall. Those opportunities come rarely and unpredictably, and are usually more due to internal rot than external pressure. Instead, find a niche the big dog isn't serving well and focus on it. Pick a genre or playstyle that D&amp;D doesn't cover and deliver it. I mean, that's why Pathfinder is doing as well as it does.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Kurotowa, post: 9281878, member: 27957"] I'm not sure how viable that is as a growth strategy. For over a decade, video game companies went to great expense to launch a "World of Warcraft killer" that would supplant it at the top of the lucrative MMORPG market. Every single one of them failed. The Network Effect says that people aren't just using the dominant market entry because it's the best, but because everyone else is using it. So being just a [I]little[/I] better isn't enough to trigger a mass migration. Especially not when the big dog is offering a buffet of options and most competitors can only manage being better at one thing at the cost of something else. The closest thing that's come to killing WoW is WoW itself. Or rather, the company that makes WoW growing bloated and corrupt and being ruthlessly milked for monetization by a corporate owner that doesn't care about the players. Which is usually how it goes. The big dog grows ill and decrepit, users start to drift away or look into alternatives, and that leaves an opening for a vigorous young rival to move in. The last time I saw a new big dog claim a throne purely on overwhelming merit was when Google first hit the search engine scene 25 years ago. And Google's looking a little unhealthy these days, with the search results junked up by ads and SEO and AI gibberish. It's nice to dream of being king, but it's usually better to plan around the big dog existing than plotting for its downfall. Those opportunities come rarely and unpredictably, and are usually more due to internal rot than external pressure. Instead, find a niche the big dog isn't serving well and focus on it. Pick a genre or playstyle that D&D doesn't cover and deliver it. I mean, that's why Pathfinder is doing as well as it does. [/QUOTE]

Verification