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Polish and execution are everything. It's the reason Apple's MacBooks sell for much higher prices (and much higher profit margins) than similarly-specced (but l

Polish and execution are everything. It's the reason Apple's MacBooks sell for much higher prices (and much higher profit margins) than similarly-specced (but lower build quality) PC laptops. It's the reason people are on waiting lists to buy Nest thermostats when the same people didn't give a second thought to thermostats before. Rovio took a fun idea and made it much more accessible and marketable to people. That's not an easy job, and the market rewarded them appropriately.

tensor 14y ago
The engineering that goes into macbooks or nest is not comparable to the angry birds art assets or their launching tweak. That also ignores the fact that the former are physical products that also require an entire ongoing, expensive and complex manufacturing process. The casual game market, at this point, is more about luck than anything else. These companies produce game after game, many with an equal amount of polish to angry birds, hoping that one lottery winning recipe. Draw Something is another good example, minus the polish. Zynga's entire company is based on this understanding. Their strategy is to wait until they observe a success by another developer, then produce their own more polished version of that product. Thus they get all of the profit and none of the risk or cost of experimentation. The market is not "rewarding" anything. It doesn't have ethics, it doesn't recognize innovation, it doesn't recognize hard work nor difficulty of implementation. The allocation of profits in the casual games market is as fickle, nonsensical, and random as musical pop stars. The music industry has learned how to "manufacture" pop stars and the casual games industry is now starting learn to do the same in their market. I also feel that pop stars have unwarranted sums of money allocated to them. Obviously I am in the minority in this feeling however, and that is ok.
- tokenizer 14y ago
  You may be in the minority but you're not alone!
- ebrenes 14y ago
  I think you sum it up perfectly in your third paragraph. The emotional jerks we get in these examples are based on that false assumption that the market "rewards" anything. The market just is, and it's a fickle beast as you eloquently describe. The difference between angry birds and crush the castle may very well be just the artistic assets, but those differences matter immensely to the market. And today's markets seem to reward a few projects much more heavily than others once they've reached a critical point.

tensor 14y ago

The engineering that goes into macbooks or nest is not comparable to the angry birds art assets or their launching tweak. That also ignores the fact that the former are physical products that also require an entire ongoing, expensive and complex manufacturing process. The casual game market, at this point, is more about luck than anything else. These companies produce game after game, many with an equal amount of polish to angry birds, hoping that one lottery winning recipe. Draw Something is another good example, minus the polish. Zynga's entire company is based on this understanding. Their strategy is to wait until they observe a success by another developer, then produce their own more polished version of that product. Thus they get all of the profit and none of the risk or cost of experimentation. The market is not "rewarding" anything. It doesn't have ethics, it doesn't recognize innovation, it doesn't recognize hard work nor difficulty of implementation. The allocation of profits in the casual games market is as fickle, nonsensical, and random as musical pop stars. The music industry has learned how to "manufacture" pop stars and the casual games industry is now starting learn to do the same in their market. I also feel that pop stars have unwarranted sums of money allocated to them. Obviously I am in the minority in this feeling however, and that is ok.

tokenizer 14y ago
You may be in the minority but you're not alone!
ebrenes 14y ago
I think you sum it up perfectly in your third paragraph. The emotional jerks we get in these examples are based on that false assumption that the market "rewards" anything. The market just is, and it's a fickle beast as you eloquently describe. The difference between angry birds and crush the castle may very well be just the artistic assets, but those differences matter immensely to the market. And today's markets seem to reward a few projects much more heavily than others once they've reached a critical point.