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Somehow titling Minecraft, Diablo, BG as "Startup"s or "Startup-like" things feels wrong to me. Minecraft was one guy (probably) enjoying himself while putting
by ozataman 14y ago
Somehow titling Minecraft, Diablo, BG as "Startup"s or "Startup-like" things feels wrong to me.
Minecraft was one guy (probably) enjoying himself while putting together something creative. It then exploded. Did he really target 10% growth per week?
Diablo, BG, etc. were all calculated bets by people with lots of experience in the industry. They weren't building a business model, a new organization, etc. They were doing "projects" they felt would promise high returns. That's it.
- shimon 14y agoMinecraft maybe didn't set out to be a startup, but it achieved all the growth goals of one, and it's certainly fair to call it one now, isn't it? Games like Diablo and BG are actually run in a fashion closer to movies than startups. A game publisher finances games that it expects will succeed. The publisher's competitive advantage comes largely from brand equity and high capital cost of creating a new game. Thanks to brand equity, they are primarily expanding or upselling into a market where they already have a lot of reach. Of course, there is some risk of failure in each project, but it's closer to that of making a blockbuster sequel than that of solving a novel problem with technology.