Future shareholders?
In my career I have often been cornered by “froffing” individuals keen to explain to me his (its always a bloke) idea to make a ton of money with his XYZ idea on the creation of a new video game. The perception by these “blokes down the pub” is that as a game developer I am personally the gatekeeper to the development of video game content.
The reality was that in console development the gate keepers were generally amorphous committees at game publishers. They controlled the money to take the concept to commission. These guys came laden with personal likes and dislikes; burdened with business plans and overwhelmed with technical ambitions for their release schedule.
In the old development world publishers needed to be sure that the investments made in physical box product which amounted to $millions gave a return. Barriers to entry were made on purpose to slow the process to give time to control the market.
Now I am not smashing this concept it worked for twenty plus years. Money has been made in many multiple millions, but the landscape is now shifting. Games can no longer demand a $40 ticket.
The old committee mentality is the inevitable enemy of innovation. No exec is going to gamble his pay packet on the production of some concept that can be delivered by a drunk bloke. He’s more likely to give the thumbs up to a license or sports endorsed sequel.
My issue with this is that entrepreneurial innovation is never going to occur in this regime. In the mechanism of trial by committee failure is simply not an option so the mantra of the new Internet entrepreneur “fail early fail fast” can simply not be invoked.
Ultimately the velocity at which apps are created coupled with the wafer thin margins available to the developers it is simply not practical to put the same barriers to entry as existed in the old world. The rate of change of audience tastes also means that it is impossible for any individual or group of individuals to work out what will succeed.
But there is an appetite for innovation: Angry Birds; Cut the Rope, Where’s My Water,Temple Run prove it.
New models of connecting with the audience therefore need to be devised that prove ideas quickly and harness the creativity and ENTHUSIASM of the “blokes” down the pub.
And this model exists: crowd funding.
What appeals to me this is the democracy of the approval process. The investors in content like this could be your biggest advocate, sales guy and ultimately seed the viral loop to make your application go big.
The biggest innovation however is that they could also be your best indication that your idea is going to fail therefore allowing the entrepreneur to “fail early; fail fast and fail with out too much expense”.
smashthinking 