Metaverse Weekly: May 3, 2021

If Leonardo da Vinci were alive today, he’d be a game designer. Games are both left brain and right brain — engineering and art.

If Leonardo da Vinci were alive today, he’d be a game designer. Games are both left brain and right brain — engineering and art.

— Jon Radoff, at the MassDigi 10 year celebration

Graph of the Week

Q1 2021 game revenue was up 30% year-over-year in the US. March didn’t look like it was slowed down (and February was simply a short month compared to January).

The Live Gaming Trinity

I introduced a tool for thinking about live game operations. The core of the model is to create a virtuous cycle intended to drive high retention through content updates and live events, with merchandising geared towards capitalizing on the ever-evolving live environment. Read more about it in my article on the economics of free-to-play games.

Amazing Statistic of the Week

When Travis Scott announced that he’d do a concert in Fortnite, the daily download numbers increased from an already impressive 108K/day to 538K/day on the days of the concert.

Celebrating MassDigi… and Leonardo da Vinci?

MassDigi supports a network of modern-day renaissance workshops for the art and engineering of games.

I was back in public for the first time in a year to join Lieutenant Governor Polito, the presidents of Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Becker College, and the leaders of MassDigi — Tim Loew and Monty Sharma — to celebrate 10 years of MassDigi and its new home at WPI.

Observations and Reflections

• LuneX is a new blockchain gaming fund backed by Play Ventures.

• Epic Game Store added itch.io (an indie game discovery website) without taking a cut.

• A nutcase tried to kill the founders of MiHoYo, the creators of Genshin Impact.

• Game publisher Nexon is putting $100M of its treasury into Bitcoin.

• Frank Miller is doing Sin City NFTs.

• EA completed its $2.4B acquisition of Glu.

• Microsoft Windows store fees going down to 12%. Who is next? Steam?

• A game won an Oscar.

• Metamaterials can shape and redirect light in novel ways and are shaping the next generation of mobile devices — and ultimately smartglasses.

• Intrigued by Tiger Global and the new breed of rulebreaking better-faster-cheaper investors who are capitalizing the future.

• Glad to see Intel (and even TSMC) investing in US semiconductor manufacturing. The metaverse will have a nearly insatiable desire for faster, smaller chips.