Great place to stream cartoons and anime for free, no account. It feels like they have almost everything, as I found anime as far back as the 1970s on there.
When I discovered Food Wars was split between two streaming platforms, I hoisted the sails.
Nice read. Makes me excited to build a video game company/be surrounded by creatively driven people.
I've been developing a city builder game "Metropolis 1998" [1] for over 3 years. My life has been constantly pulled in two or more different directions (e.g. creativity/artistic expression vs. logic/software). Most of the time the environments that allow these forces to thrive are incompatible with each other.
Since working on my game, I've been in a happy place where I get to go full throttle on both of those. I've created my own engine and I am designing the game, directing the art, handling sound design, marketing, UI, UX, environment design, etc, etc.
Been following development of this! The game looks great, and the work you've put into the simulation side really seems like it's paying off. If it's not too nosy to ask, how are wishlists etc going?
I'm currently diving deep in making music (EDM), but this comment makes me feel that I might take a crack at creating my own game. Joining logic and creativity like that sounds like fun!
As a consumer i don’t like price increases. As an indie game developer, i hope this raises the floor (it prob won’t) because id like to hire people locally (ie in person). Steam takes 30% and the talent are in expensive cities. It’s a tough industry :D
>Angel investors also face the longest time horizon for liquidity of any investor. Private equity aims for 3-5 year returns, and VCs typically run 7-10 year fund cycles, but angels usually wait 10+ years for exits. This means angels aren’t just taking company-specific risk, but also the risk of facing more macroeconomic cycles.
>Think about all that's happened since 2009 when I started: multiple presidential administrations, a global pandemic, zero interest rates, and now high inflation and higher interest rates. My investments have had to withstand all of these shifts, and many didn't make it through.
Really interesting stuff (for me, as an outsider).
Can anyone comment if VCs are looking for shorter fund cycles or are the macro economic shifts what's capping it at 10 years?
I once read one reason why startups take so long to IPO is so private investments can benefit longer from the growth
My LPs want liquidity now, always. 2021 was hot and it’s been relatively quiet since. Mega funds are keeping companies private longer. Capital is tied up which hurts emerging managers trying to raise. My LPs want returns in 6 years which only works if everything goes perfectly which almost never happens; that’s how long $100M+ rev takes if you triple yearly. IPO requires more rev than before, everything’s larger.
As an LP, I would be excited for liquidity in 10 years at this point.
It seems like even for successful companies, there isn't a clear path to an exit for many of them. Add to that the increase in late-stage investors, and there isn't much of an incentive to exit.
A bit hyperbolic but yeah. It also depends on the industry / stage. I’m always looking for creative ways to get liquidity out given the exit issues you mention.
It would be helpful to run out the math on the $500K investment: what's the post-money on that investment when it was made? How much capital did this mythical sold-for-$10M in 5-or-6 years company raise? (Or did it survive for a half decade on a total investment of $500K?) What was the headcount and the revenue and the burn? (And to whom does it sell for $10M?) Assuming that it wasn't a wipeout, you'll quickly find that the math doesn't... math: if you have somehow conjured a successful outcome in your mind, what you likely have is not a venture-scale business.
That’s not necessarily venture returns so LPs might not be interested. Selling secondaries is also a pain as you generally have to pay fees and sell at a discount.
I work in the video game industry and recently saw a chart on the predicted growth of AR/VR (as calculated at the time) over the last decade (i.e. updated predictions over time by various groups). The curves all start curving straight up at the beginning of the chart, and each successive year, they become flatter and flatter. The amusing thing is that the actual sales are drawn below all the predictions and it's basically a flat line (averaged out)
A counterpoint to consider: Tim Sweeney says his Unreal (studio) customers that use Steam (which is nearly all of them) are worse off than the retail era:
>Generally, the economics of these 30% platform fees are no longer justifiable. There was a good case for them in the
early days, but the scale is now high and operating costs have been driven down, while the churn of new game releases
is so fast that the brief marketing or UA value the storefront provides is far disproportionate to the fee.
>If you subtract out the top 25 games on Steam, I bet Valve made more profit from most of the next 1000 than the
developer themselves made. These guys are our engine customers and we talk to them all the time. Valve takes 30%
for distribution; they have to spend 30% on Facebook/Google/Twitter UA or traditional marketing, 10% on server, 5% on
engine. So, the system takes 75% and that leaves 25% for actually creating the game, worse than the retail distribution
economics of the 1990's.
>We know the economics of running this kind of service because we're doing it now with Fortnite and Paragon. The fully
loaded cost of distributing a >$25 game in North America and Western Europe is under 7% of gross.
I just don't get how what Steam does is parasitic or bad in any way. They are expensive, but they don't engage in the predatory practices of most of their competitors. They just kinda sell games.
A friend of mine wrote an article 25+ years ago about using C++ based scripting (compiles to C++). My friend is super smart engineer, but I don't think he was thinking of those poor scripters that would have to wait on iteration times. Granted 25 years ago the teams were small, but nowadays the amount of scripters you would have on AAA game is probably dozen if not two or three dozen and even more!
Imagine all of them waiting on compile... Or trying to deal with correctness, etc.
I am surprised to see Kali Malone mentioned here! But yes, I also highly recommend listening to her work, especially if you like ambient or meditative music
Great place to stream cartoons and anime for free, no account. It feels like they have almost everything, as I found anime as far back as the 1970s on there.
When I discovered Food Wars was split between two streaming platforms, I hoisted the sails.
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