An essay on platforms, power, prosperity, principles, and profits.

After a decade of dominance at the box office, the franchise turns its attention to the small screen

These excellent shows made the long evenings and weekends in isolation tolerable

The content, business models, and health of every media category is driven by technology. And audio technology has never been so diverse and dynamic. After decades of struggles, audio is ready to grow, not just replace.

With a clutch of awards for “Succession” and “Watchmen”, HBO reigned supreme

The platform, popular with tweens, allows developers to cash in on its success

Patrick and I went deep into topics including the Metaverse (its technical challenges, opportunities, and philosophy), IP and the role of business model and technical innovation in storytelling, the Unreal Engine, Cloud Gaming, Fortnite as a competitor to Spotify, and more.

An essay on what Nintendo does and doesn’t want to be, why, and what this means for its future

A walk through of one of the most important, but least understood companies of the future.

How does one explain Epic’s strategy? What is the Epic Games Flywheel looking to achieve? Why is Epic spending billions to launch new businesses that remove or reduce all the value in that category - and without shifting the remainder to Epic’s own pockets?

Walk through of one of the most important, but least understood companies of the future. Part 5 focuses on Fortnite, its creative ethos, and how it built Epic’s flywheel

Walk through of one of the most important, but least understood companies of the future. Part 4 focuses on Epic Online Services

Walk through of one of the most important, but least understood companies of the future. Part 2 focuses on Epic Games Store and Epic Games Publishing.

An introduction to one of the most important, but little understood companies of the future. Starting with its core business: Unreal Engine

Cloud gaming is just one part of the future of games, but just as TV wasn’t a visual form of radio, the games built for cloud will look very different from the games of today. Introducing the MILE.

Streaming content spend needs to be handicapped based on the ability of a network to create hits and a library of value. As a result, the gap between the biggest and smallest spenders is tighter than the topline numbers suggest.

The Travis Scott x Fortnite event is commonly understood in comparison to prior Fortnite events, but instead it needs to be viewed as part of Fortnite’s testing and experimentation process/journey. It is technically less impressive than prior events, but creatively much bigger. Both points matter

We are years and hundreds of millions of dollars into the rise of esports, but most esports teams and start-ups are struggling (if still operational). And bad luck is rarely to blame.

We’ll see an accelerated end of Pay-TV subscribers and ad revenues, more competition OTT, and several of Netflix’s short-term woes get worse

How esports, cross-play, the Metaverse and more will forever be affected by an ‘IRL’ virus