World is Unfair and Hates You

Imagine you are trying to make a living from selling a single apple pie only to your family and friends. Half of your family is gluten-free anyway. You don't make much money.

You decide the problem is in scale, make more pie and put your creation on shelves of the busiest mall in the city. About every possible variation of apple pie already sits there. No one cares.

You decide it's a discoverability problem.

You take a look at all the other pies and realize all of them are in white boxes. Your pie is now dressed in black. Sales go up by 1%.

You decide the apple pie industry is saturated, leave the pies in the mall and with tears move to the basement of your parents' house.

Sometime later your mother brings you apple pie in black box. On it a face of PewDiePie. You hate the guy. Pie tastes exactly like yours - because it is. You can tell.

You get an email from the mall. It reads: "We need more of Appew Pie. Please find attached a fat check." You are confused and go to mall to investigate.

One of the store clerks had a laugh and labeled all of your pies with the face and the name. Your pies went viral. They sell like hot cakes. Although they are cold pies.

You still don't know whether people like your apple pie. Your pie is popular because of all the wrong reasons. You don't care. You get to make Bluebarrymore Pie next.

Point of this inspiring story? Random shit outside your control happens every day and if you give it time you'll get to be succ...

No one cared for Bluebarrymore Pie and you've never baked another pie.

Anyway.

The point is the world is chaotic on its own. Add irrational people to the mix and you'll go crazy trying to make sense of it all. Go with the flow, do your best. Sometimes dreams don't come true, but no worries there's enough reality to occupy your whole life.

World is actually pretty fucking open to you.

Game developers around the world are freaking out*!* Selling games is not as easy as it used to be and requires good dose of creativity, business savviness and a pinch of luck.

Try distributing a game 10 or 20 years ago. Fat chance. Smartphone revolution changed this paradigm and many are hoping to bank on the VR the same way. Compare what was to what we have today and then complain.

You have access to an immense number of people, wide selection of devices, ability to instantly patch up mistakes and to evolve your work over time. Your work is actively played and introduced by young and old. Show me a medium with such a momentum?

Current outcries remind me of my high school classmate. Never paid attention, never studied, sometimes cheated, yet got through with grades better than most. Why?

He got through thanks to being easy going and teachers didn't have high expectations, so didn't pressure him with hard questions. In one perspective he lucked out, in the other he got passed on.

States side Americans are among the most vocal when it comes to voicing concerns. Partially because they just have to share their perspective on pretty much anything and whatever happens over there is supposedly what moves the world that day.

Ehrm.. cheeky remarks aside, major reason is the very high cost of living in US, Canada, UK and other parts of the western world.

Game devs of post-communist era in countries of Eastern and Central Europe are entering their seniority, but can live on 1/5th of the average US developer. That's hard to match. Game developers in US are not five times better than in Poland, Czech Republic, Romania or Ukraine.

Then try to compete with the copy and fax machine that is China or India. Thankfully both markets are so big they can mostly sustain themselves.

And the cycle will repeat next decade or two when South America or Africa sees its share of growth. South Africa or Nigeria are already huge hubs of tech innovation. Videogames are the next natural step.

(Yes, I'm leaving out Australia since their government will likely make games more expensive than gold or ban selling them anyway).

Global industry means everyone gets the same access to the same shelves in the mall. Average price and sales hurt one side of the pond more than the other.

It'll get just worse with average wealth increasing and all the other societal issues resolved. After a while that's an unsustainable ecosystem.

There's a reason why theaters show only a few movies every week, rather than hundreds that comes out. Videogame platform holders can definitely do a better job of curation and turn from dollar stores into design stores.

More so what we need is a revolution in revenue streams akin to DLCs and microtransactions. Some will hate to hear this, but future iterations of cryptocurrency is most likely exactly that.

Remember there are a lot of great unemployed actors and musicians, just because the market is satisfied. Be happy for a small chance rather than no chance. After all...

World is unfair and hates you.