These “categories” are only superficially the same thing. Here’s what social/casual games and PC/console games have in common:

• Both show (usually) moving images to a player
• Both accept input that is (usually) reflected through an impact on the game’s outcome

Here’s a couple of things that are very different:

• social/casual games monetize by letting you pay to make the game less bad or by preying on psychology. PC/console games monetize by dangling the promise of some kind of experience you couldn’t otherwise have.
• social/casual games are useful for destroying time. PC/console games are useful to stoke imagination and elicit emotions.

I know I’m being reductive here, but I think the point is valid. They’re superficially the same but used for very different purposes. Putting them side-by-side on a chart like this is like comparing revenue across all car makers and determining that, because McLaren made $280 million in 2020 while Kia made $44 billion, sports cars are going away soon.

If McLaren did go away, the McLaren driver is not going to replace the McLaren with a Kia, because those are not the same thing, even though they are in the same way that a pair of scissors and a Hattori Hanzo sword are both blads, or maybe in the same way that both brass knuckles and a bazooka are weapons even though one cannot replace the other. If Baldur’s Gate 3 were never released, I wouldn’t have dumped my $60 into Fortnite skins because I’m looking for something particular out of a game. My goal isn’t just to burn $60 on anything that shows me moving pictures and maps my inputs onto those pictures. Those attributes of a video game may be what make it a video game, but they aren’t the attributes that will make me enjoy it or want to spend money on it.

If McLaren and all sports car makers go away, most of the money spent on those is not going to funnel into compact cars. It’s going to stay in people’s pockets. $280 million dollars doesn’t hold a candle to $44 billion… but someone is going to want to take that $280 million! So, someone will probably keep making sports cars… just like someone will probably keep making the games that will take the remaining ~$73 billion slice of the video games pie.

Some public companies may jump ship to chase the social/casual dollars… but these are the companies that have been trying to blur the lines anyway (think EA), so we’re really not losing much. The talent who delivered PC/console games we used to enjoy from EA have mostly moved on to other studios or to form their own studios so they can keep making what they like.

Could this future give me glasses that can’t be smudged? If so, sign me up!

Drop will continue to operate independently

In the case of an acquisition, this sentence always has an implied “for a little while” at the end of it.

I loved having a personal web site when I was a teenager… but then the internet became all about commerce and I sorta jumped on that bandwagon. I got fed up a few months back and needed a creative outlet so I launched a new personal web site, part of that being a blog.

I love writing for it! It’s different from journaling because someone else could find it. I know the feeling of discovering someone else’s personal blog, and it’s incredible. I love knowing that I’m writing and creating things that could do that for others.

I have no idea if anyone else is reading and, if so, how many people are reading. I don’t have any analytics set up, and that’s intentional. I don’t want to track people, and I don’t ever want to make a decision about my web site based on that data.

The old web was magical. There was something special about discovering a new web site and knowing that it only existed because someone’s passion was too much to contain and had to spill out onto the internet. That’s what I’m trying to recreate with my site.

• Sip- samples colors on the screen
• TripMode- lets you decide which apps can access the internet. Great to conserve bandwidth when you’re tethered.
• SideNotes- adds a drawer on the side of the screen you can pull out to make some quick notes
• Espanso- cross-platform text replacement
• Amphetamine- keep the computer awake on a schedule or under certain conditions
• FreeTube- privacy-minded YouTube client
• Mona- Mastodon client
• Session- best pomodoro app I’ve found

Every movement, subculture, whatever is just about fashion for 98% of the people involved. Fashion is easy. Values are hard.