A weekly newsletter of what I've seen in (mostly) tech & games and thought was interesting. This week: drunk shopping, slot machines that walk in bars, and Lush Lava…”
😳 Must reads of the week
◼ “52 things I learned in 2019.” These yearly posts by Tom Whitwell are amazing to read and a pure treasure trove! Just take #8: “Drunk shopping could be a $45bn /year industry, and only 6% of people regret their drunk purchases.” Sit back, read, enjoy. Link
◼ If you just have time for one of the things of this list, take this one from games: “1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality.” Smart, funny, questionable. sad… this story got it all. Link
🗞 Tech News
◼ Tough stats: Uber reports it had reports of 3,045 (!) sexual assaults during its rides in the U.S. in 2018, with nine people murdered and 58 killed in crashes. I'm glad I work in mobile gaming… Link
◼ Fraudsters used AI to mimic CEO’s voice to steal $243,000. AI is everywhere, also in crime. Link
◼ How Germany quietly became an animation powerhouse. I must have missed that. But there is a point about different ways of story telling in Europe vs. U.S. mainstream entertainment. Link
◼ The EU is not particularly keen on having Libra and similar crypto-currencies w/o regulatory oversight. Link
◼ “Biased Algorithms Are Easier to Fix Than Biased People”. Sad but likely true. Link
◼ Bluesky: Twitter Announces Effort to Build ‘Decentralized Standard for Social Media’. From a company that famously was very open in the beginning, before they started clamping down hard on 3rd party clients. Hard to gauge if anything will come of it but I am definitely curious to find out. Link
🕹 Games
◼ PlayStations 1 to 4 have sold more than 450 million systems. Not a bad brand to have. Link
◼ Riot Games will pay $10 million to settle gender discrimination suit. Link
◼ Germany’s Federal Government Data Ethics Commission on ethical principles for data and machine learning. Germany is infamous for its much stricter stance on privacy and data protection. Interesting long read. Link
◼ Epic is being sued over copyright violation - in dance moves. Link
◼ Speaking of Fortnite: remember how they stayed off the Google Play store in the beginning? Looks like now the main hype is over they might like to be on it and asked Google for an exception for the 30% app store cut. Not happening. Distribution is hard. Link
◼ On the other side of Battle Royale, PUBG Mobile apparently has grossed more than $1.5b. Interestingly, 40% of this is from China. Link
◼ “Four Reasons Why the Hypercasual Gold Rush is Coming to an End.” Oversaturation and rapid market maturationi happens to everyone. Link
See also: “Top Hyper-Casual Games Worldwide for November 2019 by Downloads” Link
◼ CoD Mobile also seems to be going strong, with an estiated 170m downloads so far and $55m gross bookings in November. Link
◼ “Roblox’s 10 biggest games of all time — each with more than a billion plays”. This is like free candy to anyone doing market research. Link
◼ An interesting take: “Winning and measuring engagement is no longer enough – entertainment firms should be measuring positive sentiment in this age of abundance.” Link
😋 Tasty Tidbits
◼ Shutterstock's 2020 Color Trends: Lush Lava, Aqua Menthe, and Phantom Blue. This isn't based on tastes but actual growth trends. Link
◼ Need some Xmas gifts ideas for gamers? No problem, I got you covered: “LVxLoL: The Collection”. Note: it may be pricey. Link
◼ Speaking of pricey: Apple’s new Mac Pro can cost $52,000. Without the $400 wheels. I don't think I'll ever need 1.5 TB (!) of RAM, but need ain't want :). Link
◼ “Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back.” Link
◼ Banksy's “Early Learning Counting Set”. Brilliant, cynical, art. Link
I work for King. All views in this newsletter are personal and my own. They do not represent the views of King or ActivisionBlizzard. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only and it's surely no investment advice. This newsletter links to other websites and information obtained from third-party sources and I cannot ensure nor verify accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.