I lied. The blog post was so massively awesome that it needed not one, not two, but THREE separate posts. Holy moly.
We have established that annoying children usually get what they want, depending on the parental strategy that their parents employ. Firms take advantage of this fact, and target children to indirectly target their parent’s wallet. Fair enough. But why is it that only certain firms survive to take advantage of this gold mine of opportunity?
Children have short attention spans. Very short attention spans. You’ll need something incredibly addictive to keep their attention in one place for a given time, and that’s where video games come in. Video games are expensive; one Nintendo DS game will probably last around 20 hours before the kid gets bored, and will cost anywhere between $25 to $50. Starcraft, the bane of good report cards, costs $60 for pretty much a life sentence of stay-in-room-itis. And World of Warcraft, goodness forbid, has an upkeep cost of $15 a MONTH to keep a child lonely from age 5 to 35 (just kidding there, gamers. I love y’all.)
But what is it that keeps a child interested? This is where entrepreneurs come in. Oh, FINALLY I mention the key word here. In class, Davis mentioned “Club Penguin,” where young children can play safely on the internet in an online game called “Club Penguin.” The creators of club penguin are successful entrepreneurs: they found their niche, and they stuck to it. And it worked. Such success reminds me of similar online games such as Kingdom of Loathing (KOL), Runescape, and the all-familiar NEOPETS.
All online games have something in common. An engaged community and a constant flow of new material will achieve both a sense of familiarity and sense of novelty to the young underdeveloped (or really developed, depending on who you’re talking about) mind. Back in the day there were 150 pokemon. Now there are over 500. Does it seem strange that it took a milennia to find 150 pokemon, only for the pokemon world to discover nearly 4 times as many within just a few years? Is it not strange that Ash still remains 10 years old after spending his whole life catching pokemon for a living? None of that matters. Pokemon are fun, children have achieved a sense of familiarity with Pokemon, and Pokemon is STILL coming out with new items.
The card game industry is also making a giant profit off of children. Whoever first started the concept of trading card games was not only a successful entrepreneur, he started a revolution. Imagine, firms selling pieces of paper for over a thousand dollars, then releasing the same card en masse to drop the price to around $30, but still giving veterans the incentive to keep on buying. Not only are they making a profit on mere pieces of paper, firms like Konami are able to RECYCLE their ideas to keep the money flowing. But the fun doesn’t stop there! Every month they release yet ANOTHER set of cards to keep the cycle going! A naiive child/duelist/nerd will never attain that sense of “I am satisfied with the cards that I have” feeling because they will NEVER be able to prefectly mod their deck.
I apologize for the usage of jargon, hopefully it makes sense to most of you.
An entrepreneur can create an innovative idea that can take society by storm, but a GOOD entrepreneur will always be able to keep that idea fresh. Take a look at this. This is genius. Professionally-written “teaching” aspiring duelists how to play the game at a higher level. Deck analyses to inspire new ideas. Heck, even RANKINGS on worldwide tournaments.
Essentially, Konami has created an artificial sport, with it’s own league of nerdy followers (including me, at an objective, casual level). It’s not an easy task. Many card games have tried and failed to create the same scenario. So I agree with the statement that entrepreneurship is very hard to succeed in, but may result in mountains of profit.
My examples may seem childish and my jokes may be lame, but something should definitely make sense from this. People make MONEY off of this stuff, and anything that can generate millions of dollars in profit must not be ignored…
Christopher Lam, out.
