作者：Daniel Cook

我们通常会从创意或文化角度来看待艺术作品，但我发现从经济或变革视角来看待这些作品也同样颇具启发性。开发者所处的经济环完究竟如何塑造了其创造的艺术形式？

作为本文的案例研究，我找了一些最近在成熟的手机、PC和主机市场专注于内容的一系列已站稳脚跟的利基游戏。在移动平台方面，我们所举的例子是《Sword & Sworcery》、《Device 6》和《Monument Valley》这类游戏。在PC平台，我们则以《 Kentucky Route Zero》、《Proteus》和《Gone Home》为例。而主机平台的这一趋势则不甚明显，但《Journey》和《Flower》在某些方面可以算是这种典型。

这些游戏通常具有以下特征：

*极强的召唤内容关注性：多数游戏是由传递编撰严格的有效载荷的故事弧所组成的。玩家的认知载荷是被激励解释而非计划或操作执行消耗的。

*较少使用系统：从机制上来说，这些游戏的交互循环较为有限。玩家在一个机械性空间中的玩法空间较少。其所使用的系统通常极富传统性，在其他题材中的历史较为悠久。

*短暂玩法：通常持续1-3小时。

这种形式的繁荣并非源自人类艺术鉴赏倾向的突然爆发，也并非来自真善美的普遍内在属性。这些游戏之所以繁荣是因为它们恰如其分地执行了与当前社会经济环境相适应的开发战略。

因环境风险而成形

形式是一个艺术作品的公认和标准化框架。挂在起居室墙壁上的油画就是一种普遍的绘画形式。而俳句则是一种写作形式。

与许多媒体不同的是，游戏所采用的形式仍然极具流动性。文学作者可能会受限于诗歌、短篇故事、散文或小说等固定的结构，而游戏形式则更为广泛，并且局限性较少。它们在机制、范围、主题、参与者数量和硬件上差别较大。《俄罗斯方块》以及《Charades》之间的区别看起来远比莎士比亚戏剧与百科全书条目之间的差别更大。作为一名设计师，你通常要为自己的游戏选择独特的形式。

风险如何塑造游戏形式

但是，游戏的不同形式也有不同程度的风险和效益。这里存在诸如设计风险、技术风险、制作风险等内部风险。此外还有一些类似发行、市场等外部风险。如果项目的任何一个方面失败了，开发投入就会遭遇损失。任何游戏设计都要权衡其开发游戏的成本，成功利益和失败负作用等因素。

这些可不是抽象的决定。多数开发者（甚至是大型开发商）都要靠运营项目避免破产。毕竟解决三餐一宿可是个实实在在的问题。许多聪明的团队因此选择了那些能够最小化整体风险，从而极大增加自己未来存活机率的项目形式。

所以游戏开发者具有推动游戏形式适应其面临的环境压力的极大动机。如果某些环境因素发生变化，增加了一种风险类型，那么开发者就会从潜在形式中进行选择，挑选其中能够消除风险的选项。

利用幸存者来决定主导战略

我们可能无法看到游戏形式进化的过程。大部分项目并不能正确平衡自己的风险，从而失败并在文化意识中沦陷。多数开发者几乎都没有意识到自己的影响力和限制条件。我们真正所知的只有幸存者的情况。

当你看到市场上新游戏类型的兴趣时，你就可以开始提出一些有趣的问题。这些游戏得以幸存的选择机制是什么？它们使用了哪些超越其他设计的战略？这些通过筛选的东西可能有助于你了解筛子的形状。

发挥作用的力量

究竟是什么力量促使现代独立开发者尝试以固定的价格出售游戏呢？

*数字发行和廉价工具：这股新兴力量的核心就是小型团队得以用较低成本创建和发布游戏的能力。但是，这些市场现在正日趋成熟。

*大量用户习惯于消费内容：在过去十年中，AAA游戏通过动画、关卡设计、画外音等完善了一系列二级内容传递标准。游戏玩家知道并且理解这些方法。在过去数十年，我们培养了知道如何读取这些内容、训练有素的用户。

*产品的平均收益在下降。事实上，移动市场的游戏价格接近于零。小部分游戏却创造了大量收益，这里根本不存在中端市场。除了输赢，你没有什么中间路线可走。

*每份游戏平均预售价低于0.99美元。随着Steam的进一步开放，捆绑销售模式的发展，以及主机引进更多免费游戏，付费游戏售价将进一步被蚕食。你不得不因为更少的单价而去获取更多用户。

*曝光度很弱。曝光机制很弱但门槛却很高。各个渠道充斥大量质量难辨的游戏。似乎1到30秒的曝光就能决定一款游戏的质量。

*制作成本不断攀升：廉价工具降低了制作成本，但劳动力成果却岿然不动。不断增长的质量水准导致制作成本不断攀升。五年之前，制作移动平台的一款付费游戏可能需要5万美元。但现在，为了制作一款收益更低的游戏，你的开发成本可能介于20万至100万（甚至更高）美元。这种开销几乎全部归咎于内容和功能竞争：更多美工、更多动画、3D使用的增加，更多“必须”功能。

所以游戏很难脱颖而出，难以盈利，却很容易让你入不敷出。

专注于内容的战略

鉴于这种形势，哪种游戏类型可能获得生存？我们要针对上述所列问题寻找解决方案，以及用相同的资源解决多种问题的方法。有效的解决方案才能幸存下来。

注意，以下方法绝非唯一的对策。如果你去看看其他繁荣发展的开发者，就会发现许多替代方案。这个战略除了其功能益处之处并没有什么固有的价值。这些普遍战略是从不同方面不知不觉地汇集到一起，似乎是由一只无形的手塑造成形。无论我们是否足够明智，能够事先预料形势，都必须承认环境拥有局部最大值。

现在让我们来考虑一下小型团队的内容集中开发战略：

缩减成本

*瞄准更小的范围：内容很昂贵，但如果你制作的是一款1-3小时，而非20或30小时的游戏呢？这种简单的改变意味着你只需投入大型项目十分之一的成本。这也是这种游戏形式的决定性经济属性。

*移除系统和功能：尽量删除许多标准元素，仅专注于其中一两个关键元素。在《Gone Home》中，玩家要做的就是四处走动并点击物品。NPC呢？删除。战斗？删除。分支故事？删除。

*保持较小的团队规模：因为劳动力就是你的最大成本，小型团队意味着较低的投入。团队成员应该能够执行多个开发层面，这样你就不需要雇佣兼职人手了。

*保持较短的开发周期：在一个项目上投入9-12个月，而非18-24个月。

*在自己打算做的事情上表现卓越：如果你的团队至少拥有一名或多名世界级的高手，那就很有优势了。这样你就可以围绕他们的个人风格创建游戏。这可以弥补例如人人身兼职数，较短的时间安排等小型团队规模一些不可避免的劣势。

减少发布风险

*让游戏易于完成：你想让人们来玩完游戏，并向好友宣布游戏。这是一种快速的病毒传播。在其他情境中（游戏邦注：例如《暗黑之魂》、《Spelunky》），挑战是一个很管用的策略，但如果你希望尽量顺利地传递美丽的载入内容，那就不应该给玩家创造这种挑战了。

*保持内容较高的易理解性：为了弥补游戏过短的风险，你可能要补充一些可容纳多种解释的内容。这意味着如果任何人都无法准确地描述你的内容，那么它的质量就会比较低。特定的神秘感可以为人们的普遍批评打一剂预防针，让玩家产生一些因信息不全而造成的疑惑。

*与社区互动：理想情况下，在玩家和评论员生成自己对游戏的详细解释时，你要展开第二轮社区活动。

注意这些环节如何整合为一个紧凑的战略。拥有强大美术人员或文案的小型团队可以创造一个拥有轻量级故事，短小而富有吸引力的游戏。这也正好是一个他们能够完成和发布的项目范围。这种游戏已经足够醒目和获得口头传播。并且对玩家来说风险也不大——他们可以获得超级实惠但又具有可观内容的游戏，并且获得一种相对于书籍或电影等其他消费品来说极具价值的体验。

对游戏的极度保守看法

这个战略原则并不新颖。有别于由严格监管的质量变量，廉价且易消费的内容正是多数媒体市场的核心。

在大部分游戏中，精品游戏内容就是最保守的开发战略之一。认为真正的游戏历史始于2007年的媒体评论员可能会为这些作品而兴奋。但是，对比过去30年丰富的系统性和叙事实验，这些形式实际上是一种倒退。生存主义风险缓解被推销为一种时尚文化进步。这种游戏策略性地放弃了游戏原本该是一种有别于传统媒体的东西这一理念，并全盘采用了与之类似的方法和局限性。其最粗糙的形式，好比是像书籍一样让你翻页看到内容。

人们不应该简单地将这种现象标榜为“糟糕的”变化。发展并没有什么判断标准。这种战略奏效了。优秀而富有激情的人们开始从中盈利并得以创造另一款游戏。在这样一个无情的资本主义社会中，你也只能指望游戏开发者做到这一点。

未来

因为我们要应对保守的产品战略，可比较的市场则指出这种现象在未年可能发生变化。

*市场快速饱和：由于当前技能和技术的成本门槛降低了，并且第一个吃螃蟹的人通常没有任何竞争风险，新人们很快涌向市场，从而降低了大家的平均成功率，多数人都无法实现盈利。

*成本增长：随着更多竞争者的出现，质量问题更加重要。资金雄厚者能够保留和虏获更多极具盈利性的用户，导致行业形成以最大投入获得最多用户的风气。

*较短的时间长度：成本增长也进一步为游戏时长带来压力。玩家甚至看到20分钟的出色体验也不会决定花99美分购买游戏。

*使用捆绑销售法：选集、捆绑包或订阅模式来销售内容是这个热作驱动的生态圈中的一个普遍推广方法。如果这种市场结构发生变化，中间人决定用户口味的倾向就会更强烈。

*题材差异化：这一点在市场分化上表现尤其明显。随着用户对这一新形式的适应，他们就会开始偏好特定的内容，就好像我们有人喜欢言情小说，有人喜欢悬疑小说一样。首先进入相关题材领域的人就可以挖掘出一个新的次级利基市场。

*脆弱的专家型公司：开发者必须擅长生产特定形式的最佳内容。但这也会导致他们在面临必须适应新形式的时候缺乏灵活性。在过去的冒险游戏题材中，我们就见识了这种情况。

在此类游戏数量还不甚众多的情况下预测未来的市场饱和或崩溃也许并非什么明智的想法。但市场并非静止不变的。由于缺乏足够的竞争者，这一市场最终也会快速饱和，任何黄金时代都将短暂结束。

在某种意义上看，这些短小的内容型游戏无异于与恶魔达成了交易。他们缩减了自己的创新机制范围，并通过高度润色的内容传递自己的价值。但是，游戏行业的一个常量在于，特定平台上的内容成本一直在攀升。成本曲线就是蚕食我们行业的怪物。将游戏中的内容砍削十分之一来降低成本是个好做法，但如果制作内容的成本攀升10倍时又该如何呢？这种短暂的优势终将化为乌有。

教训

虽然我个人并不制作内容驱动型的游戏，但我认为从这个视解来理解自己的作品如何以及为何影响世界真的很有用。所有艺术都是由特定年代和地点的经济情况所塑造的产物，所有标准化的艺术形式都是社会经济生态圈中的细分领域。它们并非永恒的，会随着时间流逝而变化。认识到普遍形式并非绝对真理，可以让聪明而富有洞察力的开发者受益。

我们有必要反思：谁在赚钱？开发者、记者、博物馆、评论员或其他中间人如何从自己所宣传的作品中获利？任何有赖于（大小规模）盈利机构的创意作品都是一件商品，它受制于经济条件。我们没有人是纯粹的独立创意实体。因为它最多是一个令人愉快的幻觉和谎言。我们所要在一个以实际主义为准则的系统中进行创作。无论我们是否喜欢，都要通过自我审查在这种情况下抢占先机。

这种分析的另一面在于从失败情况入手。问问有谁因特立独行而失败？究竟是什么体制或环境因素导致他们入不敷出？当你分辨出问题所在区域时，是否可能发现差距并想出一个能够让自己发展的新战略？

当你看到一种新游戏形式出现时，要问问原因。查找其形成的各种因素。然后使用这种见解来创造自己独特的游戏形式。为推动游戏的发展而做好自己的份内工作。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

How art games are shaped by economics

by Daniel Cook

We often consider artistic works from a creative or cultural perspective, but I find it just as enlightening to examine them from an economic or evolutionary lens. How does the economic environment within which a developer finds themselves shape the form that art takes?

As a case study of this in practice, I’ve been fascinated by a class of content-focused game that’s recently found a stable niche in the maturing mobile, PC and console markets. In mobile, we see examples like Sword & Sworcery, Device 6 or Monument Valley. In PC, you’ve got Kentucky Route Zero, Proteus and Gone Home. On console the trend is less pronounced, though Journey and Flower share some aspects.

These games generally have the following characteristics

Strong focus on evocative content: Most of the game is composed of arcs that deliver heavily authored payloads. The player’s cognitive load is consumed by interpretation of stimuli not the planning or execution of actions.

Light use of systems: Mechanically, the games tend to have limited interactive loops. There is little room for play within a mechanical space. The systems used are often highly traditional with a long history within other genres.

Short playtime: Often 1-3 hours.

This form thrives not due to some sudden explosion of artistic appreciation within the human race, nor due to universally-applicable intrinsic attributes of Truth and Beauty. No, instead these games thrive because they competently execute a development strategy that matches well with the current socioeconomic environment.

Form shaped by environment risk

Form is an accepted and standardized structure for a work of art. A painting stretched on canvas painted in oils that fits roughly on a living room wall is a common form of painting. A haiku is a form of writing.

Unlike many media, the forms that a game might take are still quite fluid. Where authors of literature might feel locked into to well-established structures such as poem, short story, essay or novel, game forms are both broader and have less sharp boundaries. They vary radically in mechanics, scope, topic, number of participants, and hardware. The difference between a game of Tetris and a game of Charades can seem far vaster than that of a Shakespearean play and an encyclopedia entry. And as a designer, you often get to chose the unique form of your game.

How risks shape game forms

However, different forms of game have different levels of risk and trade offs. There’s internal risk such as design risk, technical risk, production risk. And then there’s external risk such as distribution risk, market fit and many others. If any one of these aspect of the project fails, the development investment is lost. Any game design can be judged by the costs associated with building the game, the benefits of success and the downsides to failure.

Fig 1. Valid terrain based off existing environmental risks

These are not abstract decisions. Most developers (even large ones) operate a paycheck or two away from bankruptcy. Paying the rent and putting food on the table are very real concerns. Many smart teams therefore choose projects of a form that minimize overall risk in order to dramatically increase their chances of future survival.

Thus game developers have a great incentive to evolve game forms to fit whatever environmental pressures are present. If something changes in the environment that increases a type of risk, then you’ll see developers selecting, from this vast palette of potential forms, the options that mitigate that risk. Picture a thousand little Brownian developers blindly adapting their game forms to half felt market forces and thus converging on useful strategies.

Using survivors to determine dominant strategies

The process of evolving games forms can feel invisible. The vast majority of projects that don’t balance their risks correctly, fail and sink out of the cultural consciousness. Most creators are barely conscious of their influences and constraints. All we really know are the the survivors.

When you see a new species of game thriving in the marketplace, you can start to ask some interesting questions. What are the culling mechanisms that let those games survive? What strategy was used that gave them an advantage over other possible designs? The things that make it through the filter give you some insight into the shape of the filter.

Some forces at play

What are some meaningful forces acting upon the modern indie developer attempt to sell a game for a fixed upfront price?

Digital distribution and cheap tools: At the heart of the emergence is ability for small teams to build and release games at low cost. However, those markets are now maturing.

A large audience trained on content consumption: The past decade of AAA titles perfected a variety of secondary content delivery standards via cutscenes, level design, voiceovers, etc. Gamers know and understand these methods. Over the decades, we’ve built up the equivalent of a trained audience that knows how to read.

Average revenue for a product is dropping. In fact they are close to zero in mobile markets. The exponential distribution of revenue looks more L-shaped, with small number of titles making the majority of the money and no middle market to speak of. You have hits or failures with little in-between.

Price per unit for games with an upfront cost is less than $0.99. As Steam opens up further, bundles proliferate and consoles introduce more free games, expect further price erosion for premium titles. You need to reach more people to make less money.

Discoverability is weak. Discovery mechanisms are weak and heavily gated. Channels are also flooded with games of difficult to determine quality. A game benefits from being able to signal quality 1 to 30 seconds of exposure since that is likely all the time it will get.

Cost of production is increasing: Cheap tools bring the capital cost down, but labor costs remain stable. The need to hit ever increasing levels of quality results in an escalating cost curve. Five years ago, a hit premium game on mobile might cost $50,000 to build (including sweat equity). Now, for less revenue, you’ll see costs range from $200k – 1M (or higher). This expense is almost entirely due to content and feature competition: more art, more animation, increased use of 3D, more ‘required’ features.

So it is hard to stand out, hard to make money and very easy to spend more than you make.

A content-focused strategy

Given such a landscape, what is a species of game that might survive? We are looking for solutions to the problems listed, but also ways of tackling multiple problems with the same resources. Efficient solutions survive.

Fig 2. A strategy that mitigates technical and design risk. While taking on some distribution risk.

Note that the following is by no means the only strategy. If you look around at other thriving developers, there are many alternatives. Nor is it a preferred one. This strategy has no inherent value beyond its functional benefits. Nor for that matter is it likely that the half-blind creators explicitly planned out their strategy. Like the flying fish and the (sadly extinct) flying shark, common strategies converge unwittingly from disparate perspectives as if shaped by an invisible hand.  Environments have local maxima whether or not we are smart enough to perceive them ahead of time.

With those disclaimers duly dispensed, consider a content-focused development strategy for small teams…

Reduce costs

Target a smaller scope: Content is expensive, but what if you make a game that is 1 to 3 hours, not 20 or 30? This simple change means you can cost 1/10th what a bigger title might. This is the defining economic attribute of this game form.

Remove systems and features: Trim as many standard elements as possible and focus the game on one or two key features. Dear Esther, you walk around. In Gone Home, you walk around and click on objects. NPCs? Cut. Combat? Cut. Branching narratives? Cut.

Keep your team small. Since labor is your largest cost, a small team means lower investment. Team members should being able to execute multiple aspects of development so you don’t need part time specialists.

Keep your development cycle short(er): Spend 9-12 months on a title, not 18-24 months.

Excel at what you attempt: It helps to have at least one or more people who are world class. Then build your game around their signature style. This makes up for some of the inevitable weaknesses that arise from small teams sizes, wearing too many hats and short schedules.

Reduce distribution risk

Make high impact video and images. Since you have limited contact with potential players, you want the briefest glimpse of a game to excite them. Gorgeous visuals, evocative narrative hooks that can be grasped in a couple seconds work well. All many buyers need to see of Monument Valley is a single screenshot.

Form relationships to amplify your signal for free: With a small team and a low marketing budget, free distribution is ideal. By forming relationships with journalists, streamers, taste makers and platform curators, you may get a mention or a feature. Of course, what you provide in return is a sellable story or validation of their long simmering world view. ‘Games as art’ is currently easy topic to bond over and all games with this form make the most of it.

Reduce design and production risk

Rely heavily on static content: Art and video rarely fails on a functional level. There’s a risk in discovering an artist initially, but once on board, a competent artist tends to continue to produce competent art. Especially over short production schedules. You already need to make high impact visuals in order to get distribution, so there’s synergy here.

Use existing mechanics: New mechanics take time to discover and often don’t work out. Invention is hard. By using well proven traditional mechanics, it is unlikely that the systems will delay your game. Turning a page or clicking a hyper-link is quite reliable.

Reduce systemic emergence: Unplanned surprises hurt the schedule and cost you money.

Reduce technical risk

Use existing technology: Well proven, simplistic technology. Again, you can get away something that simply puts quality content on the screen

Avoid complex technologies: Technology that require strong expertise such as multiplayer servers or advanced 3D rendering is likely to blow up. So don’t do that.

Reduce audience risk

Make the game easy to finish: You want people to play the game, finish it and then talk to their friends while still in midst of the afterglow. This is a fast virus, not a slow one. Challenge is a useful tactic in other contexts (Dark Souls, Spelunky), but it is a poor fit when you want to deliver your beautiful load of content as smoothly as possible.

Keep content highly interpretable: To offset the risk of the game being too short, you can implement content that either vague or open to many interpretations. This means that quality of your content can be lower without anyone being able to concretely describe it as such. A certain air of mysterious brilliance can act as a prophylactic against common criticisms; seed the doubt that a player may simply be unschooled in Imperial fashion.

Engage the community: Ideally, you kick off a secondary wave of community engagement as players and critics invent their own detailed explanations for what may in fact be random (yet highly evocative) noise.

Notice how all these pieces fit together into a coherent strategy. A small team with a strong artist and / or writer makes a short, attractive game that sells a light narrative. This also happens to be small enough a scope that they can finish and release it. Such a game is pretty enough to be featured and can be easily talked about. There’s also little risk for the player…they get this nice watchable nugget of content that’s super cheap and feels like a reasonable value relative to other comparable consumables like books or movies.

A deeply conservative take on games

This strategy formula isn’t new in the grand scheme. Cheap, consumable content differentiated on gatekeeper-approved quality variables is at the heart of most media markets.

In the grand spectrum of possible games, the crop of boutique content games is one of the most conservative possible development strategies. Rosy cheeked media critics who might imagine the real history of games started in 2007 are likely excited by such titles. However, when compared to the rich systemic and narrative experimentation of the last 30 years, these forms are ultimately a retreat; survivalist risk mitigation marketed as hip cultural advancement. Such games tacitly give up on the idea that games could be a different type of thing than traditional media and adopt whole hog similar methods and limitations. At the crudest level, you flip pages, you see content.

One should tread lightly in labeling this as a ‘bad’ change. Evolution does not judge. This strategy works. Good, passionate people are making money and surviving to build another game. That’s all you can really hope for as a game developer in a staunchly capitalist world.

The future

Since we are dealing with a conservative product strategy, comparable markets suggest where these might evolve over the next 5 years.

Fig 3. Increasing costs put new pressure on the content heavy form.

Player desire for the new form increases the overall market opportunity.

Rapid market saturation: Since costs of entry in terms of skills and technology are quite low and first movers have almost zero competitive moats, new entrants should flood the market. This reduces the average success rate; most will not be profitable.

Costs increase: As more entries appear, quality becomes more important. Those with cash spend more to keep or capture profitable audiences. Form-specific blockbusters emerge that spend the maximum amount to get the maximum audience. (I’ve called these genre kings in the past).

Shorter length: Increased costs put pressure on decreasing the length even further. At some point players may decide that even an amazing 20 minutes is not worth 99 cents.

Use of portfolios: Anthologies, bundles or subscriptions to content streams (aka magazines) are common methods of paying a population of authors in a hit driven ecosystem. If this shift in market structure occurs, middlemen begin dictating tastes even more strongly.

Attempted differentiation based off thematic genre: Essentially the market fragments. As customers become trained in this new form, they’ll start to prefer specific types of content, much like we we see romance or mystery novels. First movers in thematic areas could tap a new sub-niche.

Fragile specialist firms: Developers will need to specialize in this specific form to produce the best of breed content. However, this makes them inflexible when the need arises to adapt to new forms. We’ve seen this situation play out in the past with adventure games.

It may seem silly to predict a future of saturation and collapse when there are so few of these games around. Yet markets are never eternal. Due to the lack of competitive moats, this one will mature rapidly and any golden period is likely to be short.

In some sense, these short content focused games have made a deal with the devil. They’ve reduced their inventive mechanical scope and deliver all their value through highly polished content. However, one constant of the game industry is that content costs are always rising on a given platform. The cost curve is the monster that eats our industry. It is great to trim 1/10th of the content in a game to get your costs down, but what happens when the cost of making content then jumps by 10X? That brief advantage disappears.

Lessons

Though I don’t personally make short content-driven games, I find this lens immensely useful in understanding how and why my work impacts the world. All art is shaped by the economics of a specific time and place. All standardized forms of art are but niches within a socioeconomic ecosystem. They are not eternal, they shift over time. Knowing that common forms are not some absolute truth empowers the clever and observant developer.

It pays to ask: Who is making money? How do the developers, journalists, museums, critics or other middlemen benefit from promoting the works that they promote? Any creative work that depends on money-making institutions (big or small) is a commercial artifact, shaped by commercial constraints. None of us are truly independent creative entities. That’s at best a pleasant illusion, a lie. We all create within systems that cull our impassioned work with pragmatic brutality. We also, like it or not, preempt this culling through self-censorship.

The flip side of this analysis is to look at the failures.  Ask who is doing something different and failing? What structural and environmental factors explain why they are not making enough to eat? Once you’ve identified the problem areas, is it possible to spot gaps and come up with a new strategy that lets you thrive?

When you see a new form of game emerging, ask why. Seek to understand the confluence of forces. Then use this rich understanding to invent your own unique form of game. Do your part to ensure that the evolution of games never stagnates.（source：gamasutra）