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January 7th, 2022

Death from Winning

Lately I've been noticing a trend, or phenomenon happening in media. I say "lately" but this really has been happening for many many decades. It's the growth and expansion of a franchise. Most of the time when people create things, there's a srong and true creative intent to bring life to an idea they love. People often try out lots of new things, push boundaries and attempt to create a new unique thing reflective of their imagination. That's the energy put into it. But what heppens whe one of those things succeeds? When that thing now becomes viable ofr that creator's income and livelihood?

Tik Tok is a really interesting example of what happens. Most people on that platform make videos that are fun to them. But due to the way Tik Tok's algorithm works, anyone has some kind of chance to have one of their videos 'blow up' on the platform. When one of somebody's videos explodes and they get a new wave of people paying attention to them, they see that opportunity: "I can maintain this moment of fame." And in a creator/audience relationship, the most obvious thing to do is produce more content that the people came to you for. Normally you do videos about your knitting and rant about your job, but now everyone's discovered you from that one comedy sketch you did. Tha was a one-off for you, but now everyone's come to your account in hopes of seeing more funny skits like that. So, the obvious thing to do is make more. More short comedy skits, with the same format, and the same song in the background. This is such an incredibly common occurence. One guy used to do a variety of humorous content, but now people don't even recognize his face without the silly distortion filter, because he incorporates the same thing over and over again. That exact situation I just described applies to alt least 3 different people I've seen on there. SLots of people find themselves trapped doing the same schtick over and over again, holding onto that once piece of sustainability, that one chance they got to be famous, to be known. On these social media environments, the audience (and algorithm) value consitency- not just in quality but consistency in genre as well. Gimmicks are great for predictable streams of content for the algoritm to label and distribute. People feel more inclined to follow consistent accounts, because it's easy to plug into and understand... It's safe. This is extremely noticable on Tik Tok, which is why I bring it up as an example. But, it's defnitely not at all limited to these apps and websites. This phenomenon has been going for so many years- especially in film and games industry.

In the AAA field thuis type of success-based content stagnation is obvious. The example everyone pulls out first is the Call of Duty franchise. With so many frequent releases, the series has made practically no innovations. The only thing that has changed in the series is the fidelity of the graphics and the fluidity of he controls. Besides that pretty much all of the other changes are completely arbitrary. It's made no innovations in gameplay and no innovations in its art style or design. The reason is obvious. Much like McDonald's or In-N-Out's food, they want to provide a consistent tried-and-true experience to the consumer. The main goal of that franchise is to provide a signature "Call of Duty" experience every time. Pokemon is exactly the same. The series has undergone absolutely zero innovations in almost 10 years, and the structural formula of the games has been exactly the same since 1996. The same "beat all the gym leaders, defeat the champion and beat the Bad Guy Team" structure has been completely the same for 23 years. Every single new idea in the franchise has been relegated to side-games and spinoffs. The main series has yearly releases but has been practically untouched the entire time. BUt these trends aren't even exlusive to individual franchises. They dominate entire genres.

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