And then that happened
The world changes and we have a choice:
• Fight hard to keep it the way it was.
• Notice what happened and then decide to do something with that insight.
Thirty years ago, AOL was my company’s biggest client. They charged users $3 an hour to use their precursor to the internet, and paid content providers a royalty based on time spent on their ‘site.’
We invented a breakthrough game that was played in a chat room. Our testing showed that people (millions of people, probably) would play it for hours at a time. We developed a series of games with AOL that were fun and engaging, and were a few weeks from launch. It was certainly the most profitable project I had worked on to date.
And then AOL changed to flat rate monthly pricing. And the royalties went to zero.