Introducing ALDORA
A few thoughts on games as a platform
The SuperJoost Playlist is a weekly take on gaming, tech, and entertainment by business professor and author, Joost van Dreunen.
The die is cast.
With the release of a new report this week, it became impossible to keep the new venture under wraps. And so we’ve launched the site and updated everyone’s job status.
The run-up to this moment has been a few years in the making. After leaving SuperData in 2020, I spent the pandemic tinkering with a few projects (including a book, that counts, right?), and took on several advisory roles. It is an incredible privilege helping other firms grow and succeed, but nothing compares to building your own. When Nielsen unceremoniously shut down SuperData, the initial path forward seemed obvious: build SuperData 2.0.
But rebuilding it wasn’t enough. The end of SuperData 1.0 coincided with a massive shift in the industry—not just from the surge in consumer spending due to the pandemic, but from a broader change: online environments had expanded into far more meaningful forms of human interaction. Just as Pokémon Go proved in 2016 that ‘everyone was a gamer,’ by 2021, online experiences had become socially normalized. Some of us already knew this, but suddenly the rest of the world realized, too, that digital experiences can be deeply meaningful.
This shift made rebuilding a slightly refreshed SuperData feel redundant. What we had anticipated a decade earlier was the transition from games as physical product—with all its distribution infrastructure, revenue models, and marketing cycles—to digital services. Or, more to the point, where previously success was expressed in the formula ‘number of units x average selling price,’ the economics had become more complex. As games became a service, the formula changed to ‘monthly active player x percentage converted to spending x average spending per paying player.’ A simple algebraic update, perhaps. But it had big implications for the aggregation of the necessary data and cultivation of analytical talent.
Moreover, the market for data services has changed. Where once only a few companies provided Steam data, there are now dozens offering everything from live-streaming analytics to audience surveys. Industry observers—from analysts to casual players—have become savvier, and free data is everywhere. The days of those crappy infographics from the early 2000s have given way to daily reports churned out by investment banks, consultants, and even hobbyists.
The consumer-facing part of the industry has changed, too. When smartphone-based gaming took off, creative firms could not release content fast enough. But that was 15 years ago. The App Store’s era of explosive growth is long over, and today, platform holders behave largely like absentee landlords in search of rent. Industry consolidation has left only two types of companies: giant, multi-billion-dollar platforms, and tiny indies. The mid-sized ‘double-A’ studios are being squeezed out, setting the stage for a major disruption.
The new company’s vision centers on games-as-a-platform. After gradually gaining momentum over the past few years, the idea is starting to materialize as the industry’s transitions toward 2025. This next era isn’t about interactive experiences designed solely by professional teams. It’s about games serving as the foundation for a variety of online activities. Play is just the starting point.
To help visualize how we anticipate the next era in interactive entertainment I’ve created the following diagram.
The first image shows the old model: players, represented by the black circles, play predominantly single-player experiences (orange square). Games are physical products (e.g., CDROMs, cartridges) released through retail. And publishers focus on maximizing sales. In this model, consumer spending is the most important success metric.
The second represents games as a service. Here multiplayer games are the norm, facilitating people to play together online and, hopefully, establishing positive network effects. However, the overall experience remains limited to in-game interactions. Here, success is measured by the degree of player engagement and money spent.
Third on the right shows what’s next: games as a platform. Here, game worlds expand beyond play, becoming hubs for all kinds of social and economic activity. Play becomes an excuse for richer interactions within a shared digital space.
If you agree with this vision, you’ll also understand that just counting dollars is no longer a sufficient strategy when it comes to making creative decisions and tackling strategic challenges. Online interactions are far more complex than purchases alone. We realized that the next data company must measure a broader range of audience behavior.
Endemic companies—publishers, developers, platforms—are evolving to deepen connections with their audiences. The quality of their content and its recognizability is a key differentiator in a saturated market place. CD Projekt, for example, rebounded from Cyberpunk 2077’s disastrous launch by focusing on community and setting up a ‘flywheel.’ Nintendo’s success with the Mario movie, PlayStation’s PC push, and Epic’s investment in user-generated content similarly point to this shift.
Non-endemic companies are also getting in on the action. The New York Times became a mobile games publisher to offset the downturn in news. Toymakers like Hasbro, LEGO, and Spin Master are reaching audiences in immersive online experiences as TV viewership declines. Even Disney sunk $1.5 billion into Fortnite, seeing the value in interactive worlds. For these firms, interactive entertainment presents a new relationship model between brands and audiences.
Both types embrace the realization that an entire generation has grown up socializing online in interactive environments. It raises all kinds of really cool challenges and problems. What to make of the intersection between physical and digital entertainment? What new channels have emerged for people to find out about new things to play? Nintendo, for example, has been pushing into Disney territory with its theme parks and movie releases. Meanwhile, Apple and Meta are hoping to establish themselves as leaders on the next frontier with virtual reality and spatial computing. It promises a change in what constitutes an audience, and opens opportunities to build new experiences.
Recognizing that games are now at the center of online and digital activity, and key to driving innovation and success for a growing number of firms, ALDORA is taking a broader approach to understanding interactive entertainment. We go beyond traditional methods, using data-driven insights to help creative firms and consumer brands map critical digital behaviors: play, watch, connect, create, and spend. Over the past two years, we've built a strong team and data infrastructure, running successful tests with major gaming firms and eager newcomers looking to navigate this evolving space.
As you can imagine, I’ll have a lot more to say about all of this in the weeks to come. But for now please keep an eye out.
I’m excited to share more soon!
NEXT UP
We’ll return to our regularly scheduled industry updates next week.