Games

Aliens are among us. Well, the online multiplayer game Among Us is -- a murder mystery set in space, where the group must figure out who the alien imposter is (a variation of party games like Werewolf or Mafia) -- has seemingly suddenly become very popular. On this episode of 16 Minutes on the News -- our show where we talk about what's in the headlines; tease apart what's hype/ what's real; and where we are on the long arc of innovation with related tech trends -- we cover: 1) Who, how, and why now? Especially since the game, from indie game company InnerSloth, has been around since 2018 -- what if it's NOT just "the pandemic effect" (where people are seeking new ways to connect). 2) What are the underlying trends involved -- from social to streaming -- but digging in on the twists, and nuances, of both. 3) What are the implications for startups and big companies when it comes to the gaming market, beyond this game?

In one of our special "2x" episodes of 16 Minutes (32ish minutes;) -- our show where we quickly cover the headlines and tech trends, offering analysis, frameworks, explainers, and more -- we cover the algorithm that powers TikTok, the short video-sharing platform that grabbed massive marketshare in cultures and markets never experienced firsthand by the engineers and designers in China, beating out other apps in the United States. Now, with talk of U.S. ownership/partnership for TikTok, what happens if the algorithm isn't included in the deal? And what can we learn from the "creativity network effects" flywheel of TikTok; for "algorithm friendly" product design; and more broadly, about the future of video?

Communities are everything, but the word "members" is faceless. What if there's a better, more modern way to understand, support, and design for communities of all kinds -- whether open source, passion economy, or other groups coming together? Nadia Eghbal offers the latest research and insights from her new book, Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software... but it's not all participatory, and it's not all public, either.

In this special "2x" episode (#32) of our news show 16 Minutes -- where we quickly cover the headlines and tech trends, offering analysis, frameworks, explainers, and more -- we cover the tricky but important topic of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The 1996 law has been in the headlines a lot recently, in the context of Twitter, the president's tweets, and an executive order put out by the White House just this week on quote- "preventing online censorship". All of this is playing out against the broader, more profound cultural context and events around the death of George Floyd in Minnesota and beyond, and ongoing old-new debates around content moderation on social media.

John Riccitiello, CEO of the game software development company Unity Technologies, discusses the rise of esports and streaming, the potential of cloud gaming, and far-reaching applications for game technology.

In this episode, a16z partner Jon Lai joins host Lauren Murrow to talk about how game developers are grappling with skyrocketing numbers, why this may be an inflection point for VR, the surprising transition of professional sports into esports, and why live-streaming is having its moment.

The idea of "1000 true fans" argued that to be a successful creator, you don’t need millions of customers or clients, as long as you also have a direct relationship with those fans. But how is media changing today as a result, and what nuances do people often miss about the concept? And why are we apparently surrendering our attention (whether to TV, books, or whatever) for only $3 an hour?!

A new ecosystem is forming around the direct relationship between consumers, content creators, and the tools and business models to facilitate all that. We're not just seeing this phenomenon in newsletters and podcasting, but also in people setting up e-commerce shops, video streaming, and more. Are the stars and the incentives finally aligned?

News and trends covered this week include: * Star Wars trailer in Fortnite, gaming, and future of social -- with @tocelot * Congress warns tech companies to take action on encryption, or else "we will impose our will on you" -- with @martin_casado @joeldelagarza

The creator of hit shows like Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and others, writer and executive producer Shonda Rhimes shares lessons she's learned about pitching ideas, storytelling, leadership, and scaling a business across mediums.

This is the 13th episode of 16 Minutes, our weekly-ish news show where we quickly cover the top headlines of the week, the a16z Podcast way: what’s real, what’s hype from our vantage point in tech. This week, we cover the following news -- with a16z experts general partner Connie Chan and D'arcy Coolican from the consumer team, and former CSO/ a16z security operating partner Joel de la Garza.

From Fortnite to Untitled Goose Game, next-generation video games are unlike anything we've seen before. These are the tech trends turning gaming into a massive, culture-defining phenomenon.

This is episode #3 of our new show, 16 Minutes, where we quickly cover recent headlines of the week, the a16z way -- why they're in the news; why they matter from our vantage point in tech -- and share our experts' views on these trends as well. This week we do a short but deep dive on esports, given recent news of the inaugural Fortnite World Cup champion, and how this all fits into the broader trends in gaming, social networks, and the future of entertainment.

This special, almost-crossover episode of the a16z Podcast features Billions co-showrunner Brian Koppelman — who also co-wrote movies such as Rounders and Ocean’s 13 with his longtime creative partner David Levien — in conversation with Marc Andreessen (and Sonal Chokshi). The discussion covers everything from managing up — when it comes to executives or investors sharing their “notes” aka “feedback” on your work — to managing down, with one’s team; to managing one’s partners (or co-founders)… and especially managing yourself. How to tame those irrational emotions, that ego?

Bobby Kotick is the CEO of Activision Blizzard (a merger he engineered); it's one of only two video gaming companies in the Fortune 500, and the largest game network in the world. The company is responsible for some of t...

This episode of the a16z Podcast features the rare combination of a16z co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz in conversation, together, with economist Tyler Cowen (chair of economics at George Mason University and...

In his book (and podcast), Brian McCullough chronicles the history and evolution of the internet -- from college kids in a basement and the dot-com boom, to the applications built on top of it and the entrepreneurs behin...

In this episode of the a16z Podcast, based on a discussion that took place at our annual a16z Summit, Marc Andreessen interviews Jeffrey Katzenberg -- formerly CEO and co-founder of DreamWorks SKG (and chairman of Walt D...

For decades, the increasing value of sports teams, rights, licenses and more have been fueled by sports media. But dollars follow eyeballs, and eyeballs -- at least on the traditional broadcast -- are going elsewhere. "I...

There’s all sorts of interesting tech trends happening right now, including AI, VR/AR, self-driving cars and drones (as well as interesting stuff happening in verticals like healthcare and finance) — and there’s a lot also happening in seemingly more “mature” tech revolutions, such as mobile and cloud. But where are we now, really, with these shifts… and how does that inform how we think about the next couple decades?

The open source movement enabled so much in computing, including the collaborative building of libraries -- that is, building blocks of code that developers could combine together to build applications. But as these appl...

Construction has been one of the industries most resistant to innovation and change over the last decades -- productivity has actually decreased there while it has risen in other industries around it. So how are new tech...

Now that we've finally reached the age of the truly autonomous commercial small drone -- and in this case, a self-flying camera -- what happens when you take the pilot out of the loop? And what becomes possible that wasn...

There was a lot of hype about VR ad then it seemed to go pretty quiet. So where are we right now? Bigscreen founder Darshan Shankar and a16z general partner Chris Dixon take the pulse on VR, AR, and mixed reality -- espe...

Every industry (for-profit, non-profit, government, private-sector) has been touched by tech, with most trying to lead the charge in order to stay ahead. But museums and memorials, by definition, lag rather than lead the...

Turnabout is fair play: That's true in politics, and it's true at Andreessen Horowitz given our internal (and very opinionated!) culture of debate -- where we often agree to disagree, or more often, disagree to agree. So...

Moore's Law -- putting more and more transistors on a chip -- accelerated the computing industry by so many orders of magnitude, it has (and continues to) achieve seemingly impossible feats. However, we're now resorting...

In this hallway-style episode of the podcast, a16z partners Connie Chan and Kyle Russell discuss recent announcements at Facebook's annual developer conference, F8, in the context of trends such as: messaging and QR code...

Evolution and technology have allowed our human species to manipulate the physical environment around us — reshaping fields into cities, redirecting rivers to irrigate farms, domesticating wild animals into captive food sources, conquering disease. But now, we’re turning that “innovative gaze” inwards: which means the main products of the 21st century will be bodies, brains, and minds. Or so argues Yuval Harari, author of the bestselling book Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind and of the book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, in this episode of the a16z Podcast.

Once upon a time, Robert Stromberg got a phone call from "Jim" Cameron (aka James Francis Cameron of Terminator and Titanic fame) about a little project called Avatar. Before he knew it, he was responsible for designing...

The building blocks for VR and AR are finally here -- but the content is just beginning. So everything you'll actually experience and consume in these new mediums over the next few years is being built right now. Formats...

From glittery reaction gifs modded by grandparents to rage faces on Reddit, stickers (gifs and other layered images) and emotive "biaoqing" have taken over messaging culture in China and beyond. Stickers are tied to filt...

The most recent Oculus Connect event (the third and largest yet) has been lauded as bringing us closer than ever to the future promised for virtual reality or VR. There have been many hardware moves by many players, both...

"Apple isn't just a tech company; it's a tastemaker." Remember the iconic ads of dancing silhouettes in black, with only the headphone wires visible in white? They were a critical part of the larger buy-Apple innovation...

This podcast is all about emoji. But it’s really about how innovation really comes about — through the tension between standards vs. proprietary moves; the politics of time and place; and the economics of creativity, from making to funding … Beginning with a project on Kickstarter to crowd-translate Moby Dick entirely into emoji to getting dumplings into emoji form and ending with the Library of Congress and an “emoji-con”. So joining us for this conversation are former VP of Data at Kickstarter Fred Benenson (and the ???? behind ‘Emoji Dick’) and former New York Times reporter and current Unicode emoji subcommittee member Jennifer 8. Lee (one of the ???? behind the dumpling emoji).

Seemingly overnight, a single game -- Pokémon Go -- has taken people by storm. But it's a game that was technically years in the making, building on a legacy of creative intellectual property and technologies such as mob...

Technology has always been a force in how we live, work, and play; only now it's accelerating and compounding in unexpected ways. But just because we don't know exactly what form that tech will take (sharing homes on Air...

In this episode of the a16z Podcast, Marc Andreessen and 21 co-founder Balaji Srinivasan cover everything from deciding what ideas to work on and the optimal type of startups to work at, to the funding environment and pendulum swings of deciding when to IPO. They also discuss the VC “formula” of weighting product vs. market vs. team; the full-stack approach to cracking industries that tech could never enter before; and recent tech trends and news including The DAO, AI, VR/AR and the “Instagrammification of everything”, more.

Innovation or invention? Platform or app? Vertical or horizontal? Strategy or tactic? Does the smartphone eat VR? And (not to get all existential about it or anything but), what is an app, really?

Virtual reality is coming fast, and everyone seems to assume that it will be gamers who get to have all the fun first. But there are other applications for VR that could also bring it into the mainstream. “It could very...

Our virtual reality-enabled future is arriving, but it’s hard to know -- as it is with every new technology platform -- how quickly we’ll all make the transition to VR and what it will ultimately look like. For example,...

We know that the gaming industry -- in some ways like but in other ways unlike the music industry -- has been changing due to the internet and especially technologies around crowdfunding, online discovery, and direct fan...

Up until now virtual reality has been a disappointment for all those people pining for their own personal holodeck. But advances in the components required to create a truly immersive digital 3D experience have finally b...

We’re excited to share that we’re investing in k-ID - the best-in-class compliance engine for online safety and privacy management.

The stakes are high. The opportunities are profound. From the creation of new medicines to bolstering national defense, this is our vision for the AI-enabled future.

We're thrilled to lead the $5M seed round for Yellow, a company focused on revolutionizing 3D character creation through generative AI.

We’re excited to announce A16Z GAMES' investment in Kaedim, a new type of co-development platform providing AI-powered art outsourcing.

The emergence of generative AI, cloud computing, and new spatial platforms is poised to disrupt 3D creation end-to-end.

Smart energy grids. Voice-first companion apps. Programmable medicines. AI tools for kids.
We asked over 40 partners across a16z to preview one big idea they believe will drive innovation in the coming year.

Exploring soft launch best practices, myths, and limitations to determine the right strategy to soft launch your game.

Insights from leaders at OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, Databricks, Character.AI, Roblox, insitro, and Figma on where we are, where we're going, and the open questions for building the next wave of AI.

We’re leading a Seed investment in Proof of Play, an on-chain game studio and tech company that’s committed to building a future with composability, interoperability, and permanence at the core of gameplay.

A16Z GAMES is leading the seed investment in Series AI, a games & technology company that is reinventing the future of game development with generative AI.

We’re thrilled to announce that A16Z GAMES is leading the Series A in Pahdo Labs, a game studio building a next-generation anime RPG and UGC platform.

We believe the largest opportunity long-term is in leveraging AI to change not just how we create games, but the nature of the games themselves.

Drawing inspiration from the games speedrunning community, we created a16z Games: SPEEDRUN, a 6-week startup school, as a shortcut for gaming founders.

Generative AI will completely reshape UGC and expand the games market beyond what many thought was possible.

To understand how radically gaming is about to be transformed by generative AI, look no further than this recent Twitter post by @emmanuel_2m. In this post he explores using Stable Diffusion + Dreambooth, popular 2D gene...

You install that new Parkour game that everyone’s talking about, and instantly your avatar gains a new set of skills. After a few minutes in the tutorial level, running up walls and vaulting over obstacles, you’re ready...

We are proud to announce GAMES FUND ONE, a16z’s inaugural fund dedicated to building the future of the games industry.

The following transcript is from a conversation on the topic of NFTs in gaming, featuring Aleksander Larsen, Cofounder and COO, Sky Mavis/Axie Infinity; Gabby Dizon, Cofounder and CEO, Yield Guild Games; and Jonathan Lai...

Today, we have a pair of big announcements: Congratulations to Jonathan Lai, and welcome James Gwertzman -- our newest General Partners on the consumer investing team. Together, we’re doubling (er, tripling?) down on the...

NFTs have already begun reshaping the internet, and those with rare properties are starting to illuminate the composability and functionality that’s central to web3. A new generation of products is reaching hundreds of m...

Today, we’re excited to announce the release of How to Win the Future, a policy agenda for the third generation of the internet. It will be a living document housed in our new web3 policy hub alongside a growing array of...

In the 2000s, hundreds of millions of people devoured web games like Bejeweled and FarmVille, powered by Adobe Flash. In contrast to siloed console or PC games, these browser-based Flash games were incredibly accessible:...

Social Strikes Back is a series exploring the next generation of social networks and how they're shaping the future of consumer tech. See more at a16z.com/social-strikes-back.

From embracing memes to enabling early evangelists, Proletariat CEO Seth Sivak describes how his team fueled Spellbreak's sleeper success behind the scenes.

Dungeons & Dragons, the granddaddy of all role-playing games, has never been more popular than it is today. Released in 1976 the tabletop fantasy game was unique for introducing user-generated storytelling. One perso...

A conversation with Unity Technologies CEO John Riccitiello on esports, platform convergence, cross-platform play, and the future of the games industry.

As the shelter-in-place restrictions have tethered many people to their homes, livestreaming—broadcasting user-created video in real time—has skyrocketed. Platforms like Twitch, Caffeine, YouTube Live, and Facebook have...

The combination of cloud, social, and mobile has turned gaming from a niche hobby into a massive industry. Now veteran gamer Kevin Chou is using blockchain technology to realign the economic relationships between game de...

Much of the buzz around cloud gaming has centered on its potential to “kill the console”—to remove the need for local hardware to play games. But the ongoing focus on hardware fails to grasp cloud gaming’s true potential...

Forget gamification. If you want to make software that feels like play, rather than work, it requires tapping into deeper, more intrinsic motivations. And that’s where the principles of game design come in. In this talk...

Games have come a long way since Pong. Consisting of a single white pixel bouncing across the screen—a crude simulation of table tennis—the 1972 arcade classic was the nascent gaming industry's first hit.

Stadiums packed to capacity filled with screaming fans. Global audiences in the hundreds of millions. A multibillion-dollar economy. College scholarships for the top players. Talent agents. Professional teams with dedica...

Join us as we kick off a new series of YouTube videos called "Founding Stories" with the story of Skybox VR.

Have you ever wished you could be in the room when founders present to the Andreessen Horowitz investing team? Even better, do you wish you could stay to hear the discussion after the pitch?

1/ Theory: esports is to traditional sports as ecommerce is to brick & mortar retail. 3 similarities. 1 difference.

The future of immersive virtual reality is often depicted as a dystopian view of millions of people spending hours alone each day, with huge gadgets stuck to their face, enraptured by fantastical worlds.

If you think back on any of your life’s most indelible experiences -- meeting someone special for the first time; stepping off a plane in an utterly foreign place; a meaningful moment with family and friends; watching a...

When it comes to free software, there’s a sharp cultural divide between the tech world and the gaming world. It’s normal for a startup to make heavy use of open source, and it’s normal for a big tech company to give away...

AS COMPANIES LIKE Oculus, Valve, and Google address virtual reality’s technological hurdles, the interesting problems in VR no longer hinge on the question, “Can we do this?” Instead, for those working in the field, the...

In the VR community, “presence” is a term of art. It’s the idea that once VR reaches a certain quality level your brain is actually tricked  --  at the lowest, most primal level  --  into believing that what you see in f...

Pius Uzamere argues that virtual reality will succeed first in business applications instead of gaming: