i was talking to someone about marketing budgets.
game studios spend billions.
not millions.
billions.
on facebook ads.
google ads.
tiktok ads.
paying platforms to maybe get players.
and someone said.
what if you just paid the players directly.
skip the middleman.
give them real rewards for actually playing.
not for clicking an ad.
for engaging.
it makes sense on paper.
but that's not how it works.
studios have entire departments built around paying facebook.
performance marketers.
analytics teams.
processes that took years to optimize.
changing that means changing everything.
new metrics.
new processes.
new people maybe.
and organizations don't change like that.
not unless they're forced to.
even when the math says they should.
@Pixels built stacked around this idea.
redirect marketing spend.
pay players instead of platforms.
they're doing it internally.
$25 million in revenue shows something's working.
but internal and external are different things.
what works inside pixels.
might not work when you're asking other studios to change how they've done marketing for a decade.
that's the part i'm watching.
not whether it's more efficient.
it probably is.
but whether studios actually change.
because better isn't always enough.
predictable beats efficient.
established beats new.
unless the pressure to change is too strong to ignore.
$PIXEL's value depends on whether other studios actually adopt this.
more games using it means more utility.
more demand.
but adoption requires studios to overcome organizational friction.
to choose different over predictable.
most don't.
maybe this time is different.
i'm watching to see if efficiency wins over inertia.
