The best ideas are not always the most original
ideas. copy-catting others' proven ideas, perhaps in different markets or
ways, may be the quickest path to success. And, nothing illustrates this
point better than Fortnite Battle Royale, the video
game made by Epic Games, which
my son introduced me to this year. To me, Fortnite appears to have pulled
a page right out of the The Hunger Games movie playbook, copy-catting it into a huge success.
Allow me to further explain.
THE
HUNGER GAMES SUCCESS STORY
The Hunger Games was a top selling film from 2012, directed by Gary Ross and starring Jennifer Lawrence. The movie was based on the best selling book by Suzanne Collins. To date, more than 17.5 million copies of the book has been sold worldwide (grossing $169MM in book sales for this first of three books in the trilogy alone) and the hit movie has grossed another $752MM in sales worldwide on top of that. I would say that was a pretty huge success for the author, the book publisher and the movie producer.
THE
HUNGER GAMES PLOT
Here is The Hunger Games plot as copied from Amazon's book
description "Could you survive on your own, in the wild, with
everyone out to make sure you don't live to see the morning? In ruins of place once known as North America that lies in
the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts.
The Capital of harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them
all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to
participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight in the death on live
TV." Now keep this firmly imprinted in your memory, for what is to
follow.
WHAT
IS FORTNITE BATTLE ROYALE
It Was Launched in 2017 (five years after The Hunger Games--about the amount of time it takes to develop of video game of this scale),
THE
SIMILARITIES ARE BEYOND A DOUBT
In both The Hunger Games and Fortnite Battle Royale, a bunch
of contestants are entered into a fight to the death with a last man (or woman)
standing in both cases. The contest is set up in a way that the battle takes
place within a fixed geographic space, that gets manipulated to be smaller over
time, forcing the last remaining contestants to battle each other at some
point. Both drop the contestants into an unknown environment and make
them race to find the closest and best weapons. And, in both cases you
have no visibility into where your competitors are coming from, so you can be
unexpectedly attacked from behind at any time.
WHY
COPY-CATTING CAN BE A GREAT STRATEGY FOR QUICK SUCCESS
There are many advantages of copy-catting. First of
all, it de-risks your venture based on the proven learning and investments of
others. Why experiment with a new idea that has a 90% chance of failing,
when you can double down on a proven 10x return winner. Secondly, you may
be able to take a great idea in a good market and make it a great idea in a
huge market. Look what happened in this case study--a $169MM book become
a $752MM movie become a $3.6BN video game all with basically the same
blueprint. Let this be a lesson to the book and movie industries, perhaps
the video game industry is where you can really create the most wealth (at
least with products targeting teenagers). In just a short period of time,
using what I feel is a copy-catting strategy (that I doubt they will ever
admit), the founder of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, has just become the newest
member of the billionaire club!! Not so bad for a couple years worth of
work, retooling someone else's playbook. I am surprised The Hunger Games
hasn't sued Fortnite for copyright infringement.
CLOSING
THOUGHTS
So, for all you entrepreneurs out there, looking to become
the next unicorn billionaire, your path to success and wealth does not need to
be a unique one. Look for proven ideas that you can repurpose into your
own. And, in the process, you will materially accelerate you product
development curve and growth trajectory. At the same time, if you are
working on a great idea in one market, perhaps it will be a much bigger idea in
a different market. As an example, I bet Marvel is happy they transitioned
from a low revenue comic book company to a huge revenue movie production
juggernaut ultimately acquired by Disney for $4BN. So, who is ready to
help me start building my Revengers video game, a Fortnite-style fight to the
death between Avengers-style superheroes of your choosing set in a Jurassic
Park-style dinosaur setting!! Sounds like three home runs in one,