Generally this also means reorienting what you’re solving for. Lowering quality without opening up objectives (changing flight plan = innovation) means the lowered quality is a deadweight loss.
Conversation
This is probably a manifestation of the bias-variance tradeoff in disguise, but I’m feeling too lazy to work out how to connect the dots
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You’re done as a live player the day you’re not willing to put out something shoddy by *your* standards. Consistent output and a consciously set subjective high minimum bar is inevitably also an unconsciously set low maximum bar. You’ll never stall, but you’ll cease to surprise.
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I should name this. Yield-rate/next-peak tradeoff under fixed minimum quality. If you try to increase yield rate, next peak will be lower, and vice versa. Or more precisely, the next “all time high” (ATH) will be a smaller improvement over last. Diminishing marginal altitude.
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Even money doesn’t break this tradeoff, which is a rare failure of money to solve problems outside of death. Money allows you to add a new dimension (depth/difficulty) but not break basic yield-rate/next-peak tradeoff. The *only* way is to lower quality bar and open up direction.
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MCU is a great example in high-money end. MCU lost top property (Spider-Man) to Sony due to bad contracts. So they dropped bar and made things work with second-string properties. When that had stall problems (Hulk 2, Thor 2), they dropped bar again (Guardians of Galaxy)! Gutsy.
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By contrast, Sony failed to capitalize on the momentum of the first 2 Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies and had to deal with MCU eventually. They only belatedly figured out the p,ay book sort of, with Venom stand-alone.
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DC otoh, had no such corporate conflicts to navigate. The Nolan Batman trilogy was better than the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy. The DCEU should have been *easier* to build. But Superman fumbled etc. They even screwed up a naive copying of the bar-lowering trick (Suicide Squad)
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Wonder Woman kinda bailed them out partly, but couldn’t salvage the justice league level of the franchise. I haven’t yet watched Harley Quinn.
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