Matt Ball - The Future of Media: Movies, the Metaverse, and More

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome, everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:17)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management.
All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Oshanose Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (1:42)
My guest today, Matthew Ball, is a long time coming. He's the former head of strategy at Amazon Studios, an investor and probably my favorite business essayist writing today. In fact, I can't think of another author whose work I read as quickly once a new essay drops. Read his latest on the past and future of Nintendo and you'll see why.
Our conversation is all about the past and future of media. We discuss movies, music, television, video games and the metaverse. When I re-listened to this episode, I couldn't believe how much information was in Matthew's head and how easily he covered so many topics in depth. Please enjoy this great conversation.
So Matthew, this conversation has been, I don't know, two years in the making. Luckily, in those two years, you've written about 25 more interesting things that we might explore today. So I'm glad that we waited. I thought it'd be fun for those that aren't familiar with you to sort of sum up your compulsive interest, which I would define as how people entertain themselves. How would you describe your compulsive interest?

**Matthew Ball** (2:41)
I would say that the compulsive interest really surrounds this idea of entertainment, how we spend our leisure time. And the big realization over this past decade is the speed with which we've freed ourselves from any of the inherited or technological constraints that really defined what we did and why we did it.
Television is a great example there because the cycle times used to be so long.
You moved from radio to broadcast television to cable. And then rapidly in the last 50 years, we've seen the emergence of user-generated content in YouTube and interactivity at the light level, HQ trivia of Twitch style content, as well as just the innovations of getting outside of the pay-to-be ecosystem or linear broadcast in how Netflix and others have changed narrative. So I think that compulsive need all surrounds this idea of how would you have told the story 80 years ago if you had all the tools available? How are those stories going to change in the next 10 years? And in some instances that is unlocking what you might call a narrative primitive. That's perhaps some of the reasons why the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the tales of Star Wars are so expansive today, so immersive. And then in other instances, it's just about what we depart from. There's a reason why procedural cop shows have declined over the past few years. And to another extent, there's an interesting reason as to the ways in which collective storytelling or immersive storytelling, to some extent what you see in Minecraft or Fortnite or even in A Call of Duty or The Last of Us, looks a lot more like the first few thousand years of stories than it does the last 200 years. And that's a reflection of what was possible decades ago and what's now possible today.