A lot of the industry has finally learned that investment in the most realistic graphics doesn’t offset lack of fun. I credit indie studios the most for that

Meh, federated or defederated, threads poses only the first challenge to the fediverse. There will be other players with their own incentives that will join via ActivityPub, add their own custom features incompatible with the broader world, and entice users with slicker interfaces. Fediverse will need to show it can weather it, especially hard with the network effects of the larger corporations’ user bases.

My hope is the pressure will keep open services innovating to better compete and result in a richer experience for everyone.

You reminded me of a deeply amusing story of solving the 4 queens problem with just the type system.