The Rise of Visual Novels
Once catering to small, niche audiences in Japan, visual novels (VNs) are now entering the mainstream. And their popularity is growing rapidly: r/visualnovels subreddit subscribers nearly doubled in the last 8 months, soaring to 185k+ members.
VNs straddle the border between a game and a story, and could perhaps be described as akin to R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps, where the reader is presented with choices -- but in an interactive, video game format.
Traditionally released in Japanese and featuring anime art, VNs are now branching out to include multiple genres, illustration styles, and levels of immersion. Development is fast, simple, and low cost, so you could create your own (check out this guide).
Entrepreneurs could offer customized visual novels based on clients’ personal stories and favorite characters. Or perhaps look to the children’s market -- yet untapped by VNs -- where stories in which moral choices must be made have been receiving growing positive interest.
There is also opportunity to provide better translation options for traditional Japanese VNs, as numerous posts in the subreddit will tell you.
Chess Is Climbing the Ranks
Online chess is one of Twitch’s fastest-growing categories, with a total of 50m+ hours watched in the last year. Some YouTube channels have seen weekly views increase by 40k+.
Offline chess is also growing, with soaring increases in Amazon searches for “chess board sets” (+210% on 6.2k searches) and “chess set for adults” (+154% on 18.9k searches) over the last 30 days, according to Jungle Scout.
Even Netflix has embraced chess: The Queen’s Gambit has ranked as the #1 most popular show since its release (with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes -- who knew that was possible?), creating the biggest peak in search interest in chess over the past 5 years, according to Google Trends.
Hikaru Nakamura, the #1 chess streamer on Twitch with 1m+ viewer hours, recently signed with a major esports league, a sign that the game is nearing the same level as other esports.
The biennial Chess Olympiad (Olympics for chess!) could see additional brand sponsorships along with livestream commentators, a step beyond the streamers/YouTubers they had as judges when they were held online this year.
Beyond streaming, you could create a TL;DR chess course (Chess.com’s beginner’s guide gets 19.4k visits per month, according to Keywords Everywhere), perhaps with bonus lectures with popular grandmasters, in true MasterClass fashion.
Steph, our resident international chess champion, sees opportunities in sports betting (you can read our article on sports gambling here).
The Mug Life Chose Me
If you’re not sipping your morning cup of joe from a trendy thrift-store find or handcrafted creation, you clearly need to up your mug game.
A subreddit dedicated to coffee and tea mug lovers has soared from ~25k members to 70k+ over the last 3 months.
To capitalize on the trend, you could create and sell customized/ commissioned mugs. Monthly search volumes are high, according to Keywords Everywhere:
- Personalized mugs: 110k
- Customized mugs: 33.1k
There may also be an opportunity to craft handmade gems that tie in with recent bohemian and cottagecore decor trends.
You could provide mug fans with the option to craft their own unique creations: Searches for “pottery classes near me” have soared 480%+ since March, and now sit at 49.5k/month, according to Keywords Everywhere.
Interesting thrift-store finds are flooding the subreddit. Why not snap up cheap, unique deals at secondhand stores and resell them, or provide an online marketplace for fans to sell/swap their own thrifted mugs?
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