Michael Jordan didn't spend his entire lif practicing baseball.

Had Michael Jordan decided to constantly hit baseballs while in the pooring rain rather then shooting at a hoop....

He'd likely of been quite the baseball player.

I'm not saying the sitaution your born in doesn't matter.

I'm saying it mattered very little for Michael Jordan in particular, because Michael Jordan was dedicated practically to the point of mental illness.

When you consider how well Michael Jordan did based on him saying "You know what I wanna try baseball" I think it says something.

You're assuming that these are things which can not be predicted or understood ...

Game design is a learnable skill, and people who put the time and effort into learning it don't have to depend on "luck" to give them the inspiration they need. It is entirely realistic to believe that bulletball would be successful had the inventor spent the time to read a couple of game design books that are readily available on Amazon or in the Library, and started experimenting with the ideas contained in these books.

The first step towards success in an creative/inovative field is to copy the approach of other successful people and then (after you've mastered their approach) inovate and create your own works. As an example of this consider musicians, you will rarely find a successful musician who has not already mastered the works of most of the successful artists with their insturment in their genre.

Your taking peoples foresight and intellegence as luck now.

Is there nothing you won't pretend is luck?

Consider Stephon Marbury.  Marbury is an individual who REPEATEDLY makes dumb mistake after dumb mistake that most people can see is wrong.  He wouldn't hire an agent, was an all-star in the NBA, and now has to play in China, because no one in the NBA wants to hire him.  He wore out his welcome.  His ego wants to succeed, but he apparently is too stupid to figure things out.  And how his mind works, as a problemed player is because... he decided he WANTS to be this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephon_Marbury

Allan Iverson found himself out of the NBA also, for similar reasons.

And there is Ray Williams, former NBA player, who ended up homeless, and due to finally getting a LOT of media exposure, found a job:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/12/17/fanhouseraywilliamsgoesfromh.DTL

More and more elements out of the control of a person, and even elements that appear within the grasp of a person, that really aren't.  Can bring up Mike Tyson, like Marbury, who self-destructed, due to not receiving sufficient parenting.  More things to make their makeup, resulting in their own decisions being out of their control.  And then one goes, "But others made it...".  Against the odds?  People winning the lottery do it "against the odds" to, but all that is, is luck.

The few things I mentioned regarding I saw, come from game design, that are clear to me.  But, if he happened to end up doing things differently, it might work.  His costs are too high for one thing.  But, there is also the case of top designers of games NOT making it.  Sid Sackson had his entire game collection auctioned off to pay medical bills, and he was top in the world at one time.  BOARDGAME designer, noted, but just didn't happen to be in an area that was really viable. 

As far as the first step you mention, is that, if a market is saturated, copying someone else merely makes you an also-ran, because everyone is doing it.  The innovation and blue ocean comes from being different, and in the area where you do make a difference, it isn't guaranteed.  Risk is risk for a reason.  Risk means you can fail.

You overvalue foresight by people.  Survivor bias, looking back at who made it, can bias you into think they were necessarily smarter.  One can say YES to some degree, one can be moderately successful doing this.  But the extremes, require a lot of things in place people have NO control over.  They would require a long string of events to break right.  

On what I said, take the case of Wall Street.  Are there not a LOT of smart people there?  If so, then who did the financial markets get wiped out due to the housing meltdown?  Too much risk, and the bills came due.  Throw in follow of believed fooled-proof quantitative analysis and then factors break thr wrong way. 

Anyhow, this is a basis of what Hayek, and others wrote on the subject.  A reason why you DON'T do planned economies is that people aren't smart enough to do them.  There is WAY too much we don't know, that makes it too risky to see too far ahead.  All this, just like buying lottery tickets, is due to luck.  Fooled by Randomness and other Taleb books go into this in greater detail.

Can one, by mostly skill, win at chess?  Yes.  But how about becoming a billionaire playing chess?  Nope, there needs to be something like the Cold War to produce a climate which would make Bobby Fischer's ability to play chess captivate the world enough you can become wealthy playing chess.

The financial markets got wiped out because of stupid people.

Not on Wal-street.

The derivitives market was based on the belief that there wouldnt be a nationwide housing bubble.  Which was seen as an impossibility because the factors that cause the ups and downs of housing markets are local events.

The government, brilliant as they were decided to centralize housing values via lending acts and lowering housing insurance.  This causes a nationwide bubble that busted.

A lot of smart people got out when Wallstreet crashesd too by the way.  Denmark and Norway, two of the smartest governments, made a killing.  As did a few other smart nations.

Also, it's not survivor bias.  If 20 people say "I have this great idea, and people will love it"  and they all follow the same steps and only one of them succeeds....

then they in fact were smarter and more perceptive, because they were the one who did have something everybody would want.  The scenario they were in was not random.

Survivor bias is when you survive because a genocidal mad man has 9 bullets and 10 people to shoot.

Peoples purchasing habits aren't so random.

You don't copy someone else's work to sell it as your own, you copy someone else's work to learn from it.

Sid Sackson is a very interesting case-study. After his death I read up on him because I remembed playing many of his games as a child. One of the things that 'bothered' me about his story is that he had the opportunity to be remarkably wealthy had he realized the opportunities he had. Had he applied his considerable knowledge and skill towards making videogames in the 1980s it is likely that his company would have become a dominant player on early platforms; instead, he focused on boardgames and VCR games and found himself in a shrinking market.

In many ways, Sid Sackson is like the many buggy companies in the early 1900s who continued to focus on buggies rather than the automobile.

First, if people who had nothing to do with the financial markets get killed by stupid people, like lose their jobs, exactly WHAT does that say about luck then?  Why would markets gets wiped out by stupidity if people are smart?  Aren't they smart enough to avoid disasters?

Second, if it is only stupid people who lose money, then what about Long-Term Capital Management?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management

They were a bunch of idiots also?  No, they were individuals who presumed that their mathematical models were robust enough, and certain abnormal things won't happen.  I was also informed in another thread that NO ONE foresaw that the economic meltdown would happen.   Yet there were a few, not many, and then it was in hindsight they look smart, like Peter Schiff.

Also, nonsense on thinking people are brilliant and so on.  People's purchases are driven by emotion, and they are able to replicate over and over and over and over bubble conditions, even when the outcome is known, due to greed:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/mind-over-money.html

 Supposedly "smart" people do get wiped out.  They fail to see what is going on, and get caught up in an arms race of risk, that results in a lot crashing and burning.  Sure, look back and blame government, but it seems natural to risk too much, in case of things going bad. BUT when the going is good, it is up and up and up above the norm.

Individuals like Donald Trump are noted for doing this overleveraging, which has highs and lows WAY beyond what normal expected outcome should be:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump

2008 financial crisis

Trump has been caught in the 2008 financial crisis as sales for his Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago have been lagging and he failed to pay a $40m loan to Deutsche Bank in December.[35] Arguing that the crisis is an Act of God, he evoked a clause in the contract to not pay the loan and initiated a countersuit asserting his image has been damaged.[35] Deutsche Bank has in turn noted in court that 'Trump is no stranger to overdue debt' and that he has twice previously filed for bankruptcy with respect to his casino operations.[35]

On February 17, 2009 Trump Entertainment Resorts filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy; Trump having stated on February 13 that he would resign from the board.[36] Trump Entertainment Resorts has three properties in Atlantic City.

There is NO guarantee Sid Sackson could of ever broken into the videogame business or had the understanding needed in that realm, to be successful.  The fact is that his skillset is in another area that is older, and in less demand.  I know this area, because it is where I have some talent and am fully away that top designers of boardgames make livings, and don't get rich.  Also the form of play is different to.  Videogames play different, and the skills are different.  NOW, with the casual game market being what it is, it would be more possible for the likes of Sid Sackson to of possibly made a difference.  But, that came along too late.  Thing about the 1980s also was it still wasn't that huge though.  It actually went through a crash in the early part, that had the toy industry feel videogames were a fad.  Nintendo had to do a lot, and catch some breaks, or the NES wouldn't of even taken off, as they wouldn't of found a way to get distributed in American markets. 

And speaking of Nintendo, their name means, "leave luck to heaven" (as per Wikipedia).  Considering they started out as a card company, it would make sense they would have this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nintendo