Why Did the Dot-com Bubble Burst?
What if you had been part of the late-'90s internet frenzy? From whether to fund a company with no revenue, through taking it public just by adding '.com,' valuing it by eyeballs instead of sales, the belief that 'this time it's different,' to the 2000 crash — you choose at every step and experience, as a story, why and how the dot-com bubble really burst.
What is this content?
'Why Did the Dot-com Bubble Burst?' is a choice-driven story where you become a player in the late-'90s internet frenzy, deciding at each step and experiencing, as a narrative, how the bubble inflated and burst.
It opens with you deciding whether to fund a company with no revenue, then follows — through the characters' dialogue — how a plain company goes public just by adding '.com,' gets valued by eyeballs instead of sales, and finally collapses in the spring of 2000. It's made so that 'why it burst' clicks into place without any jargon.
Five steps: frenzy → .com IPOs → eyeballs → 'this time is different' → collapse
① The frenzy (screening deals): even companies with no revenue that lose money on every sale get flooded with cash, for one reason — 'it's the internet.' Pass, and the VC next door funds it anyway, so no one can stop. ② Add '.com': a plain company's stock multiplies just by adding '.com' to its name, while the actual business hasn't changed at all.
③ Eyeballs: revenue is zero, yet 'visitor counts' alone send valuations to hundreds of millions or billions — because it's 'growing.' ④ 'This time is different': everyone, gripped by FOMO, just looks for someone who'll buy higher. ⑤ Collapse: in 2000, rates rise and the question 'so when does the profit come?' finally lands — and the inflated valuations drop to zero in an instant.
'This time is different' is the most dangerous phrase
The core message is that the bubble wasn't caused by a single con artist but by everyone acting 'rationally' because everyone else was buying. Through your choices you feel the structure firsthand: the moment you trust 'the next person who'll pay more' instead of the fundamentals, no one asks about real value anymore.
Whatever you choose, the story converges on the collapse — a device to show how powerful a shared belief becomes when everyone holds it at once. The characters and events are based on the real dot-com bubble (Pets.com, the Nasdaq crash, and more), dramatized for learning and fun.