4 ms·

Do you ever feel that companies that do online advertising are not the best use of your talents? Is there no choice in life? Nothing better to work on?

themartorana 11y ago
I own a small, independent mobile games company. If you can figure out how to get people to pay for games (without resorting to psychological trickery like Candy Crush) you could make millions. I'd love to run a pure paid model and rip out the bloat and headaches of advertising SDKs, but I also have employees who count on a paycheck and like working on games, and app stores that foster a race to the bottom and highly promote free games over paid. So I'm pretty happy with my place in life right now.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  Keep chasing that dragon. Mobile games aren't much more than ringtones. Take note of how much time you spend marketing and whale-chasing v how much time is spent on the actual game. KSP, Subnautica, Prison Architect, Minecraft, Don't Starve ... there is plenty of money being made by independent studios once you get off the mobile merry-go-round.
  - themartorana 11y ago
    This is incredibly, offensively tone deaf. Our biggest game is over 5 years old, we spend 95% of our time on it on features and improvements, and we don't have in-app purchases (besides the ability to buy away ads) so we could care less about whale chasing. Millions of people play, our retention is at the top of the market, and we make 95% of our money advertising because less than 2% of players are willing to part with $1.99 to turn off ads (but many play for years). Please don't make assumptions or comments about things you don't actually have experience with.
    - sandworm101 11y ago
      Lol, no experience. I've lived through the mobile gaming thing. I've seen clients rise and fall, and cry, because of the ridiculousness that is selling games on phones. It is dragon-chasing. It's all about trying to pry pennies out of people for tiny little games. 1.99? Right there is another silly marketing trope, as if that penny would ever make a difference for a careful consumer.
    - ticviking 11y ago
      What game is this. Curiosity compels me to see if it's worth 2 bucks to turn off ads.
      - arvinjoar 11y ago
        Probably http://flyclops.com/games/domino.html http://flyclops.com/games/domino.html (looked through his HN description)
jasonthevillain 11y ago
I've been working on news sites for 7 years. I rarely comment here, but that's a good question. 1. No, I think the opposite. One of the reason that Internet advertising has gotten to this point _because_ smart people don't want to work on it. 2. The history of mass media is tied to the history of advertising. I know its trendy to say things like "the market will innovate" followed by no new ideas. This isn't the answer. The answer is to fix web advertising's problems. 3. I love the writing. I think it matters. I meet people who read my sites all the time and they agree. The survival of this depends on solving a series of really difficult, interesting problems. Maybe it's just me, but I think that's cool.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Re 2., of course "the market will innovate" is bullshit. The market is perfectly fine with the status quo. Moreover, the market is a system that optimizes for efficiency of making profits and only for this. All those complains about ads are in fact complains about the market being too efficient at extracting profit from users. If we want to use the power of the market to fix abusive ads, we need to destroy their profitability.
- aplorbust 11y ago
  "... smart people don't want to work on it." That's encouraging. At the same time, there are some clearly talented authors of networking code working in advertising (well, at least one). Impressive. I cannot comment on the idea of "markets" but I can offer an opinion about people. If they can work on what they _want_ to rather than what they believe they _are forced_ to, I think that's cool. Dennis Ritchie once said in an interview he could have chosen to work on calculating missile trajectories or some similar "difficult, interesting" problem, but instead he chose not to, and ending up working something like C. I'm not sure anyone asked him to volunteer that information, he just did it. If my curiousity oversteps a line, I apologize. I wish I had the programming talent that I see some people (few) have and I just wonder what it must feel like to have that talent.
geocar 11y ago
I noticed you get a 256-trie with: T:{$[~#y;z;@[256#x;*y;:;.z.s[x@*y;1_y;z]]]} that t:T[t;"key";leaf] can be used to store a leaf in the trie, and t@/"key" can be used to look up the key in the trie. Unfortunately, at least on my 1.7Ghz i7, with 8-byte keys, bin remains faster until around 1m records, and the difference remains negligible until you have more like 10m records. By all means, get in touch. I'm always interested in hearing about better things to work on.

themartorana 11y ago

I own a small, independent mobile games company. If you can figure out how to get people to pay for games (without resorting to psychological trickery like Candy Crush) you could make millions. I'd love to run a pure paid model and rip out the bloat and headaches of advertising SDKs, but I also have employees who count on a paycheck and like working on games, and app stores that foster a race to the bottom and highly promote free games over paid. So I'm pretty happy with my place in life right now.

sandworm101 11y ago
Keep chasing that dragon. Mobile games aren't much more than ringtones. Take note of how much time you spend marketing and whale-chasing v how much time is spent on the actual game. KSP, Subnautica, Prison Architect, Minecraft, Don't Starve ... there is plenty of money being made by independent studios once you get off the mobile merry-go-round.
- themartorana 11y ago
  This is incredibly, offensively tone deaf. Our biggest game is over 5 years old, we spend 95% of our time on it on features and improvements, and we don't have in-app purchases (besides the ability to buy away ads) so we could care less about whale chasing. Millions of people play, our retention is at the top of the market, and we make 95% of our money advertising because less than 2% of players are willing to part with $1.99 to turn off ads (but many play for years). Please don't make assumptions or comments about things you don't actually have experience with.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    Lol, no experience. I've lived through the mobile gaming thing. I've seen clients rise and fall, and cry, because of the ridiculousness that is selling games on phones. It is dragon-chasing. It's all about trying to pry pennies out of people for tiny little games. 1.99? Right there is another silly marketing trope, as if that penny would ever make a difference for a careful consumer.
  - ticviking 11y ago
    What game is this. Curiosity compels me to see if it's worth 2 bucks to turn off ads.
    - arvinjoar 11y ago
      Probably http://flyclops.com/games/domino.html http://flyclops.com/games/domino.html (looked through his HN description)

jasonthevillain 11y ago

I've been working on news sites for 7 years. I rarely comment here, but that's a good question. 1. No, I think the opposite. One of the reason that Internet advertising has gotten to this point _because_ smart people don't want to work on it. 2. The history of mass media is tied to the history of advertising. I know its trendy to say things like "the market will innovate" followed by no new ideas. This isn't the answer. The answer is to fix web advertising's problems. 3. I love the writing. I think it matters. I meet people who read my sites all the time and they agree. The survival of this depends on solving a series of really difficult, interesting problems. Maybe it's just me, but I think that's cool.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Re 2., of course "the market will innovate" is bullshit. The market is perfectly fine with the status quo. Moreover, the market is a system that optimizes for efficiency of making profits and only for this. All those complains about ads are in fact complains about the market being too efficient at extracting profit from users. If we want to use the power of the market to fix abusive ads, we need to destroy their profitability.
aplorbust 11y ago
"... smart people don't want to work on it." That's encouraging. At the same time, there are some clearly talented authors of networking code working in advertising (well, at least one). Impressive. I cannot comment on the idea of "markets" but I can offer an opinion about people. If they can work on what they _want_ to rather than what they believe they _are forced_ to, I think that's cool. Dennis Ritchie once said in an interview he could have chosen to work on calculating missile trajectories or some similar "difficult, interesting" problem, but instead he chose not to, and ending up working something like C. I'm not sure anyone asked him to volunteer that information, he just did it. If my curiousity oversteps a line, I apologize. I wish I had the programming talent that I see some people (few) have and I just wonder what it must feel like to have that talent.

geocar 11y ago

I noticed you get a 256-trie with: T:{$[~#y;z;@[256#x;*y;:;.z.s[x@*y;1_y;z]]]} that t:T[t;"key";leaf] can be used to store a leaf in the trie, and t@/"key" can be used to look up the key in the trie. Unfortunately, at least on my 1.7Ghz i7, with 8-byte keys, bin remains faster until around 1m records, and the difference remains negligible until you have more like 10m records. By all means, get in touch. I'm always interested in hearing about better things to work on.