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Ze Frank’s Star.me Is Like Being In Kindergarten All Over Again
- joshu 16y agohooray! i'm glad to see this finally launch. (i'm an investor)
- revorad 16y agoWhy did you invest?
- covercash 16y agoDid you invest specifically in star.me or in Ze Frank Games?
- joshu 16y agoI invested in Ze. I figured it would be amusing.
- npr 16y agoWhy did you invest in such a dumb startup ?
- jamesbressi 16y agoYup, Josh has a history of dumb. I mean, who would invest their time in making an online bookmarking service when browsers had bookmarking capability? Yeah, like that would ever allow you to cash in... I (like yourself) don't see myself having any interest in this startup--but I'm not the market. I see you are new here (if your account isn't a throw away), but amidst all the down voting you are getting, let me welcome you to HN and say don't build any animosity over getting down voted by the community. It's only because you didn't write a valid argument and instead slapped "dumb" on someone. I believe you have a good argument in you and are probably quite intelligent. I look forward to seeing you contribute on HN in your more capable capacity.
- ehsanul 16y agoWhile you start off with some (probably deserved) snark, I want to thank you for the way you wrote your second paragraph. I wish every downvote HN newcomers get came with a comment like that.
- jamesbressi 16y agoThanks. We're all here for the better of ourselves and others (at least that's how I feel). BTW, I'm going to try one of those crazy jellies from the site you are working on.
- ehsanul 16y agoThanks for signing up! (assuming you did)
- joshu 16y agoThanks. Like I said, I bet on Ze. Btw I am Joshua, not Josh.
- zachbeane 16y agoI saw people make that mistake a lot with Philip "Don't Call Me Phil" Greenspun, aka philg@mit.edu.
- joshu 16y agoThe userid Joshua is usually taken. I grab Joshu only when I have to...
- jamesbressi 16y agoSorry Joshua! Next time you are in Philadelphia or NYC I'll buy you a drink. Come to think of it, you are one of a few intellectuals I haven't had the pleasure of bs'ing with anyway. Cheers.
- scalyweb 16y agoThis is the product from someone with a doctorate in neuroscience? So much for moving the human collective forward. Now I don't feel so bad about the kids coming out with undergraduate CS degrees feeling like they don't know how to program. I don't use Facebook but I do use Twitter. I do love games. What is it in regards to social networks, games and the idea of positive reinforcement am I missing with this project?
- revorad 16y agoWhat.... am I missing with this project? Umm, the fact that you haven't seen it yet?
- JoeAltmaier 16y agoWell, it is cloying and silly. But it has something many, many games do not: actual feedback. So many have none at all, or unrelated to real positive values. I wonder if it will be 'gameable' - elementary school kids giving one another stars to pump their stats.
- endtime 16y agoI hate to be so negative about something so positive, but the only word that comes to mind is ghastly. I was actually thrown off a bit by the dissonance between the positive tone of the article and the product being described. >themed Stars with messages like “UR CRAZY,”"UR CUTE,” “BFF,”"Frenemy”"Bromance,” and (!) “Mom Jeans.” I don't think you're going to find too many adults who are really all that interested in embracing their inner 12-year-old girl. >Both the actions of giving and receiving Stars cause new and more diverse stars to be unlocked The reason games like WoW work, IMO, is because there's enough shininess to distract you from the TINO (time in, numbers out) nature of the game. If you distill that down to its core I don't know if people will like what they see. Kind of like how I'll enjoy broccoli smothered in butter or mixed into a cheese dip, because it doesn't really taste like broccoli, but eaten plain it's a chore. Hey, I'd love to be wrong. I generally want people to succeed, and I'm sure everyone involved here is a nice person...but I'm not sold.
- bitserf 16y agoI'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, though I don't understand it. It'd be awfully dull if everything had to be optimized for maximum utility, the better to mechanize us.
- njharman 16y ago> I don't think you're going to find too many adults who are really all that interested in embracing their inner 12-year-old girl If you look at Ze Frank's many past efforts you will see that is exactly what he's adept at finding.
- gyardley 16y agoRemember, people - just because it doesn't appeal to the typical reader of Hacker News, it's not doomed to failure. There are many, many people out there with preferences different from your own. I suspect several of my family members would love this.
- gfodor 16y agoAnd so we continue to amuse ourselves to death.
- pclark 16y agoI wish people on Hacker News would be (much) nicer about peoples startups.
- georgemcbay 16y agoI would send you a UR NICE star for this comment but since HN doesn't have that you'll have to settle for an upvote.
- seigenblues 16y agoDid any of the haters on this thread watch his TED talks? There's the one linked to in the article (from 2004), and another one Ze gave last year (http://www.zefrank.com/ted/2010.html http://www.zefrank.com/ted/2010.html). Having watched "the show" back in the olden days before youtube, i'm convinced ze is a genius. He's incomprehensible to HN because he really doesn't care how it works, he only cares about how it's being applied. It's all about the application of technology to make a human connection for him. His only metric is the quality of that human connection -- which is weird to people who care about clean design, or scalability, or neat javascript "fade" effects.