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DreamWorld (YC W21) MMO raises all red flags
- xixixao 5y agoCompare with actual company building an engine that can power a huge scale MMO - for over 8 years, stuffed with FAANG alumns and Cambridge graduates, and probably valued over a billion dollars: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improbable_(company) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improbable_(company)
- rvba 5y ago8 years and all games with that got cancelled or never released?
- rohansingh 5y agoHuh. I'd be really curious to see their YC application.
- caslon 5y ago"We're here to revolutionize online gaming! As you may know, video games are a multi-billion dollar market! Something about MMOs being the next Bitcoin! Fortnite! Synergy! We got our teeth whitened and professional lighting for the video interview! Totally casual! We are extremely hyped to deliver to you the future of online casinos!" I'd write more buzzwords, but that made me feel a little nauseated, so... But yeah, it's basically the video you send that matters.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SquibblesRedux 5y agoI am surprised to see a YC MMO at all. Are there any examples of a YC MMO?
- minimaxir 5y agoNot MMOs, but YC has funded smaller gaming companies over the years (the names of which I do not remember, which speaks to their relative success)
- Impossible 5y agoMachine Zone is relatively successful. They also funded Mino Games https://minogames.com/en/ https://minogames.com/en/, which might not be "successful" on your terms, but they've stayed in business for 10+ years which is better than many game studios
- minimaxir 5y agoAh, forgot about Machine Zone, that's fair. Mino Games was the one I was thinking about, although that website appears to be out of date but yes their games are still active.
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- ericbarrett 5y agoA family member of mine played Game of War (owned by Machine Zone) and made friends with some of the highest ranked players. The biggest whales were dropping $5-10k a day on power-ups.
- Impossible 5y agoZenith is a VR MMO that went through YC https://zenithmmo.com/ https://zenithmmo.com/. Multiverse isn't exactly an MMO, it's more of a tabletop RPG platform (think Roll20), but is also YC funded https://www.playmultiverse.com/ https://www.playmultiverse.com/. There might be more.
- bottled_poe 5y agoBut will it have dragons?
- rychco 5y agoI don’t know what kind of secret sauce they’ve got that attracted investors, but I’m really skeptical based on what I’ve seen so far.
- sen 5y agoThe fact this made it past ANY cursory inspection at YC is kind of... hilarious? There's a good video[1] breaking down just how ridiculous this entire venture is. They have absolutely ZERO background in game development, yet are claiming to be making the biggest MMO ever attempted (with a team of 2), using a revolutionary peer-to-peer meshed (infinite!) game world, with every single game genre merged together. It's probably the single most blatant gaming-related fundraiser scam I've personally come across... but they got YC backing. All their videos are just assets from the store, thrown together using open world youtube tutorials, and long-winded posts filled with every buzz-word and game-dev fantasy you can think of. The video is really worth a watch if you want to see just how ridiculous this is, especially the latter half breaking down their technical claims. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGQZfAbsQ6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGQZfAbsQ6I
- qsi 5y agoIt's probably the single most blatant gaming-related fundraiser scam I've personally come across... but they got YC backing. It'll take quite a bit to beat Star Citizen. I don't understand the YC backing either though.
- danso 5y agoStar Citizen is a decade-spanning imploding trainwreck, but there’s no doubt that it’s helmed by ambitious and notable gamedev veterans. Dreamworld doesn’t even have notably padded resumes, and it’s flimsy even by the low standards of shoddy Kickstarter MMO campaigns. To be honest, when I saw it claiming to be a member of YC, I assumed it was touting a participant award (i.e. it applied to YC, but wasn’t necessarily accepted), or was engaged in some other outright deception. Anything seemed more probable than them actually getting YC investment
- Grustaf 5y agoYeah I had to go back and forth between the HN headline and the page 4 times. I couldn't believe I read it correctly, did it really, REALLY say "YC".
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- young_unixer 5y agoIs it science-based?
- lacker 5y agoI don't understand the hate. Look at what exactly DreamWorld is claiming on their Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playdreamworld/dreamworld-the-last-game-youll-ever-play https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playdreamworld/dreamwor... * The infinite open world MMO * Sculpt the world and create with a massive catalog of objects * One single world, millions of players * Explore thousands of unique biomes * Fight and tame DreamWorld's incredible creatures Those claims just don't seem very outlandish to me! They aren't even very unique among videogames. There is no standard for what constitutes a "biome" so it seems quite plausible that you could procedurally generate different biomes. The most questionable part is whether millions of players would really be in "one single world", but it seems quite reasonable than an actual limitation would be something like "they are all in the same world, but different areas of the same world require a loading screen", and on the backend it's just implemented with multiple servers, nothing fancy. Everyone who's familiar with "early access" video games or Kickstarter video games should know, one cool demo video doesn't guarantee a fun game, at all. That's just how video game development works. This one is no different. They aren't a "scam", they are just trying to make a video game.
- hn8788 5y agoHow about how they say that the game will also include every genre, and all of this work will be done by two people? This is an absolute scam.
- viraptor 5y agoIt depends where you put a limit on genre. Minecraft for example covers a surprising number of genres using just the basic mechanics + user mods for goals/limitations. Same with Roblox. If you can modify the world, you get them "for free".
- woobilicious 5y agoMinecraft wasn't marketed as having "every genre", while showing exactly none in their demo videos. When you design a game you come up with a core game play loop, Minecraft had this, and notch was competent and humble enough to make his game from scratch, and release a MVP people could play. This game doesn't have a core game play loop so it hides behind nothing burger statements like this. Whenever someone makes claims that are both grandiose and vague you should take it with a grain of salt. But do you know what it does have? it doesn't describe in ambiguities? kickstarter rewards, you get pets, and you get to put your name on a billboard, and the more you donate the bigger your name.
- busterarm 5y agoKeep in mind sometimes YC is just betting on the team. Many founders have a reality distortion field that disconnects logic from the equation. Lots of batshit has raised tons of money...like Theranos...or Star Citizen...or WeWork. YC is betting not a large amount of money to get a piece.
- chii 5y ago> Lots of batshit has raised tons of money...like Theranos...or Star Citizen...or WeWork. and all of them have not yet delivered much, or are frauds. If i were the VC, i'd be skeptical of founders with reality distortion fields. There are more fraudsters than there are Steve Jobs out there.
- woobilicious 5y agoThere's no reason to believe this team will do anything. Look at the guys LinkedIn and you'll see the graphic designer is a really bad graphic designer, look at the game itself, it's just an asset flip, they have no artists, the demo videos show no game play, but they're happy to show how you can chase your clout on their wall. This project looks like Theranos, more than Star Citizen or WeWork. Star Citizen was founded by the guy who made Wing Commander, he has a history with a product that actually was successful, It looks like they merely bit more off than they could chew, for example they released a road map for their road map, which reeks of middle management problems more than it being an outright scam. WeWork had a viable product it's just impossible for them to monopolize on it so they were quickly beaten by their competition. Saying "we believe in the team" just shows the people who a-okayed this were easily manipulated by scam artists, or are in on the scam themselves.
- xwolfi 5y agoSorry but Roberts has a long string of failures behind him and his games succeeded despite him. This is even worse than the present case since people paying for Start Citizen (I'm a pigeon too) should have known thanks to his long past of failures. At least here we can claim they're virgins :D
- busterarm 5y ago
- Danieru 5y agoAs part of my day job I see a ton of Unreal asset packs. Thus I recognize most of the asset packs shown. Nothing in the shown GIFs appears original. The infinity weather asset pack is the most "impressive": https://unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/infinity-weather https://unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/infinity-... Here is their "voxel engine": https://voxelplugin.com/ https://voxelplugin.com/ Notice how none of the asset packs are shown together. The "developers" are just showing off walk throughs of the asset pack demo levels.
- sen 5y agoIn the video I posted elsewhere in this thread, he actually breaks down all the assets and every single one of them is from the asset store. There's literally nothing original in the game at all.
- chii 5y agoThere's nothing wrong with buying assets off the store. But the game has to have some original mechanics, and a proposition value that makes it worth investing in. That value can't be "everything that has been done before, but all in one game". The idea has to be original or unique, and that's what's missing here in this MMO!
- Vaslo 5y agoI've been playing an MMO called Dual Universe. It's really amazing given that you can build so many things with voxels. But it has a team with 40 people and has struggled to deliver on much of what was promised during it's kickstart. There is no way this game will deliver on a lot of this stuff. I can tell you too, in my most recent Dual Universe experience, all those kickstarters who spend 40 bucks one time backing you five years ago will be your worst complainers and will try and sink your ship when you don't deliver. Why would YC fund this unless they think some of the technology will be salvageable and sold a few years from now without the MMO attached anymore.
- marakv2 5y agoGod's sorry to side track but I have been looking for someone who has tried this game. It looked so good I was going to pledge today but my PC died last night. Do you think they will actually get there? I loved the idea and what I had seen.
- sen 5y agoI was an early backer and played since the first playable teasers. For background, I played EVE Online for 10+ years, and have played almost every single space-based open-world game other than Star Citizen. Unlike the game talked about here, it's actually a technically impressive game with some properly unique ideas and some really fun aspects. It's also a total buggy mess and half the time I can't even get through a half hour session without it either hard crashing, or coming across game breaking bugs. Plenty of people seem to be having a fine time, building huge bases and impressive ships and running some pretty decently sized operations, but that's not me. Whether it's my hardware combo or just bad luck, I've struggled to ever get a solid session in at all. I still don't give up on it though, and check back every few months, as I think they ARE building something awesome, it just needs a lot more work.
- marakv2 5y agoThanks! Old school wvw player here too. I'm so damn tempted. It looks so good, but it seems as if I'm rolling the dice as if it will work for me haha. I think though it seems as if throwing a new account their way would help. The more money the more Dev time and all that. Cheers
- seattle_spring 5y agoIn the Kickstarter video the 2nd guy said he, "left his job at Google, Facebook, and Apple to start Dreamworld." What exactly did he mean by that?
- gremlinsinc 5y agoHe delivered food to all three via uber eats.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't do this here. Thoughtful critique is fine. Being an asshole or piling on, not fine. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sen 5y agoIt’s not hard to find his LinkedIn etc. He legitimately did work at (or at least “for”) those companies but seems to be hyping it up a lot more than is probably warranted.
- ALittleLight 5y agoTrue, but presumably he only left a job at, at most, one of those companies to work on the game.
- username90 5y agoYou are grouping it wrong. It is meant to be read as: > He left is job at Google > He left his job at Facebook. > He left his job at Apple to start Dreamworld All of those are true, can see his linkedin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrison-bellack-1a55b165/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrison-bellack-1a55b165/ The sentence is poorly structured, but it isn't misleading.
- vxNsr 5y agoAccording to this the last company he worked for was cruise... so not a FANG company.
- senojretep356 5y agoGuy is straight up lying when he says he left Apple, Google and Facebook to work for Dreamworld. Just check his linked in. He has less than a year at Google and Facebook, then he left Apple in 2019 and started Dreamworld in 2021. https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrison-bellack-1a55b165/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrison-bellack-1a55b165/
- ronsor 5y agoI mean, technically he did leave Google, Apple, and Facebook.
- fastball 5y agoHow is he lying though? He did, in fact, work at all of those companies.
- Grustaf 5y agoBut he didn't leave any of them to start Dreamworld, isn't that the claim?
- seattle_spring 5y ago... as an intern for 2 of them and an SDET for the 3rd.
- natural219 5y agoI admit, I'm mostly confused as to why this article was written. The kickstarter goal is $10,000, and they've only raised $60,000 so far. Is this really the biggest scam to be writing about? If it reached millions I could imagine it warranting some level of scrutiny.
- flipnotic 5y agoMost of the comments I see here are people going along with the author's rant, so I'm going to take a different perspective. Many of the author's criticisms of DreamWorld may actually be viewed as strengths. Examples: >people with no credentials or history in the gaming industry, and try to get funding for some massive project that multi-million dollar corporations haven’t been capable of producing Isn't this what YC is all about? This team is attempting to disrupt an industry, to do something that a large, bloated and bureaucratic corporation has trouble achieving. Why be hatin'? >it’s definitely the first time I’ve seen it done while using the default Unreal player model. This sounds like an intelligent move to me. If this small, two-person team wants to ship, why would they spend time creating custom models? Using default assets for as long as possible seems like the right move to me, and exactly the kind of attitude you want in a team that delivers. >the mission statement here as well because it grossly oversells what CORE AEGIS actually creates. The author fact-checks a corporate vision statement for accuracy, which makes me think he has little experience in the corporate world. Therefore, I wonder, what makes him a credible judge of what is or is not a viable business?
- Vaslo 5y ago>Many of the author's criticisms of DreamWorld may actually be viewed as strengths. Examples: people with no credentials or history in the gaming industry, and try to get funding for some massive project that multi-million dollar corporations haven’t been capable of producing Dual Universe's owner NovaQuark listed the SAME "strength" and it is clear by their most recent backtracking and company changes (including replacing the CEO) that NOT having gaming experience is a HUGE detriment.
- koonsolo 5y agoInexperienced game devs that want to make a huge MMO is very common in the game industry. But the keyword here is "want".
- LootCrateDev 5y agoI love that your dishonest sophistry evades mod and AI bad faith detection. Keep it up.
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- joshmn 5y agoDiscussion on IndieHackers, posted late March 2021: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/a-ycombinator-backed-kickstarter-scam-d971f770af https://www.indiehackers.com/post/a-ycombinator-backed-kicks...
- smashah 5y agoOP mentions they used a throwaway to prevent this "smack talk" from affecting any of his future YC prospects. I don't think YC management/judges are that petty, or at least I hope they aren't.
- jackblemming 5y agoThe marketer must have reality bending charisma. That alone has immense value.
- kgeist 5y agoWhat's the point of raising $10000 on Kickstarter? Isn't it basically 1 month income for 2 programmers?
- minimaxir 5y agoPublicity. That said, games with this type of scope (and no VC backing) ask for something more reasonable such as six figures minimum.
- franciscop 5y agoAnother amazing video deconstructing it. "This game has more red flags than a Turkish Embassy": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXDngD70Lw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXDngD70Lw4 On top of it all, it's a pyramid scheme. They claim you can only play the pre-alpha if you get 2 other people to pledge, and when you get 2 other people to pledge they put you on a waiting list.
- sen 5y ago..and yet people still give this the benefit of the doubt. It’s so clearly a scam in every sense of the word.
- tjs8rj 5y agoThat’s not a pyramid scheme, that’s a referral system.
- legostormtroopr 5y agoNo a referral system, is "you can invite others to play, everyone else has to wait" "You can only benefit, after you get others to invest" is almost a textbook definition of a pyramid scheme.
- SahAssar 5y agoI think the missing part for it to be a true pyramid is that you don't profit from your referrals referrals and so on. That's what is usually called a downline in MLM/pyramid schemes. But yeah, it is getting very close to a pyramid system IMO.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoAnyone know how many games YC has backed and how well they've done? A quick google suggests they've backed at least one other, but I'm not getting a good sense of how much experience they really have with gaming companies. Maybe this is just not their forte?
- CliffyA 5y agoMino Games is YC backed, as their job ads pop up on here occasionally. Interestingly they seem to have shut down their older larger scale Mino Monsters games and are focusing on (what i assume to be) smaller scale collecting games.
- chris11 5y agoOneSignal has done great, but they pivoted out of video games quickly.
- diss 5y agoDespite probably being correct in their sentiment, I think the attack on the team of "ragtag nobodies" is a bit out of order. I'm sure many of the world's best programmers are "nobodies".
- danso 5y agoPure programming skill, however you imagine that being measured, is a very small part of building and designing a successful game and game world. Do you honestly believe that anyone more skilled at PHP than Mark Zuckerberg had been as a Harvard freshman is on the cusp of building the next Facebook-killer?
- diss 5y agoNo, Mark Zuckerberg was a nobody too. Having clout helps things along considerably when it comes to marketing and acquiring non-nobodies, but being a nobody is neither here nor there when it comes to potential. Replace "programmer" with whatever skills you think are most relevant.
- waihtis 5y agoSo let's lay down what's happened here: 1) Company proves there's a market for the product with collecting revenue with the equivalent of a slideshow 2) Raises VC money to actually build the product (Kickstarter page claims: "We know MMOs cannot be built with just $10K. We've secured the majority of our funding from some of the best investors in Silicon Valley. We know that we'll be able to deliver our Alpha and beyond with the money we already have!") What exactly makes this different to any other Silicon Valley high risk bet?
- koonsolo 5y agoSilicon Valley high risk bets are bets made on market and solution. In this case, all elements are well known: Market, distribution, effort, etc. It's a well established market with a lot of different players (indies to huge studios). In this case, you will have to outperform the big studios. Basically you will have to compose a basketballteam and compete in the NBA. Good luck! Any experienced game developer can see that this is the Dunning Kruger effect in action. Nothing new perse, but the new thing is that ycombinator is going along in this delusion.
- waihtis 5y agoFair game. I don't know practically anything of game dev so I believe your explanation. The video itself seemed to be mostly critical about the lack of funding to fulfill their promise so thought that was the main problem here.
- fastball 5y agoBecause there is no original thinking going on here. The idea is basically what a 5 year old would come up with if you told them to invent "the bestest most coolest game ever", with all the complete lack of deliverability that entails. Except the founders don't even seem to have game dev experience.
- Animats 5y agoWhat, they're not mentioning "Metaverse" and "NFT", and they don't have a blockchain? They're missing the hype train. Right now, there's a huge boom in "blockchain metaverses". Search for "metaverse" in News for info. The idea is to have a virtual world in which you can buy scarce land and maybe scarce objects. There are at least a dozen of these things. As virtual worlds, they're awful. The graphics are bad, the worlds are tiny, you can't do much, and nobody goes there. It's all about selling land and "rares". There are at least two such things where they skipped building the virtual world and just sell land on a map. On top of this fluff, there's now a virtual land real estate investment trust. I want to see a good big "metaverse". Right now, 19 year old Second Life is still the best recreational virtual world, despite a lack of forward progress in the last few years from Linden Lab. Roblox is getting steadily better, moving past their blocky origins. IMVU is trying harder. Epic keeps talking up the "metaverse", but all they have shown so far is a level editor for Fortnite. Improbable [1] raised US$400 million to build a back-end system for really big virtual worlds. It even works, more or less. But you have to host on their servers (Google's, actually) and the thing is so expensive to run that the three indy games that used it all went broke. Since they raised too much money, they now have two in-house game studios, which have shipped nothing. [1] https://www.improbable.io https://www.improbable.io
- smartties 5y ago> What, they're not mentioning "Metaverse" and "NFT", and they don't have a blockchain? They did talk about NFT twice, in the kickstarter comment section. This project is now officially a scam. [1] https://i.imgur.com/cjPCcrI.png https://i.imgur.com/cjPCcrI.png
- dandellion 5y agoYou don't need to scroll all the way down to a couple random comments mentioning NFT to see the project is a scam. It's very obvious just by watching the video or reading the first paragraph, it's just ridiculous.
- puranjay 5y agoWell, the good part about these metaverses is that they can actually create an income for people who own this virtual land/resources. I personally know people who earn a substantial income from owning land in games like MegaCryptopolis. I understand the skepticism, but to me, it seems like a better model than you paying a video game developer for virtual resources and getting nothing in return. With these metaverses, you at least get to own the resource and perhaps even make money off of it.
- koonsolo 5y agoInexperienced game devs that want to make a huge MMO is very common in the game industry. What is new here is that ycombinator is going along in their Dunning-Kruger delusion.
- jeffgreco 5y agoI can’t stress enough how objectively terrible this game looks.
- hmmokidk 5y agoIf you’re clever I believe you can get pretty far in this space. But it won’t be easy. Defining an MVP with an MMO is harder than probably any other application .
- paxys 5y agoThe last time a bunch of game developers got a ton of funding for a terrible MMO it ended up becoming a $30 billion chat app.
- Gustomaximus 5y agoDidn't YC say they were going to do a percentage of randomly selected applicants to see their success rate vs random? Could this be part of that decision?
- kevingadd 5y agoFeels like a great way to torch your brand. I would've expected the randoms to be funded under a separate umbrella.
- Gustomaximus 5y agoIts kind of catch 22, if you include them in the brand people might questions your decision. If you dont include them in your brand, they dont get the benefit of access etc it would give for the test. I always assumed the random must have some vetting otherwise it would encourage some people to spam applications and developer the 'accepted' business beyond an initial phase.
- Toutouxc 5y agoI'd just like to say that the TWO (!) GIFs on that page weigh 40 megabytes (!) in total. What the fuck. I don't want this. edit: AND the page makes one CPU core spin like crazy in Safari.
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- honkycat 5y agoI do indie game dev as a hobby, and I have taken multiple classes on networked multiplayer, and I've also implemented VERY SIMPLE proof of concepts for multiplayer fighting games in Unreal Engine. I think what a lot of people are missing here is the context that there is STILL not a "make it multiplayer" button in game engines. They do NOT do most of the work for you for any facet of game development. Making games is still a ton of work. To name a few things that Unreal Engine does not do for you: networked movement prediction, acceptable LERPing to positions when client/host disagree, anticheat... basically it has a nice client/server model API you can use. You can annotate structs to efficiently be transmitted over the internet, and query the API to see if you are "host" or "client". There is an amazing talk on this from the Mortal Kombat creators about how long it took them to get their netcode right[0]. Now make that much harder when dealing with millions of players in one world, with mold-able terrain and an exotic networking stack. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jb0FOcImdg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jb0FOcImdg
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