6 ms·

AFAIK YC invests in teams, not products, and are ok, if not expect the team to pivot once or twice. I mean, AirBnB looked equally silly in the beginning. I pres

by fsloth 6y ago

AFAIK YC invests in teams, not products, and are ok, if not expect the team to pivot once or twice. I mean, AirBnB looked equally silly in the beginning. I presume the team (not their product vision) was the reason for investment. Small teams can bootstrap the creation of billion dollar IP (notch created Minecraft singlehandedly). Not taking a stance on this particular case. But you can leverage the outsourcing economy quite far if all you want are generic high quality assets. Code - well, that is the thing here, isn't it. Game industry experience? Baldurs Gate or the original Witcher teams had zero of it also in the beginning. Hustling? Founders are expected to hustle. I don't see anything super weird about this. All startups are a dice roll in the beginning.

abraae 6y ago
Yep, the article slates this as "Like a Juicero". However Juicero was most definitely a thing and attracted a heap of interest and $120M investment. So comparing this to Juicero is .... undercutting the entire premise of the rant.
- rabbidruster 6y ago
  I think you misread that. It says you could spend your money on something better. like a juicero. Hard to know exactly how the author views juicero in terms of being a good product but I think the point is it's a much better kickstarter than this game. Seems you agree on that.
KingOfCoders 6y ago
Why do you think AirBnB looked silly? "After moving to San Francisco in October 2007, roommates and former schoolmates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia came up with the idea of putting an air mattress in their living room and turning it into a bed and breakfast." -Wikipedia
- _delirium 6y ago
  That didn't end up being the actual business model though. The vast majority of AirBnB's current revenue is from renting out private apartments or rooms, more in competitition with VRBO or hotels. You can definitely still rent out an air mattress in the living room, but that's not what AirBnB is making its money from.
- fsloth 6y ago
  There are good stories of their beginning out there. The wikipedia summary really does not do justice to how hard their start was. I enjoy especially the ones as told by their founder in the excellent startup school lectures. They were scrappy, lacked clear direction and hustled and struggled.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  Agreed. This mythology keeps getting repeated, where the only thing that happened was a couple of rich VCs (pg and others) didn't like the idea originally. But as many others have pointed out, Couchsurfing was already big, and VRBO/HomeAway had already received huge funding rounds. Was it really that hard of a leap to see how people (especially millennials) would flock to cheaper urban rentals if a company made the safety and payment aspect of it much better than what existed before?
  - fsloth 6y ago
    Seeing a market and implementing a unicorn class product are quite different things even if you have the accurate perception of market needs. There is a reason unicorns are called unicorns and not justsurveythemarketfortrends-corns. I admit AirBnB was perhaps not the most relevant example given it's a different industry. I have no reason to champion the team but having a fairly good knowledge of games and software development I don't see the need to criticize the YC investment based on the context of their pitch.
  - dang 6y ago
    "Didn't like the idea originally" is no different from "looked silly". And it wasn't just "a couple of rich VCs" who thought that. (Btw, the word 'rich' seems gratuitous there.) YC wasn't going to fund them but did anyway because they liked the founders. It's not mythology. "Was it really that hard a leap?" - yes it was. That it seems otherwise now is pure hindsight fallacy.
    - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
      It keeps getting repeated that the original AirBnB idea was "crazy and outlandish" at the time, but it was only with hindsight that we see how it could be successful. My argument is that that is false, because at the time there were already numerous examples of successful lodging sharing platforms, just none of which had the special combination of features (e.g. social reviews, ease of payment) that AirBnB had. As another analogy, when Facebook launched there were already many previous social networks (MySpace, Friendster), but FB was the first with a unique combination of features (uncluttered design, real name policy, eventually the feed, etc.) that made them the primary social media winner. But nobody repeats the false myth "Oh wow, social media was such a crazy and outlandish idea before Facebook came along".
sen 6y ago
Hustling is showing pre-rendered videos to simulate gameplay, or promising an infinite open world and then having a large-but-limited one. This is flat out lying and saying you're going to build something that massive mega-studios struggle to even build, then throwing in a few dozen promises for stuff that's not even possible with current technology.
- chevill 6y ago
  >promising an infinite open world and then having a large-but-limited one. This is also flat out lying, its just that most people will realize its not true. Simulated gameplay that's labelled as "simulated" is fine but if you end up not delivering anything close to that then you'll rightfully lose all credibility.
  - fsloth 6y ago
    Scalable simulation worlds are more or less just a networked cluster of nodes with an octree topology. I suppose there are limitations to local node density but other than that providing a seamless experience is more about how to architect the core system than rocket science. Yes, it's hard. I have no idea if people even want that. Or can you make the node-to-node transit non jarring for players. But I don't really see it as lying. Ambitious certainly. Can they pull it off? No idea.
    - chevill 6y ago
      I don't think many people expect a literally unlimited world. I'm almost 40 so I don't have enough time to finish most of the non-infinite games I start. I just take issue with his statement that promising literally unlimited content and then delivering a lot of content isn't a lie. I'm not a great programmer (or a pro) and I suck at math so I don't actually know what's possible in terms of infinite worlds. There have been attempts at delivering more content than a person could play in a lifetime. However, the broader the scope of a game is, the less compelling the content becomes. For example, No Man's Sky is probably the best attempt thus far at a literally infinite world (I don't know if it actually is or not). Its a really great game and I sank about a hundred hours of time into it, but after a while even though you're going to different places it begins to feel too familiar. The 2nd Elder Scrolls Game, Daggerfall wasn't infinite but it did have 16,000 cities and quests generated in all of them. Supposedly someone figured out it would take about a week to walk from one end of the world to the other but you could actually do it (unless it experienced one of its many crashes while you were attempting it) Its one of my favorite games of all time. While by today's standards the quests were frequently shallow, there was enough hand crafted content to make the overall experience feel pretty authentic.
chevill 6y ago
>Game industry experience? Baldurs Gate or the original Witcher teams had zero of it also in the beginning. I agree with the spirit of your post but these are bad examples. Baldur's Gate wasn't Bioware's first game and the first game in The Witcher series wasn't exactly received as a masterpiece. Single Player RPGs and Minecraft style games can easily be simple enough to develop with a small team. So when people are criticizing the size of the team and lack of experience of that tiny team, it has to be taken in context with the type of game they are trying to develop. What's more important than game industry experience is game dev experience or even software experience in general. Even if that experience is as a hobbyist, it can make a big difference in my confidence level for a project. So my questions would be, what did these guys do before now, what kinds of projects have they worked on, etc.
- fsloth 6y ago
  Yes, you are quite right. My point was past performance is not always a good indicator of future human potential.
  - koonsolo 6y ago
    True. Claiming you are going to make a huge MMO when you are an inexperienced game developer is pretty common. Therefore we also know at which stage of Dunning Kruger they are.
    - chevill 6y ago
      >Claiming you are going to make a huge MMO when you are an inexperienced game developer is pretty common. Yea its so common its basically a meme that the first question a beginner asks when they join /r/gamedev or another gamedev community is "How do I make an MMO?"
    - fsloth 6y ago
      I have no idea at which point of Dunning Kruger they are. For example have they digested all of the technical material available on MMO:s available publicly? If they have and have fair software engineering savvy that puts them already way ahead. Past failures by third party actors should not be taken as discouragement for startups. To take a blunt example, before Elon Musk started SpaceX there were failed rocket companies started by millionaires all of whom dreamed of commoditizing space... Sure, their success is improbable. But in this context longshots and improbable bets are the whole point.
gcheong 6y ago
Further to the point about pivoting, it’s interesting to note that both Flickr and Slack came out of attempts to make MMOs.
- chevill 6y ago
  That is really interesting and something I hadn't heard before. Got any recommendations for detailed write-ups on their histories?
- kevingadd 6y ago
  In fairness to Slack, the MMO they put together worked and was truly innovative. It just didn't find a big enough audience. Huge gap between that and something like DreamWorld. The wikipedia page has lots of detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_(video_game)
  - paxys 6y ago
    While I have never played it, the brief description in the opening paragraph: > Glitch was officially launched on September 27, 2011, but reverted to beta status on November 30, 2011, citing accessibility and depth issues. Glitch was officially shut down on December 9, 2012. Doesn't exactly paint an image of quality.
dagw 6y ago
I mean, AirBnB looked equally silly in the beginning. One big difference is that AirBnB wasn't trying to obviously scam people on Kickstarter as part of their core business plan. I mean maybe the dude is a genius programmer who has come up with a truly novel way of building a single world Peer to Peer MMO, but if so why not lead with that? Instead all their sales videos are obvious minimal effort Unreal Engine asset flips that show no creativity or technical innovation.

by fsloth 6y ago

abraae 6y ago

Yep, the article slates this as "Like a Juicero". However Juicero was most definitely a thing and attracted a heap of interest and $120M investment. So comparing this to Juicero is .... undercutting the entire premise of the rant.

rabbidruster 6y ago
I think you misread that. It says you could spend your money on something better. like a juicero. Hard to know exactly how the author views juicero in terms of being a good product but I think the point is it's a much better kickstarter than this game. Seems you agree on that.

KingOfCoders 6y ago

Why do you think AirBnB looked silly? "After moving to San Francisco in October 2007, roommates and former schoolmates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia came up with the idea of putting an air mattress in their living room and turning it into a bed and breakfast." -Wikipedia

_delirium 6y ago
That didn't end up being the actual business model though. The vast majority of AirBnB's current revenue is from renting out private apartments or rooms, more in competitition with VRBO or hotels. You can definitely still rent out an air mattress in the living room, but that's not what AirBnB is making its money from.
fsloth 6y ago
There are good stories of their beginning out there. The wikipedia summary really does not do justice to how hard their start was. I enjoy especially the ones as told by their founder in the excellent startup school lectures. They were scrappy, lacked clear direction and hustled and struggled.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Agreed. This mythology keeps getting repeated, where the only thing that happened was a couple of rich VCs (pg and others) didn't like the idea originally. But as many others have pointed out, Couchsurfing was already big, and VRBO/HomeAway had already received huge funding rounds. Was it really that hard of a leap to see how people (especially millennials) would flock to cheaper urban rentals if a company made the safety and payment aspect of it much better than what existed before?
- fsloth 6y ago
  Seeing a market and implementing a unicorn class product are quite different things even if you have the accurate perception of market needs. There is a reason unicorns are called unicorns and not justsurveythemarketfortrends-corns. I admit AirBnB was perhaps not the most relevant example given it's a different industry. I have no reason to champion the team but having a fairly good knowledge of games and software development I don't see the need to criticize the YC investment based on the context of their pitch.
- dang 6y ago
  "Didn't like the idea originally" is no different from "looked silly". And it wasn't just "a couple of rich VCs" who thought that. (Btw, the word 'rich' seems gratuitous there.) YC wasn't going to fund them but did anyway because they liked the founders. It's not mythology. "Was it really that hard a leap?" - yes it was. That it seems otherwise now is pure hindsight fallacy.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    It keeps getting repeated that the original AirBnB idea was "crazy and outlandish" at the time, but it was only with hindsight that we see how it could be successful. My argument is that that is false, because at the time there were already numerous examples of successful lodging sharing platforms, just none of which had the special combination of features (e.g. social reviews, ease of payment) that AirBnB had. As another analogy, when Facebook launched there were already many previous social networks (MySpace, Friendster), but FB was the first with a unique combination of features (uncluttered design, real name policy, eventually the feed, etc.) that made them the primary social media winner. But nobody repeats the false myth "Oh wow, social media was such a crazy and outlandish idea before Facebook came along".

sen 6y ago

Hustling is showing pre-rendered videos to simulate gameplay, or promising an infinite open world and then having a large-but-limited one. This is flat out lying and saying you're going to build something that massive mega-studios struggle to even build, then throwing in a few dozen promises for stuff that's not even possible with current technology.

chevill 6y ago
>promising an infinite open world and then having a large-but-limited one. This is also flat out lying, its just that most people will realize its not true. Simulated gameplay that's labelled as "simulated" is fine but if you end up not delivering anything close to that then you'll rightfully lose all credibility.
- fsloth 6y ago
  Scalable simulation worlds are more or less just a networked cluster of nodes with an octree topology. I suppose there are limitations to local node density but other than that providing a seamless experience is more about how to architect the core system than rocket science. Yes, it's hard. I have no idea if people even want that. Or can you make the node-to-node transit non jarring for players. But I don't really see it as lying. Ambitious certainly. Can they pull it off? No idea.
  - chevill 6y ago
    I don't think many people expect a literally unlimited world. I'm almost 40 so I don't have enough time to finish most of the non-infinite games I start. I just take issue with his statement that promising literally unlimited content and then delivering a lot of content isn't a lie. I'm not a great programmer (or a pro) and I suck at math so I don't actually know what's possible in terms of infinite worlds. There have been attempts at delivering more content than a person could play in a lifetime. However, the broader the scope of a game is, the less compelling the content becomes. For example, No Man's Sky is probably the best attempt thus far at a literally infinite world (I don't know if it actually is or not). Its a really great game and I sank about a hundred hours of time into it, but after a while even though you're going to different places it begins to feel too familiar. The 2nd Elder Scrolls Game, Daggerfall wasn't infinite but it did have 16,000 cities and quests generated in all of them. Supposedly someone figured out it would take about a week to walk from one end of the world to the other but you could actually do it (unless it experienced one of its many crashes while you were attempting it) Its one of my favorite games of all time. While by today's standards the quests were frequently shallow, there was enough hand crafted content to make the overall experience feel pretty authentic.

chevill 6y ago

>Game industry experience? Baldurs Gate or the original Witcher teams had zero of it also in the beginning. I agree with the spirit of your post but these are bad examples. Baldur's Gate wasn't Bioware's first game and the first game in The Witcher series wasn't exactly received as a masterpiece. Single Player RPGs and Minecraft style games can easily be simple enough to develop with a small team. So when people are criticizing the size of the team and lack of experience of that tiny team, it has to be taken in context with the type of game they are trying to develop. What's more important than game industry experience is game dev experience or even software experience in general. Even if that experience is as a hobbyist, it can make a big difference in my confidence level for a project. So my questions would be, what did these guys do before now, what kinds of projects have they worked on, etc.

fsloth 6y ago
Yes, you are quite right. My point was past performance is not always a good indicator of future human potential.
- koonsolo 6y ago
  True. Claiming you are going to make a huge MMO when you are an inexperienced game developer is pretty common. Therefore we also know at which stage of Dunning Kruger they are.
  - chevill 6y ago
    >Claiming you are going to make a huge MMO when you are an inexperienced game developer is pretty common. Yea its so common its basically a meme that the first question a beginner asks when they join /r/gamedev or another gamedev community is "How do I make an MMO?"
  - fsloth 6y ago
    I have no idea at which point of Dunning Kruger they are. For example have they digested all of the technical material available on MMO:s available publicly? If they have and have fair software engineering savvy that puts them already way ahead. Past failures by third party actors should not be taken as discouragement for startups. To take a blunt example, before Elon Musk started SpaceX there were failed rocket companies started by millionaires all of whom dreamed of commoditizing space... Sure, their success is improbable. But in this context longshots and improbable bets are the whole point.

gcheong 6y ago

Further to the point about pivoting, it’s interesting to note that both Flickr and Slack came out of attempts to make MMOs.

chevill 6y ago
That is really interesting and something I hadn't heard before. Got any recommendations for detailed write-ups on their histories?
kevingadd 6y ago
In fairness to Slack, the MMO they put together worked and was truly innovative. It just didn't find a big enough audience. Huge gap between that and something like DreamWorld. The wikipedia page has lots of detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_(video_game)
- paxys 6y ago
  While I have never played it, the brief description in the opening paragraph: > Glitch was officially launched on September 27, 2011, but reverted to beta status on November 30, 2011, citing accessibility and depth issues. Glitch was officially shut down on December 9, 2012. Doesn't exactly paint an image of quality.

dagw 6y ago

I mean, AirBnB looked equally silly in the beginning. One big difference is that AirBnB wasn't trying to obviously scam people on Kickstarter as part of their core business plan. I mean maybe the dude is a genius programmer who has come up with a truly novel way of building a single world Peer to Peer MMO, but if so why not lead with that? Instead all their sales videos are obvious minimal effort Unreal Engine asset flips that show no creativity or technical innovation.