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A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

failory.com

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Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#51

Post by canes123456 »

fragsworth wrote: post #5

This is incredibly depressing. It hits home for me because I'm in a very similar situation. I and one other guy almost went broke making Clicker Heroes, but it turned out to be a great success. But so far since then every project has not been worth doing. > I didn't do ads, I didn't do micro-transactions, scummy energy bars, and all those other bullshit monetization tactics. We did this in Clicker Heroes, and I don't…

> We did this in Clicker Heroes, and I don't like that we did. But I'm learning more and more that it's hard to compete against scummy tactics.

Props to for going against the HN hive mind. F2P is successful because most people choose it and will not pay for software. There are real issues with it but it not pure evil like HN thinks.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#52

Post by adamnemecek »

rubicon33 wrote: post #2

> I liquidated my 401k savings (took all the tax penalties up front), and said "alright, gonna live off of this for as long as I can until I figure something out". This is the hard part in all of these stories. Props to him for having the courage (stupidity?). I think this forum is full of people who would not just love to quit their job and work on their own project, but would THRIVE in doing so. The problem is the…

I’ve actually realized that I was thinking about this wrong. If you spend a year doing shit, you will be in a fundamentally different position skill wise.

I quit my job over a year ago (I know, long time but my project is pretty ambitious). In that year I acquired way too many skills. Like I feel like a different person.

You aren’t betting necessarily on your project but more on yourself.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#53

Post by jabgrabdthrow »

GuiA wrote: post #30
justinpombrio wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're also not independent trials. If you just failed 9 times in a row, you're probably not the best at startups.

Or maybe you learned tons and it makes your 10th attempt more likely to succeed? Ultimately these ponderations are kind of meaningless in the absence of great data to frame them with.

At which number would you no longer make the point you just made? 100 failed startups? 50,000?

You’ve got a lot of faith in people. My number is maybe 5.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#54

Post by hansmalone »

CryoLogic wrote: post #24
rubicon33 wrote: post #2

> I liquidated my 401k savings (took all the tax penalties up front), and said "alright, gonna live off of this for as long as I can until I figure something out". This is the hard part in all of these stories. Props to him for having the courage (stupidity?). I think this forum is full of people who would not just love to quit their job and work on their own project, but would THRIVE in doing so. The problem is the…

If you are living in a high COL area like Seattle or Bay area consider moving to a low tax state with low COL. Kansas, Montana, Arizona, not places you want to stay forever but you can get a studio apt for $600-$700/mo. Can probably cut your expenses from LA in 1/3 if you are frugal and push your runway out several years until you start making profits.

Engineer in St. Louis here. I live in a crazy nice walkable area of the city and pay $400/mo splitting a 3 story house with 2 others. There are plenty of very livable cities esp in the midwest perfect for saving/working on passion projects, only off-limit because they aren't seen as tech hubs or considered hip (These are the best guesses I have). Honestly I don't really understand why programmers (or anybody working mainly on a computer) aren't getting work from home and living in cheaper more livable places. Shrugs the lack of demand is sure favoring my lifestyle.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#55

Post by krutzger »

Finally created an account, just to say this

"A Dark Room recently hit the #2 spot _overall_ on Google Play (pro tip: stick to iOS, the revenue is almost an order of magnitude better)"

I bought the game on android to support the developer despite the game being VERY late to android. With that said, the android port is horrible. It's behind garbage. Amir cannot talk about love for the code and release crap like that.

So treating android user as idiots. We pay for good game and avoid crap. Don't be crap.

Edit: ADR went quickly free on android because nobody would pay for that crap. So that's why it didn't make much money.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#56

Post by misnome »

loteck wrote: post #27

This guy made a lot of really questionable decisions. Put his future and family at risk. His only hit was porting someone else's hit game to iOS. He himself admits he is working again now only so he can build a stash and gamble it all again. I hope he finds success some day, but given his track record, I'm very skeptical of his conclusions.

Whilst perhaps a little harsh in its tone, this comment appears to be the only one commenting on the fact that it sounds like he only ported the existing game from web, didn’t create it.

So, depending on how much split with the original coder/creator that 800k might not have gone very far, and seems pretty good for “A port”. I wonder if/why not forming a small studio with the original creator would have worked.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#57

Post by hartator »

hateduser2 wrote: post #33
mkagenius wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then according to stats it would take infinite attempts to succeed. That's not how life works ;) edit: a clarification, that's not how a single human's life works. It will work if you take all humans together into account. If you apply that logic to individuals individually then nobody succeeds ever. edit2: a single human life individually doesn't get enough attempts to be statistically significant enough.

The other side says that there’s a 75% chance of not failing ten times in a row. What this says is that it probably doesn’t just happen when it’s a sure thing.

65%

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#58

Post by sremani »

amirrajan wrote: post #50
castle-bravo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it doesn't make any sense at all. He grossed over 800k on a video game, loves programming, but after another three years he has to go back to his day job? It sounds like he's burning over 100k/year and lying about his expenses in this report. In any case, there's a lot of information left out.

I give you my Armchair Expert of the Year Award. Congrats :-) Must be nice to live in a world without having to give Apple 30%, insurance premiums, taxes, and royalties/partnership splits. Take this comment in good spirit. We all make mistakes. Nothing but love for you. Go build awesome things. Hire a CPA for all the math related stuff.

I see this every day, people take the gross income number to the bank. In software world, the operational costs are less compared to other domains, but there are still costs and taxes.

Apple taking 30% cut is insane.

Re: A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

#59

Post by ryandrake »

angelsl wrote: post #21

No one's mentioned it yet, so I guess I'll be the one. I can't tolerate that many misspelt words and grammatical errors...

My guess is: English is his second language, but yes, I had a real hard time getting through that one. That piece would improve greatly with a little proofreading.
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