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A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k

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

#151

Post by bringtheaction »

MattRix wrote: post #142
canes123456 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think you misunderstood what he wrote... He was saying that it's hard to compete in F2P unless you use the same scummy tactics that everyone else does. That's why he made Clicker Heroes 2 as a non-F2P game.

> 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.

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

#152

Post by jblow »

yannyu wrote: post #134
jblow wrote: post #132

Yes, the game market is often hard. But I find this author's attitude fatalistic and weird. (Also I agree that the numbers do not add up). He seems to think that "rolling the dice" is the primary thing going on, and that he can't influence this substantially by any amount of development skill, proper tactics, and so forth. I wonder if this kind of mindset is a side-effect of modern-day political correctness -- that i…

I don't think most people think all success is 100% luck, but many people do find issue with those who consider themselves self-made without any consideration for privilege and luck. It feels like you're setting up a strawman here of people who believe that all success is unearned. The author only said that there are those who work as hard as he does and are as smart as him and yet don't succeed. How else would you r…

Have you seen A Dark Room? It's text.

He ported a text game, that someone else had already designed and implemented, to iOS.

This is not a huge amount of work compared to what most game development people do, and is not particularly challenging compared to what people are doing with 3D graphics, etc.

I am pointing this out not to be mean, but to respond to your point: "those who work as hard as he does and are as smart as him". What he did for A Dark Room was something pretty much any iOS programmer can do, and in those conditions it's natural not to expect to be noticed in a crowded market. i.e. he evidently did not do anything noticeably smarter or work noticeably harder than anyone else.

This doesn't mean he can't do smarter and bigger things, just that a port of ADR is not that, and neither were his other descriptions of projects he did in the meantime (for example, look at the screenshots for Mildly Interesting RTS).

I think when this is the limit of what one is attempting, one has no right to complain that people aren't buying one's stuff (and should not be surprised at that either!)

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

#153

Post by ramzyo »

vermilingua wrote: post #129
amirrajan wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>questionable decisions That’s an understatement. >His only hit was porting someone else’s game Yep. He’s a hack job for sure. There is no way he’ll be successful in future stuff tbh.

Sarcastic self-deprecation without actually addressing the complaints doesn't really work to your credit tbh.

Agreed!

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

#154

Post by beambot »

FireBeyond wrote: post #93
GuiA wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4% withdrawal rate is a conservative figure often used to live “forever” from a portfolio (use 3% if you want to be more conservative, 5-6% for more risk friendly). To get $30k a year, that’s a starting portfolio of $750k. [0] If you’re making $140k a year and living frugally, you can amass $750k in less than 10 years, perhaps even 5-7 if you are really frugal + lucky with the market. It’s within reach of most softwa…

The problem with your assumption is you're "living frugally" not for the ten years to make your portfolio withdrawal rate, you're doing it _for the rest of your life_. You live on $30K / year (in the Bay Area/NY, where you're most likely to find a starting / junior / midrange position that offers $140K - remembering that needs to be liquid)... and after your ten years of "living frugally" (and let's be clear, it's go…

You can always still work (job, contract, consulting, etc) even if you're "soft retired." It's just that you have a lot more freedom in the selection, and you can pursue things that carry more personal fulfillment than MegaCorp job with lots of responsibilities.

As for living frugally: Don't live _in_ SF. For a short BART or Caltrain ride, you can live in a $1500/mo. apartment that is beautiful.

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

#155

Post by matte_black »

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.

Or you might think you’ve learned tons but you’ve actually learned all the wrong lessons and are spiraling hopelessly confident in the wrong direction. Failure doesn’t owe you anything.

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

#156

Post by mgkimsal »

michaelt wrote: post #119
otakucode wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, that 'safety' of a 'regular' income is almost entirely illusory as well. Employers stopped providing insulation from market fluctuations in the 1980s. If your market dips, your company will hemorrhage workers without a second thought. Your desire for a place you can 'settle down' will also be ruthlessly exploited, and if you don't jump to a different company every 4 or 5 years, you will rapidly end up…

that 'safety' of a 'regular' income is almost entirely illusory as well Sure, to an extent, but there are differences of degree here. If I work for Google and they go bankrupt, worst case I lose a month's salary and I'm unemployed. And the chance of that is probably below 5% per year (obviously depends on the company) If I take a year off to develop my indie game, the odds are much worse, I gamble a year's salary not…

"If I work for Google and they go bankrupt,"

Google may be a bad example. Google actually filing for bankruptcy would probably have a pretty big ripple effect on tech and financial sectors, and your skills may be in less demand than you think.

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

#157

Post by amirrajan »

vermilingua wrote: post #129
amirrajan wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>questionable decisions That’s an understatement. >His only hit was porting someone else’s game Yep. He’s a hack job for sure. There is no way he’ll be successful in future stuff tbh.

Sarcastic self-deprecation without actually addressing the complaints doesn't really work to your credit tbh.

The entire write up was me explicitly stating that it was dumb and that there was an immense amount of luck involved.

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

#158

Post by mgkimsal »

cornholio wrote: post #128
mentos wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really feel like Apple's 30% tax is not optimal and a lower % would actually stimulate more development for them

I'm sure Apple made a complex assessment to determine 30% as 'optimal'. The problem here is the oversupply of apps and the undersupply of paying customers - Apple has a duty to it's shareholders to skim that market as much as possible. While it might appear unfair for Apple to take such a large cut of 'your' money, Apple looks at this the other way around: you cost them quite a lot of the money their customers are wi…

"I'm sure Apple made a complex assessment to determine 30% as 'optimal'."

Given that they've never actually run any large scale tests of the effect of different rates, it's probably safer to say this is a number that just 'feels right' - it doesn't look 'too greedy' up front, but isn't too low that shareholders might think they're leaving money on the table.

Dropping it to 22 or 25% for a couple of years would give some real numbers as to what the true impact would be. Even if the numbers were studied years ago, the current behaviour and ecosystem would be different.

As an apple shareholder, I would prefer that they explore other rates and then demonstrate that this is the best one.

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

#159

Post by bufferoverflow »

GuiA wrote: post #45
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #11

The math on this makes no sense at all. > - Live off of $15k a year. Don't buy a house. Don't buy a fancy car. Just save. - Do this for a year. - Land a job that makes you $100k a year. Save the rest. Max out your 401k contribution. - Celebrate by living off of $30k a year. - Do this for three years. - Land a job that makes you $140k a year. Save the rest. Max out your 401k contribution. Get a Roth, put $5k a year in…

4% withdrawal rate is a conservative figure often used to live “forever” from a portfolio (use 3% if you want to be more conservative, 5-6% for more risk friendly). To get $30k a year, that’s a starting portfolio of $750k. [0] If you’re making $140k a year and living frugally, you can amass $750k in less than 10 years, perhaps even 5-7 if you are really frugal + lucky with the market. It’s within reach of most softwa…

In the US your health insurance and rent alone will likely be over $30K. I have no idea how one can live on $15K, unless it's some really unpleasant place or an RV. And if you have any health issues, you're done.

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

#160

Post by amirrajan »

krutzger wrote: post #121
amirrajan wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works great on the devices I’ve tested on. Which is like 4 out of the 15,000 possible OS+Device+Carrier combinations.

If it looks like a half-loaded web page on a nexus (which is the reference device for the platform) then something is wrong. Please don't take offence, I'm just trying to explain why it did so bad on android. edit: you don't need to test your app on 1500 devices. They are all the same, if you plan for it only two devices (big/small screen) should suffice. Source: former app developer.

You’d be surprised at how many variations exist out there. Source: app developer who has had 300k downloads of his Android port and has dealt with death threats from people trying to run his game on a device that has the processing power of a toaster.
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