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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

#191

Post by BigJono »

throwawayyy9876 wrote: post #181

I am curious as to why some people think being paid $140,000 a year is 'disgusting'? I live in Australia so the comparison is a bit different, but here electricians and carpenters will very frequently make over $130,000 a year. Traffic controllers can make up to $180,000 a year, which is an unskilled job with only two days training [1]. In the prime of their careers, dentists, lawyers and doctors can commonly make ov…

That article is a crock of shit by the way. I know two traffic controllers and they're both on $25 an hour. I'm sure there's a couple somewhere that are well connected with the unions and get sweet gigs, or some actual engineers that get put on traffic control duty and earn that salary, but you can't just walk into a $140k job off 2 years experience doing traffic control like you can in software in SV.

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

#192

Post by raoulj »

gwern wrote: post #64
GuiA wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I recall correctly, one of the Compass VC analyses covered serial entrepreneurs and found that there was no increase in success rates and each attempt looked independent. There's just that much randomness in it, and I suppose the various selection effects cancel out.

I googled around for this document to no success. Do anyone have a link to this?

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

#193

Post by sooheon »

mgkimsal wrote: post #158
cornholio wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

The game theoretic problem is that they cannot explore other rates without giving away the fact. The 30% suddenly looks a lot less set in stone (and less initially justified), and cue incessant deluge of pushback.

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

#194

Post by jblow »

amirrajan wrote: post #171
jblow wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sma…

Mildly Interesting RTS looks pretty good to be honest. Have you downloaded it? It's surprisingly a lot of fun. Solid review score too. Oh and totally give A Dark Room a shot. You may find it pretty okay. PS: I'm totally gonna frame this comment thread. I'm big fan Braid and The Witness. You? Not so much :-)

It’s unfortunate you had to take this ad hominem.

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

#195

Post by dwaltrip »

andrepd wrote: post #95
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is with dice. Startups are not independent random events because some people are better at making startups than other people are.

That's your claim. What evidence do you have for that? What if it is just (or majorly, like 95%) just getting lucky?

Luck plays a big role, but there are also other important dynamics.

Domain expertise, creativity, intelligence, education, insights from other fields, financial resources, connections to other impactful individuals, personality, etc. Such things significantly affect how events unfold.

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

#196

Post by throwawayyy9876 »

BigJono wrote: post #191
throwawayyy9876 wrote: post #181

I am curious as to why some people think being paid $140,000 a year is 'disgusting'? I live in Australia so the comparison is a bit different, but here electricians and carpenters will very frequently make over $130,000 a year. Traffic controllers can make up to $180,000 a year, which is an unskilled job with only two days training [1]. In the prime of their careers, dentists, lawyers and doctors can commonly make ov…

That article is a crock of shit by the way. I know two traffic controllers and they're both on $25 an hour. I'm sure there's a couple somewhere that are well connected with the unions and get sweet gigs, or some actual engineers that get put on traffic control duty and earn that salary, but you can't just walk into a $140k job off 2 years experience doing traffic control like you can in software in SV.

A fair point. It was a silly example to use and seems to be limited to CFMEU members which is not part of the market operating as normal.

Still - do you think $140k is too much for any one person to make?

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

#197

Post by hyperpallium »

evmar wrote: post #4

"If we spend a second thinking about this, if 9 out of 10 startups fail, then we only need to roll the dice 10 times and the last startup will (by statistics) achieve success." That is not how statistics works. : With a 90% failure rate, your chance of failing 10 times in a row is (9/10)^10 ~= 35%.

But if you try 21.8543 times, the odds invert, to 90% success!

Also, you'll probably learn something from all those trials, improving the odds.

But a bigger problem is measuring "failure"... how long and hard must you work before calling it quits, for it to count as a trial? Throwing up one "MVP" website a day for 22 days probably shouldn't count... Perhaps, 3 months full-time (about the runway YCers get)? And, 3 months off to recover.

So, 11 years, for a 90% shot... assuming you're already imdependemtly wealthy.

Like those robbers planning to get money out of bank in the form of a wage for working there, there's probably an easier way.

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

#198

Post by imesh »

His math for what it takes to roll dice once doesn't make any sense. If you can live off $15k a year, than can't he just work one year for $30k and roll the dice? It seems unnecessary to ever take the other jobs after his first year of working.

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

#199

Post by a_t48 »

amirrajan wrote: post #177
a_t48 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are companies like that, but they are tough to get into (generally small company, low budget, low openings). I personally think it would be cool to work on the next Journey/The Witness/Monument Valley/etc, but it’s a crapshoot of knowing the right people at the right time with opportunity to jump on. I’m personally saving up until that opportunity comes or I go nuts like you and quit to do my own thing. Best of…

Thank you for the well wishes. You'd be surprised at how small/close knit the game dev communities are (come to TouchArcade's after party at GDC and say hello to figuratively every indie worth their salt). There isn't really a company that any of use work for per se, but "all" of us are collaborating in one way or another to make sure we succeed collectively. It's pretty great, but you have to have the battle scars t…

I believe it. Game industry is a small place. I miss shipping.

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

#200

Post by midnightclubbed »

user5994461 wrote: post #164
bufferoverflow wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The unspoken secret is own your home. Life is a lot easier when there is no rent.

True, but then you need more than the $750k to buy a house outright AND retire. And you certainly can't buy in the areas where you were earning that $140k. Owning outright makes things easier but there's always property taxes to pay, along with maintenance and upkeep.
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