Why Toys?
blog.ycombinator.com
Why Toys?
1–10 of 211 posts
Re: Why Toys?
#2Toys are on demand because people have become more childish in a way. Avoiding responsibility, seeking protection, hiding behind the groupthink, having more time to engage in juvenile/schoolyard behavior. That is not considered in the article.
Re: Why Toys?
#3Toys are on demand because people have become more childish in a way. Avoiding responsibility, seeking protection, hiding behind the groupthink, having more time to engage in juvenile/schoolyard behavior. That is not considered in the article.
Looks like you didn't get pass the title.
Re: Why Toys?
#4> This trend does not fit with history either. Standard Oil, US Steel, and Boeing were all iconically huge companies that were built as businesses. None of them went through a phase where they looked like toys.
This is largely because "inventing a new thing" and "building a massive business from that invention" are more closely linked now than they have been, historically. Standard Oil and US Steel postdated the invention of steel and steam engines by centuries. Boeing postdated the Wright Flyer by a few years, and even then mostly got off the ground due to the World Wars. (And the Wrights actually did try and make a business out of their invention, but that's another story.)
The Apple I was a toy computer designed in 1976. The Apple II was a mass-market personal computer designed in 1977 by the designer of the Apple I. There wasn't a World War nor any obvious military applications for the early Apple Computers, and the inventor who designed them (Woz) just happened to be close friends with someone who was just mercenary enough to try and make a business out of it (Jobs).
Re: Why Toys?
#5One of my favorite pg ideas: "When something is described as a toy, that means it has everything an idea needs except being important. It's cool; users love it; it just doesn't matter. But if you're living in the future and you build something cool that users love, it may matter more than outsiders think."
Re: Why Toys?
#6Toys are on demand because people have become more childish in a way. Avoiding responsibility, seeking protection, hiding behind the groupthink, having more time to engage in juvenile/schoolyard behavior. That is not considered in the article.
"Unless you are doing cutting-edge research in your daily job, you are not much different from those indies working on "superficial crap", apart from the fact that being "part of a company" gives you the illusion that it's more legitimate. Was google search or skype superficial and trivial? They started as programmer toys. The point of the article is that a programmer can start with $0 and build the whole product."
You, 6 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3202808#3203672
"Show HN: A cryptocurrency portfolio simulator game"
You, 28 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16122873
Re: Why Toys?
#7Let's not forget perhaps the biggest toy to turn serious business in the past century or so: the microcomputer itself. Without which there wouldn't even be a Facebook, or a Y Combinator.
Re: Why Toys?
#8Toys are on demand because people have become more childish in a way. Avoiding responsibility, seeking protection, hiding behind the groupthink, having more time to engage in juvenile/schoolyard behavior. That is not considered in the article.
Many large tech businesses start out as "toys" because its easier to build a new technology to pursue something trivial than something essential. That's just how development works.
Hobbies will pay more for something that might be a novelty than an improvement in efficiency.
Tesla started with Luxury cars for the same reason, and those cars could be considered "toys" of a certain type.
The next Microsoft or Google could very well be developing a "candy crush" style game in VR right now, because that is the market that pays for experimentation.
Re: Why Toys?
#9This is a really good post but it is disappointing that nowhere in the post it mentions Chris Dixon's post on this: http://cdixon.org/2010/01/03/the-next-big-thing-will-start-o...
Re: Why Toys?
#10This reminds me a lot of a chapter in Jesse Schell's awesome book, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.[1][2]
He recommends occasionally thinking about a game as a toy.
"The Lens of The Toy: To use this lens, stop thinking about whether your game is fun to play, and start thinking about whether it is fun to play with."
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Book-Lenses/dp/012369...
[2] PDF version (see book page 90 // PDF page 119): http://www.sg4adults.eu/files/art-game-design.pdf