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Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

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Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#121

Post by zkid18 »

Hey Phillip, congrats on hitting the front page on HN.

Been using Gather.town at RecSys conference, and that was very exiting. I love the mechanics and UX, it reminds me Pokémon FireRed on GameBoy.

Just out of curiosity, how is your retention is doing? I understand, you probably has very heterogeneous users – some of them purchase one-time per-seat plan, some of them use it as an office replacement, but though. My concern is how this 8-bit mechanics works in the long-term.If you can shed some lights on that, would be cool.

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#122

Post by eambutu »

roguesherlock wrote: post #118
eambutu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh interesting, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Right now I'd say we're still in this "skewmorphic transition," where we gain a lot from just replicating more aspects of real life, and since it analogizes very easily people know what to do with it. As things become more mature and people become situated with it, we'll definitely be asking how we can break physical constraints and if there's a fundamentally be…

I actually haven’t thought deeply about this topic yet. I think it’s a tricky to judge whether re-inventing the wheel is important and would yield better results or one should just stick with the norms. And I genuinely believe that we definitely need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to workplaces. Trying to translate a physical workplace to a digital one seems logical but doesn’t feel right. And more importantly,…

I see! I think another angle, is to first create a virtual analog of a workplace, but then since it's virtual, it's super flexible and easy to experiment with. I think there's only so far you can get with these questions, off reasoning alone.

Another example of a project I worked on, which was similar, was this VR office: https://siemprecollective.com/vr.html . We basically made a one-to-one mapping of our physical office in VR, and the idea was after we had that, we could play around and tweak things very easily. And actually being able to TRY these new experiments was the whole point.

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#123

Post by aymeric »

knowtheworld wrote: post #89
andrenotgiant wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen someone publish something that way, (in a video with storyboard art visuals) I think it was a really effective way to demonstrate the issue and your idea.

Haha thanks! It took me some time to make that anime. I didn't get too much traction when publishing it. Good to know someone likes it!

What's your background? Why are you interested in this problem space?

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#124

Post by raziel2p »

jessmartin wrote: post #18
raziel2p wrote: post #15

For remote teams, I literally just want Slack but with named voice channels visible to everyone in the sidebar for discoverability.

It sounds like you want Discord.

If Discord had the possibility of Slack's channel system (everyone can create one, you choose which ones to join) then it'd be perfect.

For a very small remote organization, Discord would definitely be my go-to choice to start with, but privacy concerns and the fact that it stops working well with more people involved would eventually be a blocker.

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#126

Post by eambutu »

nend wrote: post #101
eambutu wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate more on why you would dislike using this to be "in the office"? Thanks for the feedback, this is very helpful.

I had to think about it a bit, but I think in the end it's probably due to a couple bad experiences at startups. There's a lot of toxic, authoritarian company cultures out there that hide behind the idea that in order to be a good coworker you need to upbeat, peppy, and thrilled to be working at all times. It seems to go hand in hand with the (usually toxic and exploitative) work hard/play hard mentality. If I were r…

Thanks for the really thoughtful feedback. I definitely hear this, and I think it would be crazy for us to think that we can build a single tool that will be useful across all ranges of team dynamics and culture.

FWIW, just like how companies can have different cultures around their physical spaces, they could have different practices/expectations set around the virtual space. For example, if there is now an expectation for people to be in the Gather office all the time, that seems like an issue with the company (and you could expect them to do other unpleasant things like, expect you to respond to Slack messages at 10 PM).

Another q would be: under the current paradigm, are you enjoying work from home more than physical offices? One of our goals here is to replicate the physical ones, so maybe this is just not directionally correct for you.

I also admit that I haven't had any of the particular experiences mention, so maybe I'm talking out of my sphere of knowledge here.

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#127

Post by eambutu »

abcxjeb284 wrote: post #125

Phillip - would you be open to using your platform for a non-profit art project? We don’t have many funds (see: COVID), but we are REALLY excited by the possibilities of the space you designed and the game maker map!! :)

Yup! Feel free to email us at hello@gather.town , and provide these details, and we'll figure something out.

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#128

Post by edelans »

Nice ! It looks like it's definitely not easy to engage conversation with strangers.

I tried it for 20minutes and wanted to connect to random people, but noone seems like they wanted to talk ! they just walk away (and going after them looked like harassment ).

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#130

Post by casi »

Ive been using this since your post way back at the start of the lockdowns. We have a small company, 5 people, and it works great for us to meet up. Itd be cool to have some slack-like features, maybe charater bots you or vhs/answerphone you coukd record messages too for people who join later. A forest where each tree is a repo in our github and we can indicate which branch we are on. Also being able to emote /dance etc and consumable status items would be cool. I guess find the balance of fun and productive ha
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