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Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

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Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#131

Post by api »

angrais wrote: post #67
coldcode wrote: post #58

I know what building an MMO is like, having worked on one 10 years ago that was already 10 years old and still exists today (small audience though). Building something like these people are talking about requires more $ than a Marvel superhero movie to get anywhere. We could manage about 100 simultaneous players visible to each other in a reasonable time but no more; the internet is not fast enough to manage more tha…

Could you explain how world of Warcraft works then? You can certainly have more than 200 in one place at once... Are they doing some tricks to make this appear as if it's working but in reality it is not? Would love to hear your opinion.

The WoW world is not very mutable unless something big has changed since I last played it. The amount of state to be managed is small. It’s basically location, inventory, some ephemeral projectiles, etc. Only a small number of players can see each other at the same time too, so it’s not like thousands of people in a virtual colloseum.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#132

Post by runawaybottle »

monoideism wrote: post #129
runawaybottle wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have to ask, I’ll go ahead and take a wild guess. I looked at the founder’s bios. A couple of white guys, think one worked at a few FAANGs - textbook archetype for ‘certainly people of this type know what they are doing’. Yeah, we do live in that world. This shit might be the most valid textbook case of white male privilege ever. Edit: I usually have a very high bar for throwing around while male privilege thi…

It's insulting for many white men who don't come from privilege - some from poor backgrounds, or rural backgrounds, or non-college educated backgrounds, or health status, etc, etc - to pull out the hackneyed "white male privilege" stereotype here. Why not use the more accurate term for people like this, who went from a wealthy or upper-middle class home, to an Ivy, to a FAANG, to an easily funded startup? They're the…

I think you are 100% right. I didn’t have the words for it I guess, just the emotion, and picked something off the shelf.

I’ll just add this though, I promise you 2 girls would never have gotten this funded lol.

And I ain’t a girl either, or a white knight.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#133

Post by runawaybottle »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #65
runawaybottle wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have to ask, I’ll go ahead and take a wild guess. I looked at the founder’s bios. A couple of white guys, think one worked at a few FAANGs - textbook archetype for ‘certainly people of this type know what they are doing’. Yeah, we do live in that world. This shit might be the most valid textbook case of white male privilege ever. Edit: I usually have a very high bar for throwing around while male privilege thi…

Plenty of articles, including this one, have interviewed insiders that have revealed that they got to skip the vetting process due to nepotism. You might want to re-asses your "high bar" and stop making "wild guesses".

I’m not married to this fight. Nepotism is a gameplay mechanic in the whole privilege thing. So is corruption, collusion, etc. The broader theme can still stand.

But, I don’t want this fight, and you are probably right I’m off base and too quick on the trigger here.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#134

Post by dang »

lvs wrote: post #120
zumu wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely damaging to the YC brand. I'd like to see a postmortem on how these _blatant_ con artists got through.

Maybe the brand is a little bit hyped to begin with? I suspect there are only two companies these VCs have ever funded that are known to turn a profit. It seems like they've trained a generation of young smart people on how to get rich by losing money.

What a strange thing to hear. Even I can tell you that many more than "two" YC companies have become profitable, and I'm pretty removed from the business side of YC.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#135

Post by xmly »

themacguffinman wrote: post #55
ffhhj wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Favoritism shown or patronage granted to relatives and friends. But I think this is just an example that shows investment is merely gambling.

Not necessarily, the article mentions that YC allegedly never even vetted the project: > According to Upton, a senior employee at Y Combinator claims that Bellack has a friend in the accelerator who helped greenlight DreamWorld without the appropriate due diligence. "Originally, I thought this was a bit of a joke, but they called me and validated all their information and their sources. This person is actually higher…

Should not be a surprise after Theranos.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#136

Post by weird-eye-issue »

p1necone wrote: post #82
ElectricalUnion wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 200 in one place 200 players in one map instance. But not 200 visible player with interactions refreshing on real time. Most likely you see diminishing level of details, if anything besides complete fabrication or no data at all after a certain visibility range threshold.

This doesn't really matter though, after a certain point there isn't much difference to players between 50 people and 200 people within visible distance. You can just stop showing others past some cap, or throttle position updates to like 1 every 20 seconds or so and fill in the gaps with AI.

Actually it makes a huge difference. You haven't played WoW have you?

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#137

Post by Fomite »

fooey wrote: post #106
MattieTK wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was part of the exciting suggestion of the original Stadia trailers: with the entire game and all the interactions happening in Google datacentres, you would only need to receive a rendered version, and suddenly all this would be possible. Of course none of that has happened and Google folded their games studio, which is par for them, but does go some way to reinforcing this point that there's a reason this stuf…

Stadia isn't magic though, it just runs on whatever random GPU they have lying around. It was never going to be better than what you can build yourself.

No, but it might have been better than what you had.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#138

Post by plorkyeran »

angrais wrote: post #67
coldcode wrote: post #58

I know what building an MMO is like, having worked on one 10 years ago that was already 10 years old and still exists today (small audience though). Building something like these people are talking about requires more $ than a Marvel superhero movie to get anywhere. We could manage about 100 simultaneous players visible to each other in a reasonable time but no more; the internet is not fast enough to manage more tha…

Could you explain how world of Warcraft works then? You can certainly have more than 200 in one place at once... Are they doing some tricks to make this appear as if it's working but in reality it is not? Would love to hear your opinion.

WoW's servers fall down pretty hard if you have 200 players in one spot doing more than just running around. The Ashran battleground was lowered below 40v40 for a while because even just that many players fighting each other was enough to get multi-second lag on abilities.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#139

Post by somehnacct3757 »

endisneigh wrote: post #96

Our of curiosity - to the game devs out there: The article suggests this game isn’t possible, as described, even with an infinite budget. Is this true? If the game were 2 dimensional (either top down or side scroller) would it be possible?

Former game dev, ten years in the industry. I don't think money is going to be their bottleneck. It's going to be game dev expertise.

This game idea is incredibly banal. It's like the pitch you'd get if you asked a kid to design a game. Pitches like these are punchlines in game dev circles.

Throw in the article's claims that people are working 80 hour weeks and the owners are offering 20% rev shares with streamers, I just don't see anyone who knows what they're doing taking these guys seriously.

With a more professional pitch, one which describes accurately the constraints, it's possible. For example, you can have a hundred million DAU if your game is primarily asynchronous multiplayer. This was being done a decade ago on Facebook. You can have user generated content cover your content gap if you rev share with content creators as Roblox does.

They are basically pitching a game platform but never tell you why their game platform will even boot.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#140

Post by shrikant »

zumu wrote: post #104
kleinsch wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I’ve found it interesting reading about YC companies from this batch that include: - A scam MMO - Terminal autocomplete as a service - A Splitwise clone - An app that puts your next meeting in your menu bar (for $10/month!) YC gets 5K+ applications/cycle, accepts 1-3%, so they rejected 4500+ companies for these?

Definitely damaging to the YC brand. I'd like to see a postmortem on how these _blatant_ con artists got through.

Some of us remember when YC funded InstallMonetizer and people around these parts were defending it.

I doubt it'll affect the brand.

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