Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Virtual Reality is going to change the world

notch.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 221 posts

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#211

Post by bsilvereagle »

TheCapn wrote: post #201
Nursie wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet another reason that kickstarter should be equity based. At the moment it's basically a charitable donation to someone else's success.

Someone who's read the terms of use and licensing and all those other jazzy legal documents could correct me if I'm wrong, but is there anything stopping a company from having one of their promises an equity stake in the company? Say, I'm running a kickstarter and put a tier of funding as "equity". I put aside 10% ownership of my brand to those willing to pay $1,000 or more (for instance). If I set up terms that thos…

Kickstarter does not allow the exchange of equity.

https://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/kickstarter+basics#faq_...

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#212

Post by chc »

yaeger wrote: post #175
Argorak wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are oversimplifying things as well. On the "cash on the table" side of things you are right: people put cash on the table and got the goods. On the other hand, Kickstarter is a platform where people invest in future of some geeks. A successful funding drive plays on emotions, on promises and a glimpse of the future. A lot of the people that got a dev kit were closely monitoring what Oculus was doing and were plea…

>On the other hand, Kickstarter is a platform where people invest in future of some geeks. And because of that it should be a rule that no other investors or partnerships should be possible once you go to kickstarter? What about the past two rounds of investments Oculus went through? Did all backers threw fits like this? How many other entities have given money to Oculus and have a say in how things should be run at…

You keep using the words "investor" and "partner," but that isn't what people are talking about. They're talking about an owner.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#213

Post by ekianjo »

noir_lord wrote: post #202
quasque wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> optical nerve transducers Apart from some limited, low-resolution medical trials for people who've lost their eyesight already, this is firmly in the arena of science fiction and not going to happen any time soon.

> Apart from some limited, low-resolution medical trials for people who've lost their eyesight already, this is firmly in the arena of science fiction and not going to happen any time soon. Define any time soon. The year I was born the ZX80 was released, it cost about two weeks wages (revolutionary at the time for it's price point) and had a 3.25Mhz processor with 1KB of memory. Against that backdrop imagine walking…

> oh and it has 256 times the RAM and a two orders of magnitude more storage and costs less than a weeks wages and run for a full day off a single charge consuming less power than the Cray 1's circulation pump.

Yeah but mobile processing power is not increasing at the same pace now as it was 2 years ago. The pace is clearly slowing down, just like computational power on PCs too. You don't get 2x faster processors every year anymore. They are adding more cores, but that's not nearly the same thing as single thread performance.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#214

Post by e12e »

calbear81 wrote: post #87
smacktoward wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition He really puts his finger on one of the reasons why this deal feels so weird here, I think. Nobody who contributed to the Oculus Kickstarter did so because they were hoping Oculus would get flipped to a mega-corp. They didn't do so because they wanted the Oculus team to have a big, splashy VC-style exit. They…

How is pre-ordering not just a form of fundraising on Kickstarter that skirts the laws around crowsourced investing? Couldn't a startup just go on Kickstarter, promise some type of product to be delivered x months in the future, raise their seed and focus on getting bought w/o ever having to give up any equity?

What is all the FUD around Kickstarter here on HN? Kickstarter isn't investing. It is a form of pre-order donation, helping to bootstrap a viable market for a product the backer believes in. From the terms of use[1]:

"Kickstarter does not offer refunds. A Project Creator is not required to grant a Backer’s request for a refund unless the Project Creator is unable or unwilling to fulfill the reward.

Project Creators are required to fulfill all rewards of their successful fundraising campaigns or refund any Backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill. Project Creators may cancel or refund a Backer’s pledge at any time and for any reason, and if they do so, are not required to fulfill the reward."

So, if you go on kickstarter and never have any intention to deliver rewards, you're breaking the TOS. How often have this actually happened? I'm sure some number of funded projects have probably disappeared -- but is it really a significant number considering the scale of Kickstarter?

I also see that roughly 45% of projects are funded -- so that's a pretty decent filter right there. For my own anecdotal experience with Kickstarter, I've yet to be "cheated" -- a couple of games I've bought/supported are still under development, but seem to be right on track (Elite, Start Citizen, Torment and Wasteland 2). I've backed some one-off projects, and helped kick-start three businesses: hexbright.com, Printrbot and peakdesignltd.com/capture/‎

Why should I be upset that my "reward" for supporting these are a subsidized great little product, and not half of a share of the company? I mean, the risk investing in something like any of these seem on average much larger than "most probably getting a cheap, unique product". Yes, the reward is less too -- but I don't understand why people seem to think this has something to do with investing?

Kickstarter provides actionable market research. That's it. It's a chance to trial selling your product, proving it's viability.

Sure, if I had a million dollars lying around, it might have been great if, say the founder of hexbright came to me and asked me for captial, so that I could be the one benefiting from his idea, not him. But for "real" me, that haven't got any substantial capital to invest, that outcome would've been worse. I think it's great that Kickstarter helps lower the need for up front investment for starting a business.

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use?ref=footer

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#215

Post by dagw »

varkson wrote: post #209
dagw wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Bungie gave up on the RTS concept and made it a shooter before Microsoft purchased them.

I haven't heard that, but I don't remember much about Halo at that time. I do remember when Halo RTS was revealed, Bungie was talking about how they were sick of FPS games after Marathon and wanted to do an RTS.

Just checked wikipedia. Bungie changed from an RTS to a "third-person action game" before Microsoft came in. Microsoft changed it to an FPS.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#216

Post by scient »

rubinelli wrote: post #165
DanBC wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better analogy: Band wants to release music. Have a sucessful kickstarter and release an exciting first album to backers. Everyone is excited. Band then signs to a label that won't let people listen to the music without signing in to a social network first, and who will post "Joe Bloggs likes Band!" on your wall, and who only let you listen to the music in their app.

The funny thing is, every major game company does exactly that. Want to play this offline, single-player game? Well, let's first create an account in our service, so we can enhance our experience! Wow, you collected your first item! Here's an achievement that will show up on all of your friends' feeds, along with how long you've been playing. Surely you want to announce to the world you spent your last twenty hours p…

And even more funny is the fact that there is absolutely _nothing_ hinting that is is planned or would happen with Oculus at all. Sure, there is a possibility, but at this points its mostly just wild speculations and pure hating imho.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#217

Post by scient »

BeggarsAll wrote: post #88

I completely agree with Notch on this one. Facebook are just buying Oculus because they need to show the investors and board they can innovate. Facebook is a dying product, they're losing users, making bad design decisions and know the only way to remain relevant is to buy up other business regardless of the niche.

And you have zero arguments to present to support your claims. Nicely done, future armchair CEO.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#218

Post by madeofpalk »

smacktoward wrote: post #27
skore wrote: post #4

For a guy who is otherwise rather easy going, Notch can be incredibly pragmatic and strident. Here, he has cut to heart of the issue. > And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition. > Don’t get me wrong, VR is not bad for social. He is right - "social", especially in the way Facebook is doing it at the moment, is terrible for VR. Terrible for any technolog…

> And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition He really puts his finger on one of the reasons why this deal feels so weird here, I think. Nobody who contributed to the Oculus Kickstarter did so because they were hoping Oculus would get flipped to a mega-corp. They didn't do so because they wanted the Oculus team to have a big, splashy VC-style exit. They…

How would you feel if Valve bought Oculus?

Do you think the internet's reaction would be different?

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#219

Post by rabz »

joezydeco wrote: post #185
Nursie wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet another reason that kickstarter should be equity based. At the moment it's basically a charitable donation to someone else's success.

Um, you do get a product if it successfully completes. That's what most people are paying for.

These products or services are not guaranteed by Kickstarter or Kickstartees though, so we backers aren't paying for a product alone. In many cases, the value of the product is not commensurate with the money paid. Notch certainly didn't get his $10000 worth from getting a kit and meeting Carmack—he could have picked up a kit after the campaign and met Carmack at GDC or Quakecon or wherever. It's more akin to donating $100 to PBS and getting a tote bag and a $70 tax write-off, without the write-off. As others have said, it's a charitable donation to a cool project from which backers could possibly get some benefits.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#220

Post by deerpig »

smacktoward wrote: post #48
mambodog wrote: post #12

VR will be like the web. Eventually it will belong to all of us. Once it gets off the ground, no single company will be able to ruin it. Just like touchscreen smartphones, initially we had the iPhone which is relatively locked down and controlled by a single vendor, but now we have cheap, commoditised hardware of acceptable quality. More importantly, the real 'platform' for smartphones is the web, which is as open as…

The Web belongs to all of us because the people who invented it made the incredibly generous decision to set it free. (I've written a little about how that decision was made here: http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/05/the-act-of-generosity-that... ) I don't see anybody rushing to put their VR IP into the public domain.

But a lot of technologies that could be used for VR, are free, VRML and Web3D, OpenGl etc.
Post reply on HN