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

“It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

kickstarter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 392 posts

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#191

Post by DigitalJack »

lexicalscope wrote: post #139
rkangel wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like that term 'meta ignorance'. Yeah, it's descriptive. I think I re-purposed a term from an academic paper that referred to meta-stupidity: stupid people are too stupid to know that they're stupid. They did an experiment where they got people taking an exam to guess what mark they were going to get. In general, the lower scoring people in the exam over-estimated their mark more than the smart people.

Meta-stupidity actually has another term for it as well - the Dunning-Kruger effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect - people that are inexperienced in a topic don't know what they don't know (as you put it, meta-stupidity) and so think they're smarter than they actually are - people that are more knowledgable know how vast the topic is, so realize their knowledge is less compared to overall know…

The dunning kreuger effect is useless. Dumb people think they are smart, smart people think they are smart. Nothing to be gleaned from that. Only at the very fringe of the intelligent side do the lines of actual intelligence and perceived intelligence cross.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#192

Post by deaddodo »

Scuds wrote: post #159
themoonbus wrote: post #3

"But changing gameplay from 2D to 3D had a major impact on overall development cost (we found out a little too late)" Not to pile on, but this was very surprising to me... how could you not know that this would have a major impact?

"But changing gameplay from 2D to 3D had a major impact on overall development cost (we found out a little too late)" You and every other developer making the transition from SNES to PS1 in the mid 90's.

The irony here is that the publishers/developers working on Sega platforms DID understand 3D development, thanks to Sega's arcade business. They just weren't given the hardware to do so...

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#194

Post by dkersten »

pmr_ wrote: post #142
numbsafari wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what the backend motivations are. Clearly, the amount of work involved here was way too much. But if 72k can keep you alive on ramen and a futon so that you can make millions on the back-end ... Regardless, it's a gamble. But the up-front money isn't the only consideration. Especially if everyone has a real stake (which is not the case for startups in general).

72k can keep you alive on sub-standard living conditions, but it will not keep a team of 6-7 talented programmers and artists alive for very long. Not even for way below market pay and working in a garage. And a single person just cannot turn out something close to a AAA title.

Don't forget that they get a good chunk less than 72k. You gotta factor in KS' cut and the cost of obtaining and shipping the physical rewards.

I feel like a lot of people underestimate the work/cost involved in physical rewards. I remember reading a game devs blog post about the subject.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#195

Post by roel_v »

The assets of this company are, essentially, worthless. I think the liquidator would jump for joy on a bid of, let's say, 5 or 10k euros for all IP of this game. I've seen cases where IP that cost orders of magnitude more to develop sell for less, sometimes under the condition 'you have to take the office inventory too, because otherwise I have to pay for getting it disposed of' (where 'I' is the liquidator).

If anyone is motivated enough, it would take just 500-1000 people who would chip in some spare change to make this open source (I'm not interested in any of this, before anyone suggests it - just hinting to those mentioning 'open source').

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#196

Post by breischl »

Udo wrote: post #183

> I guess our public silence the last few months already said a lot. While I can personally understand this reaction to having trouble, it's not healthy nor is it fair to cease communication in this way. A lot of promising projects announce difficulties by falling silent, including Limit Theory , which I was looking forward to seeing realized some day. Maybe crowdfunded projects need to shift to a mindset where it's…

I didn't fund Limit Theory, but I've been following it because it does look cool. You may have missed it, but the developer recently resurfaced. Hopefully he'll get things back on track...

http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4492

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#197

Post by Goronmon »

kkt262 wrote: post #42

It's interesting that failure articles seem to always go up to #1 on HackerNews. Why is that?

Well, success stories tend to share the same sentiment of "Everything worked out because we worked so hard and cared so much!". It can be important to also share the failures that tend to share the sentiment of "We worked so hard and cared so much, but things didn't work out."

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#198

Post by mattdeboard »

Really honest letter that is simultaneously an apology and an explanation, without making excuses.

I wonder if more experienced game developers could have recognized the failure much further down the track and pulled the plug (or taken on a lot more funding?) before it took the company under. I also wonder, if this undertaking had been made in the US, would the outcome have been any different due to different... I dunno, funding laws or more available funding from traditional investors?

Was the completeness of the failure of GRIN down to the fact they spent way more money than they had trying to prove a point (don't need to do pixel or highly stylized art) ?

The game industry is interesting to me because of the nature of the problems they have to solve, but it is so damn brutal I don't want any part of it.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#199

Post by mturmon »

gambiting wrote: post #84
raverbashing wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USD or GBP?

$30k USD, converted from GBP for the convenience of US readers ;-)

That is a very low figure (more than 3x lower than early-career programmers where I work) for what is probably very hard work. I hope you've considered all options.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#200

Post by WmyEE0UsWAwC2i »

rkangel wrote: post #44
dmbaggett wrote: post #10

I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…

Issues with estimating, particularly something like this, mostly comes down to meta-ignorance: you don't know what you don't know. Given a particular problem of a similar sort to something he's worked on, an experienced engineer will be able to list 10 different issues that might crop up. An inexperienced engineer won't know of those potential problems and will just see the most optimistic path possible. When you're…

Maybe it is easier to come out with a list of:

a. "things that would mean the project failed."

in contrast to:

b. "things that could lead the project to fail."

For "a" one could list. There is no money left. The team desintegrates. Etc...

And finally ask yourself, what could I do now so that, if we arrive to any of the listed sutations the damage is reduced.

Take this comment with a grain of salt. As every other comment on the internet.

Post reply on HN