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CodeCombat in Y Combinator

blog.nickwinter.net

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Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#51

Post by [deleted] »

gsaines wrote: post #48
6ren wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, Notch hasn't open sourced Minecraft. Id did open source some games, but only well after the main burst of sales had dried up. Counterpoint: reddit and HN are open sourced (are they games? they have points...) Just some data points, not advice.

We're not really open source zealots or anything, but Quake did score points in my book for being cross platform back when everything was released only for windows. For most projects/businesses, there's always a tension between open sourcing and making money, I really hope that we're at a market intersection where it actually makes monetary sense to keep things open.

[deleted]

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#52

Post by gsaines »

pla3rhat3r wrote: post #42

So happy for these guys! I let my kids play this and they love the game!

Thanks for the kind words pla3rhat3r, we're hoping to release a bunch of new content soon as well as open up the level editor so folks can contribute their own levels, so please do check back! Also, if you kids find anything we can improve, please let us know.

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#53

Post by jiggy2011 »

highCs wrote: post #41
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #7

Hi, gamedev here. At one point on stage, you brought up the possibility of open sourcing your code, and Paul cautioned you that you may want to follow game industry conventions. There are two reasons the game industry tends to keep their code closed-source. 1) It has been lucrative for game studios to sell licenses to their closed-source engine. Some game studios, such as Id Software, have made hundreds of millions o…

Id Software, have made hundreds of millions of dollars (if not $1B) They didn't make that much, far from that. Id Software has been sold to zenimax with all its assets including their IPs and their people for only (edit: and around) 1 hundred million dollar - because they were runnning out of cash. My advice to the codecombat devs is at the opposite of pg's one: don't talk to the game industry. Most of all those said…

Gaming IP must lose value over time. It's hard to imagine anybody paying very much for the quake 3 IP now since more advanced engines are available for free.

That's not to say they didn't make many $ licensing it back in the early 2000s. That said in the case of this startup the tech itself is probably not where most of the value is.

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#55

Post by AdamTReineke »

gsaines wrote: post #39
ryanjodonnell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to hear that, skritter is amazing! Good luck with your next endeavours :)

Definitely, thanks for your understanding!

It has been a few years since I was on Skritter but I've been debating starting up again. Is it still Flash-based?

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#56

Post by gsaines »

gsaines wrote: post #39
ryanjodonnell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to hear that, skritter is amazing! Good luck with your next endeavours :)

Definitely, thanks for your understanding!

Hey Adam, thanks can't seem to respond to you: but it is, hopefully not for too much longer, can't say too much right now, though. :)

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#58

Post by Cyranix »

gsaines wrote: post #15
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #7

Hi, gamedev here. At one point on stage, you brought up the possibility of open sourcing your code, and Paul cautioned you that you may want to follow game industry conventions. There are two reasons the game industry tends to keep their code closed-source. 1) It has been lucrative for game studios to sell licenses to their closed-source engine. Some game studios, such as Id Software, have made hundreds of millions o…

Hi Sillysaurus, thanks a lot for the feedback. We've been talking to gamedevs and VCs and so far nobody has raised a flag about opensourcing everything, which is what we're thinking we're going to do. In the words of one VC we spoke to "it's all about the branding and community, who cares who has the code?" It feels risky, but we really think that it's consistent with the intention of the game to make it easy for peo…

Don't forget that in addition to code and art, you have data. Even if someone clones your codebase and invests time in recreating visual assets, they won't be able to draw on the player experiences you've been collecting. With data, you're able to identify trends and test new approaches smartly in order to maintain the edge; your would-be competitors wouldn't have much more to go on than their own intuition.

I won't claim to know what he thinks exactly -- maybe he's the alum you refer to? -- but I wonder if Samuel Clay (Newsblur, YC S12) would agree with that sentiment, given that he has published https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur for all to see. I haven't committed to my own startup idea yet, but my plan for it does involve open-sourcing the code while keeping a custom corpus and its associated NLP models private.

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#60

Post by vdaniuk »

testing12341234 wrote: post #32
gsaines wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry about that testing, our server sometimes messes up the code sync; for now, just copy it, delete it, and paste it in again (all the code). We have it on our list of stuff to fix, but didn't expect another traffic spike so soon and so had pushed it off a bit!

Unfortunately, she doesn't want to try again. But good luck!

That is actually a problem in trying to introduce someone to coding. First attempt frequently is experienced as boring and/or too complex. It would be absolutely wonderful to have several standard entry points to programming for various target audiences. There are some cropping up with popular MooC courses but nothing for adults that have a barrier to better understanding that programming is not that hard.
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