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CodeCombat in Y Combinator

blog.nickwinter.net

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Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#61

Post by aymeric »

I think games are a good way to teach the first principles in coding.

Last year as a pet project I ported Terrarium.Net to javascript (this is definitely not noob-friendly at the moment but it is open source :) )

http://terrariumjs.wiselabs.net/

The idea is to code the behaviour of a critter that can move / attack / eat and reproduce.

So a species that survives well can grow and invade a terrarium.

But the cool factor is the blue ball. It is actually a teleporter that sends critters randomly to someone else's terrarium, so your critter can invade other terrariums too :)

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#62

Post by woud420 »

gsaines wrote: post #29
woud420 wrote: post #3

That is a pretty cool idea. Actually, my girlfriend has been wanting to learn how to code yet I haven't been able to find something to motivate her. Maybe her love of RPGs and this will get her down on that path.

Funny you should mention that woud420, we started this to teach me (gsaines) because I wanted something more engaging than online lessons. But when choosing the artwork, genre, and overall style, we went more cartoony/cutesy because of Nick's wife's gaming preferences. We also made the main character a strong female figure so that girls could associate with story that we're putting together (not currently in the leve…

I sure hope so too! :) I guess we'll see.

Good luck at YC!

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#64

Post by Finbarr »

gsaines wrote: post #30
mhamel wrote: post #6

And every company after them in Office Hours walked just a little bit slower leaving the stage...

Yeah, we felt pretty bad about that too. PG wasn't kidding about the surprise, we thought that if we did well we might get an interview, it was a complete shock. We had met the other teams backstage, the founders of both startups impressed us quite a bit and we hope we get to see them in this batch.

As one of the founders who was on right after you, I can say that it was awesome to see you guys get in right in front of us. We were a little disappointed that we weren't also called back as we walked off the stage, but after watching a recording of your talk with PG and Sam, I think you guys totally deserved it.

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#65

Post by reneherse »

Congrats to the CodeCombat team! Their recruitment-oriented business model reminded me of an 80's movie called The Last Starfighter [1]: A young guy living in the middle of nowhere masters a space fighter arcade game. He has no idea that it's actually a fighter pilot training and recruitment tool until one night, when he's picked up by a "headhunter" (in a spacebound DeLorean) to join the force defending the galaxy against alien invaders. Fun flick, with some decent early CGI.

The parallels, I think, really help demonstrate how the CC concept has the potential to change young people's lives.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#66

Post by gsaines »

Cyranix wrote: post #58
gsaines wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hey Cyranix, yeah the db will definitely be an asset, especially when it comes time to test the business model of recruiting. Sam Altman's comment on stage about recruiters being sorts sleazy is definitely true, and so casts some doubt on our business model research, but we really do want to try the viral method before putting up a paywall.

We did in fact speak with Sam at startup school, pretty small world I guess. He not only had good data about what it took to get devs interested but what kind of conversation rates we could expect from interest -> pull request -> valuable input. To be fair, Sam does keep 10% of his codebase proprietary so it's not 100% out there.

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#67

Post by gsaines »

spicyj wrote: post #43
gsaines wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, those are all definitely on our radar, especially the idea to keep some surrounding infrastructure closed. That might be motivated by the wrong reasons though, if we don't have to open source it, we can keep it at "internal use tool" quality and devote our time elsewhere. :)

If it works, who cares what the code looks like? It can even be inspiring for others to see that code doesn't need to be "perfect" in order to get things done, and it's unlikely that people will think less of you just because there are some unfinished ends.

While it's true that you should be embarrassed by the first version and imperfect code is instructive, I would feel bad about inflicting some of our internal use tools on other people! :)

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#68

Post by gsaines »

reneherse wrote: post #65

Congrats to the CodeCombat team! Their recruitment-oriented business model reminded me of an 80's movie called The Last Starfighter [1]: A young guy living in the middle of nowhere masters a space fighter arcade game. He has no idea that it's actually a fighter pilot training and recruitment tool until one night, when he's picked up by a "headhunter" (in a spacebound DeLorean) to join the force defending the galaxy a…

That is an excellent movie, here's hoping that we can pick up some excellent space pilots, er, devs, with the platform. It's incredible how many people have written to tell us that they started their dev careers building games, I think it's a common entry point. I know that I started working with computers because of a game called gorillas.bas on my dad's Kapro '86 (whopping 3 megahertz processor and 512k hard drive). Here's hoping I'm not the anti-pattern!

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#69

Post by physcab »

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…

Let me make one counter-point here though.

> Gamers may be fickle, but they are loud and they are loyal.

Zynga. Zynga has made a fortune profiting off of other smaller outfits, just merely by studying and copying. They didn't have source-code (to my best knowledge), but they knew how to make a game mass-appeal. This happens more often in gaming than you'd like to think.

My advice (I work at a gaming company) is to hold all your IP close as possible. Game design, art assets, source code, whatever. You have a right to own it so why not hold on to it for a while until you establish a solid competitive advantage.

On the otherhand, your IP is very closely tied to how well you can integrate teaching. This is something others cannot do easily, so you have atleast that protecting you.

Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator

#70

Post by highCs »

physcab wrote: post #69
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…

Let me make one counter-point here though. > Gamers may be fickle, but they are loud and they are loyal. Zynga. Zynga has made a fortune profiting off of other smaller outfits, just merely by studying and copying. They didn't have source-code (to my best knowledge), but they knew how to make a game mass-appeal. This happens more often in gaming than you'd like to think. My advice (I work at a gaming company) is to ho…

Zynga. Zynga has made a fortune profiting off of other smaller outfits, just merely by studying and copying. They didn't have source-code (to my best knowledge), but they knew how to make a game mass-appeal. This happens more often in gaming than you'd like to think.

I don't share your point of view. Zynga - which is what I consider a web startup - has been at the origin of a revolution in the game industry. At the same time Activision did with Call Of Duty, this is one of the first company which leads the XP + items revolution. That was the first time you saw XP + items in a game from another style than RPG. This is also the reason of the success of the Call Of Duty franchise: COD 4 was the first FPS to have XP + item which were previously reserved to RPGs. Nowday, you can't find a game without XP + items. These things came from companies outside the game industry - except Activision and a very - very - few others.

The energy for example is now a main game design and monetization component you find in many, many video games published by the industry now and this is Zynga's invention. Also, Zynga uses big data far before any other big publishers did - except Valve.

My advice (I work at a gaming company) is to hold all your IP close as possible. Game design, art assets, source code, whatever. You have a right to own it so why not hold on to it for a while until you establish a solid competitive advantage.

Sorry, I think what they are doing has nothing to do with a video game IP. They are doing a product which solves a problem: it teach to code.

For all those common misconceptions (ie. see my other comment below), I strongly advice the codecombat devs to be careful of what is told from and about the game industry.

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