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

2048, success and me

gabrielecirulli.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 233 posts

Re: 2048, success and me

#81

Post by k__ »

pithymaxim wrote: post #64
pdeuchler wrote: post #27

A couple of OT thoughts... 1) It was very odd seeing something go from the HN "new" page, to the front page, to seeing people talk about it on twitter, to hearing about it from friends who have no idea what a "github" is, to my mom asking me to help her download this new game all her friends are playing. I still don't know how I feel about it. And yes, for some reason I feel like I have some sort of ownership simply…

I think #5 is wrong. 2048 is based on numbers but has very little to do with math--you can play the game just as easily using only colors. At best students are learning the powers of two, and at worst they're wasting time they should've spent on chess or checkers, or basketball.

>implying math is about numbers

(but yes, learning the powers of two is only a tiny fraction of math)

Re: 2048, success and me

#82

Post by pdeuchler »

atmosx wrote: post #65
pdeuchler wrote: post #27

A couple of OT thoughts... 1) It was very odd seeing something go from the HN "new" page, to the front page, to seeing people talk about it on twitter, to hearing about it from friends who have no idea what a "github" is, to my mom asking me to help her download this new game all her friends are playing. I still don't know how I feel about it. And yes, for some reason I feel like I have some sort of ownership simply…

> [...]we need to remember that (hubris aside) what we do everyday, even if it's just a side project we did for fun one evening, has the potential to change the world in an instant[...] Really? So '2048' changed the world. I have this feeling that developers change the world more often than Cartoon/TV-heros save thew world these days. How many apps away from world peace?! ps. Developers are the only group of people w…

Touché. But don't worry, I've been watching Silicon Valley as well (great show).

Please note I'm not saying this was some sort of amazing act of altruism, or that Gabriele has "redefined a paradigm". But the fact remains that millions (probably?) have dedicated a portion of their daily lives to this game, and that, by definition changes things within the world we live in. I don't mean to cause offense, but I happen to think that your reaction is more of a protest that our world is now at a point where change does happen through seemingly small, insignificant, passing fancies. And while I might tend to agree with you that maybe we shouldn't be so obsessed with such things, the reality is that we are. To ignore this fact would be worse than elevating it to saying that "2048 changed the world forever, for the good of all mankind". (Which is what I believe you think I'm saying)

Re: 2048, success and me

#83

Post by judk »

pithymaxim wrote: post #64
pdeuchler wrote: post #27

A couple of OT thoughts... 1) It was very odd seeing something go from the HN "new" page, to the front page, to seeing people talk about it on twitter, to hearing about it from friends who have no idea what a "github" is, to my mom asking me to help her download this new game all her friends are playing. I still don't know how I feel about it. And yes, for some reason I feel like I have some sort of ownership simply…

I think #5 is wrong. 2048 is based on numbers but has very little to do with math--you can play the game just as easily using only colors. At best students are learning the powers of two, and at worst they're wasting time they should've spent on chess or checkers, or basketball.

It's more than that if you take moment to think about strategy and how many tiles and turns you need to make progress. It can be a very nice case-study in exponentiation/logarithm, big-O, etc

Re: 2048, success and me

#84

Post by judk »

pauselaugh wrote: post #79
pdkl95 wrote: post #47

The thing I found most interesting about the 2048 was the sudden assortment of variations that immediately followed. It was a perfect example of how the thing we call "culture" works: people recursively sharing their interest in something, often without even trying ("hey, that looks cool. What are you playing?"). It is also a powerful argument in the idea (described very nicely by Lawrence Lessig[1]) that culture and…

Bullshit. Culture does not consist entirely of repeated derivatives, that's the thing we call "being a poser," and that is more specifically the shitty part of culture where someone takes a good idea claims it as their own. Culture doesn't have a built in versioning system in place, so when something does all the right things it isn't a given that the predecessors are given credit. There are far too many derivative w…

You seem to be unaware how so much of what seems "original" to you is derived from prior art. This is strange, because you describe (and deride) the phenomenon moments before you ignore it.

Re: 2048, success and me

#85

Post by sillysaurus3 »

tannerc wrote: post #35
pdeuchler wrote: post #27

A couple of OT thoughts... 1) It was very odd seeing something go from the HN "new" page, to the front page, to seeing people talk about it on twitter, to hearing about it from friends who have no idea what a "github" is, to my mom asking me to help her download this new game all her friends are playing. I still don't know how I feel about it. And yes, for some reason I feel like I have some sort of ownership simply…

I feel that your second point is vitally important for creators (particularly new developers) to spend time thinking about. For a long while I was caught in the trap of believing that I wasn't any good because none of my work had "taken off" as much as the work I would hear about on HN or TechCrunch, etc. It's a dangerous place to be, particularly because it can lead to a lack of motivation and ultimately debilitatin…

I think it's important for us to acknowledge just how much _luck_ plays into the success of creations like 2048. Granted, the game is stellar and beautifully crafted, but there was a lot of luck involved in the wave it got to ride, from the timing of release, to the time it was posted to HN, to the people who tweeted about it, and so on.

Hype (marketing) plays a role, but I think a game's popularity is generally a function of its addictiveness multiplied by its quality. There are exceptions, such as Goat Simulator (which was almost entirely a fad) but it seems like the inherent nature of 2048 would let it succeed in any era. It's viscerally addictive for many people, so as long as you can get some number of people playing it, it'll do fine.

It seems like another reason 2048 was successful is because it was open source from the start. There were about a dozen remixed versions of 2048, and few of those would have happened without the source code being available from the beginning. People would have made their own versions, but it would have taken a lot more time than "let's just use this code that already exists."

Re: 2048, success and me

#86

Post by judk »

pdkl95 wrote: post #47

The thing I found most interesting about the 2048 was the sudden assortment of variations that immediately followed. It was a perfect example of how the thing we call "culture" works: people recursively sharing their interest in something, often without even trying ("hey, that looks cool. What are you playing?"). It is also a powerful argument in the idea (described very nicely by Lawrence Lessig[1]) that culture and…

"Vocal chord" is a beautifully punny way to describe people singing together.

Re: 2048, success and me

#87

Post by baddox »

pdeuchler wrote: post #27

A couple of OT thoughts... 1) It was very odd seeing something go from the HN "new" page, to the front page, to seeing people talk about it on twitter, to hearing about it from friends who have no idea what a "github" is, to my mom asking me to help her download this new game all her friends are playing. I still don't know how I feel about it. And yes, for some reason I feel like I have some sort of ownership simply…

Regarding point 1, to add to that weirdness, all of this closely followed the massive App Store success of Threes, which 2048 is nearly a clone of (and I understand that Threes is nearly a clone of another earlier game).

Re: 2048, success and me

#88

Post by judk »

armandososa wrote: post #75

That was a good read, but I think that in the fear of losing an opportunity he ended up blowing it entirely by releasing a PhoneGap app which is very slow and unresponsive even when it's very well designed.

Phonegap was more than competent for simple CSS slides/fades on the phones of 2010, when I published a game technically similar (wrt HTML+JS architecture) to 2048. What went wrong on the meantime?

Re: 2048, success and me

#89

Post by judk »

scott_karana wrote: post #62
streptomycin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTML5 AppCache could be used to easily allow offline play.

On my Android phone, it seems to aggressively cache "web apps", so after I added it to my home screen, I've been able to play it when out of Wi-Fi and data reception.

Whoa, this is a great hack. I get so annoyed when my browser cache dumps and tries and fails to reload a page that I had already loaded. Write up this tip as a blog post and submit to HN :-)
Post reply on HN