So, you just released a game after what was likely a big investment in heart, time, and money and you haven't pulled any money back out yet? Did you expect something different after such a short period of time?
Also, you created a game that has pulled in $1600 in revenue so far and you're thinking that $24k worth of revenue is just not coming in because you can measure the freeloaders. Those freeloaders aren't your customers and likely never will be.
Focus on why 214 people bought the game and make them so happy that they will support you and the extended marketing of the game.
Had you not spent the hours developing, testing, etc. these features and trying to trick worthless freeloaders into exposing themselves for the sake of rhetorical blog posts, you could have improved your bottom line. You COULD have added features important to paying customers.
Also, the sad freeloaders posts stink of fabrication. They may well not be, but my cynicism puts together a picture of a hacker-news-abuse viral marketing scheme. Every link in the chain has an unsoiled feel to it. The game is about a game dev company, not FPS gore. The freeloaders write in full sentences and precisely nail talking points as if they came from a game industry association. The dev has taken great care to handle freeloaders gently in the post. exposing everything. Even if this were a marketing scam, the backlash would be ho-hum because everything is just so meek.
AND... of course there's an actionable pitch and link thrown right in there. You were supposed to hold back and wait for the crowd to demand links.
This game always had a very limited audience. RPG of a gaming software development company? Plan the scale and scope of your project accordingly.
The cynic in me says, "How Kaggle wastes the time of many talented individuals while enabling corporations to give the finger to their staff."
I should start providing prizes for the best start-up. I'll give you a $20k prize and then turn around and sell it for $1M or more. You can put it on your resume. Win win.
EDIT: Sure, it's good for various things, but it is so detached from the reality that it's a bit out in the thicket. The cynic in me just doesn't get over the value handed over by competitors to the sponsors.
> The cynic in me just doesn't get over the value handed over by competitors to the sponsors
I would think you don't have to hand over your algorithm, if you forego the prize money. Another way of looking at it... as alluded to by other posters, the "winning" data model may not be the best, so there might be less value handed over than you think.
Talk about putting up a shingle and calling yourself an exchange.
The clamor from the crowd that they need to do better PR gets me chuckling the most. They are fairly transparent about their lack of technical expertise, hinting at major issues in their understanding or seriousness of what they are doing.
When one noisy person tells you how to do your job and you know they're wrong, whatever. Brush it off.
When a fistful of redditors are telling you 15 different ways that you should be doing your job and it's pretty easy to show that they understand the problem domain and issues better than the team... that's a big problem.
I guess people hope MtGoxs new trading platform scales better, but that is not the sort of thought/wonder to be having when you are about to press submit on thousands in trades.
Bitcoin. Currency like kids and potato cannons. What could go wrong? Fire it up!
How useful is a "currency" if it 1) has volatility like a penny stock and 2) raises the stakes on 0-day defense to something ridiculous?
When I hear interviews where people (bitcoin founder) suggest that you don't transfer into bitcoins any state currency you aren't willing to lose... it sort of peels the "inflation-hedge" covers off the whole thing. How unstable and unsecure does a currency have to be to be nearly worthless? USDollars look pretty safe again.
This is so much a game of hacker gambling. A great experiment. Too bad it consumes so much productive time and energy.
The beautiful narrative of the reclusive, open-society, eastern hacker that designs this thing which grows to be the godzilla it is... The story arc on bitcoin is borderline trite. Michael Bay is all over this in a year.
So, the disappointment is merely a naming problem that Apple baked for itself by starting/sticking to a numbering scheme when most device makers have an "internal" code and then there's the name that each carrier tacks on. The only time you get iterations is when a device "hits" (Razor, Galaxy, One, etc.)
The disappointments surely aren't because, spec-by-spec and material ounce-per-ounce, bloggers and the public look at the value proposition and shrug about the AAPL premium. The former certainly would also never try to clickbait fanboys to their ad-laden pages to profusely pound the Book of Jobs upon heretics.
To give them the finger, because he knows that no matter what Apple delivers for their updated flagship, it will be 100% better than anything else out there in all respects. Anyone disappointed? THE FINGER!!!
It's almost like there's an IRC channel devoted to dispatching those invested in the scheme to flood the online community consciousness with fanciful ideas of wealth and splendour.
So financial journalists have no idea how these things are made, used, or what place they have within transactions, economies, etc. and you expect masses of people to eventually feel comfortable with the stuff?
The fear that is engendered by a non-tangible, value-containing set of bytes of data on a computer in the age of hacker doom-dom is quite likely the extent of what you need to know about its foreseeable viability and should put the current "value rollercoaster" into perspective.
How does the layman NOT lump the early adopters/hype pumpers in with the same crowd vandalizing paypal and credit card companies? So these kids created a currency to reject the system and they think this is the future?
It's like watching some unruly teenagers with a very large potato gun mounted to their friend's back and saying... "This is the future of the postal service. Buy stamps while they're cheap."
It's the emperor's new clothes. That's not a currency. It's barely a digital promise to anonymous posters on 4chan. As long as there isn't anybody with a strong incentive to pull the plug, this thing will continue to eat up every online "watering hole." It's great for silk road, but spare us the hype machine. The only people with incentive are adopters.
They shut that zeek's reqards down in NC and now everyone is hopping on the p2p currency train. Start your own business! Invest in the peoples' coin!
Don't be so dramatic. From a usability perspective, it works enough. Also, interactivity is changing and themes are options. People don't hover or click with touch devices.
Many UI concepts are in flux (again). Link? Button? Collapsible? Let go of what you know and watch people using flat UI.
There are many ways to hint interactions within flat design. As has always been, stick to more abstract interaction fundamentals and processes and don't wed yourself to fads based on current (or old) tooling trends.
It's easy enough to use color, contrast, font, positioning, size, shape, etc. all to indicate interaction points. That's all a gradient button is compared to the text in an old message box.
Also, there are two major thrusts in flat ui that make it compelling. One is the additional focus on content since the UI takes a step back once you spend less time tweaking artificial details. Which leads into the second point others are making. The time and energy spent in details to achieve fake results in a digital context are dishonest at best and grossly out of place from a design perspective. There's a little bit for everyone in there.
"Flat UI is bad for usability" keeps getting repeated as a criticism against the flat UI trend but is not actually true.
Bad UI design is bad for usability, regardless of VISUAL style.
As jack_trades mentions, there are MANY other ways to convey interactivity without artificial depth, texture.
Think about a simple modal. Users know to look at the top-right, sometimes left, for controls for the modal. What difference does it make if the user sees a flat X icon or an X inside a beveled, drop-shadowed button?
Re: desktop vs. mobile; If a user has to hover over an element just to know if it's interactive then perhaps the design has already failed.
Also, you created a game that has pulled in $1600 in revenue so far and you're thinking that $24k worth of revenue is just not coming in because you can measure the freeloaders. Those freeloaders aren't your customers and likely never will be.
Focus on why 214 people bought the game and make them so happy that they will support you and the extended marketing of the game.
Had you not spent the hours developing, testing, etc. these features and trying to trick worthless freeloaders into exposing themselves for the sake of rhetorical blog posts, you could have improved your bottom line. You COULD have added features important to paying customers.
Also, the sad freeloaders posts stink of fabrication. They may well not be, but my cynicism puts together a picture of a hacker-news-abuse viral marketing scheme. Every link in the chain has an unsoiled feel to it. The game is about a game dev company, not FPS gore. The freeloaders write in full sentences and precisely nail talking points as if they came from a game industry association. The dev has taken great care to handle freeloaders gently in the post. exposing everything. Even if this were a marketing scam, the backlash would be ho-hum because everything is just so meek.
AND... of course there's an actionable pitch and link thrown right in there. You were supposed to hold back and wait for the crowd to demand links.
This game always had a very limited audience. RPG of a gaming software development company? Plan the scale and scope of your project accordingly.