The math here is the sort of thing that drives apathy for me to make small incremental changes. If the superrich can dump ~250 avg. emission years over the course of a year, why should I do anything besides lobby against this mode of transport or other large consumers? Maybe it’s a “spirit of the thing,” but changes in my life seem so negligible compared to how ruinous some individuals are acting.
I generally agree. It’ll be interesting what happens with models, the datasets behind them (particularly copyright claims), and more localized AI models. There have been tasks where AI greatly helped and sped me up, particularly around quick python scripts to solve a rote problem, along with early / rough documentation.
However, using this output as justification to shed head count is questionable for me because of the further business impacts (succession planning, tribal knowledge, human discussion around creative efforts).
If someone is laying people off specifically to gap fill with AI, they are missing the forest for the trees. Morale impacts whether people want to work somewhere, and I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy the company of 95% of the people I’ve worked alongside. If our company shed major head count in favor of AI, I would probably have one foot in and one foot out.
This has been my general worry: the tech is not good enough, but it looks convincing to people with no time. People don’t understand you need at least an expert to process the output, and likely a pretty smart person for the inputs. It’s “trust but verify”, like working with a really smart parrot.
It’s not as much. GaaS is the predominant model, and you make more on the LiveOps side than the launch recoup period.
Source: Developer of 10 years, x-Director at 200 person company.
There was a similar study reported the other day about using FMRI imagining and AI to recreate the “thought content” of someone’s brain. It required training for the AI in the person’s brain and some other training. It does seem these techniques can work with some specified models, but yeah, it doesn’t seem like hooking someone’s brain up to this would create a movie of their mind or something.
I think the more dangerous part is “This is step 0,” which this tech would have seemed impossible 10 years ago. Very strange times.
Easy back for me. The original RoA is one of my favorite platform fighters. I’m happy to support Dan and crew for their next venture. I can’t wait till beta opens. :)
Game designer.
I’m a Director of Game Design now.
Ah yes. Paying for privacy on a walled garden website. Genius business moves.
You are correct, but as someone who has worked in F2P mobile for a decade, it is true that most profitability comes from whales, at least in this market. You might have hundreds of thousands who spend as you mention (dolphins or minnows), but as a percentage of revenue, that aggregate is considerably smaller than the aggregate of whales: I’ve seen that ratio as high as 5:95 on a financially successful mobile F2P 4X strategy game, meaning 5% of total revenue coming from players with a lifetime spend of less than $250, 95% of total revenue coming from those above that. The populations of those groups is usually the opposite (very few whales vs. many dolphins and minnows).
Not all F2P models swing heavily into “whale-based”, but the traditional wisdom is similar to the casino industry. Large corporate companies often have small teams dedicated to servicing VIP players, ensuring they come back to the game through attractive offers or other gifts (https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-does-zynga-hunt-for-whales-this-week-in-business).
Another component that people don’t understand is that often these aren’t “normal people” in terms of their income. We had geo-tagged data, so when you’re looking at your high level VIPs north of a million in lifetime spend, you’re talking about someone in UAE, someone in Petersburg, someone in Hong Kong, or someone in the Texas oil fields. That’s not to provide moral ammunition, but it is a different viewpoint from these games preying on people who don’t have money. A lot of whales have so much money, they just don’t care about spending $100s or $1,000s at a time.
Finally, I personally know at least 1 divorce caused by a game I worked on: the husband couldn’t stop spending, and it led to a separation. There are likely more. By the same token, I also know marriages caused by that same game.
If people are having issues with spending, please stop playing, stop spending, get help. If people don’t want this to be the dominate model, they need to support with their wallets. Having said that, there’s more free games to play than when I grew up. I do think that is pretty cool.
This looks amazing. Can’t wait to see what Dan and company finalize.
This is a moment. Take it bird by bird.
Imbroglio (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/imbroglio/id969264934) is one of my favorite minimal purchase iOS games. I haven’t played it in awhile, but it’s a unique dungeon puzzle game where you place attacks as floor tiles on the board ahead of playing. There’s some consistent rules with ramping challenge, which made it super replayable for me. I loved trying different floor designs, finding strategies, and there’s a small progression system that’s fun. Hasn’t been updated in a few years, but it was a great design despite the rough appearance.
I’ll take “poorly educated” over “educated and unwilling to learn or grow.”
Sure, but the individual contribution vs. companies / state-owned organizations is like 70% come from 100 companies / orgs. So the individual percentage is still negligible.
I’m not disagreeing with the math. I’m saying when you want to make changes, you start with the most meaningful funnel. If you have 2 factors contributing to a problem, factor 1 contributes 70%, factor 2 contributes 30%, going after factor 2 seems like a waste of time. 1%s contribute 1000x the amount of the average. Who should be making lifestyle changes here?
#voidscreaming