Meta: I am appalled by the amount of hate and (non-constructive) criticism in these comments. In a total role-reversal, all of the comments on TC are positive and encouraging. The congratulatory comments in this thread have been downvoted to negative points. What gives? Is it easier to criticize than give encouragement? These guys already have 95,000 active users... what a feat!
I am ok with constructive criticisms and asking meaningful questions, but pointing out other competitors and implying that this product is a waste of everyone's time is just mean.
Josh and team, I am extremely proud of you (never having met you). Do what you love doing, and keep doing it. Don't listen to the haters.
Those congratulatory comments were all left in a row, and one of the accounts was created just to leave one. That might have triggered somebody's "noise" radar; I haven't voted on anything in this thread, and I don't see them as noise personally. That might be an explanation for at least that, though -- I wouldn't rush to call that malicious. A misunderstanding, maybe, but I doubt someone is systematically downvoting the good will in this thread, maybe because I look for the positive in everything.
I also wouldn't consider pointing out other competitors mean. I'm sure the person leaving that comment, and the numerous votes for him, are just wondering what the difference is (and another comment hit it: it's the team).
Don't attribute to malice what mere stupidity can explain. Stupidity is a bit strong in this case, but you get what I mean. I don't really observe a lot of hate here, just a broad spectrum of responses.
The problem with TechCrunch's Facebook comments is that you can't speak your mind if you have something negative to say about anything.
If you make a positive comment, you might get some friends, but if you make a negative comment, you are much more likely to make enemies just for saying what's on your mind. That is why TechCrunch comments are now nothing but a sea of sycophancy.
The value of an anonymous forum is that the truth gets told.
True, but there is a difference between downvoting and not-upvoting. Leaving them alone at 1 point would have let them sink to the bottom just as well and not appeared to be mean-spirited.
I see that as noise, and I prefer to downvote noise. Not voting is reserved for comments with very small contributions or opinions I disagree with and don't seem properly justified. But that's just me.
I agree that downvoting is a harsh punishment, but it's also my opinion that this "noise" should be differentiated from the above cases, so I don't see any way around.
It seems he's starting to learn the hard lessons of building inside a walled garden. Facebook has already shut down newsfeed stories for his app (a major user acquisition channel) due to ToS violations. Welcome to Hell.
- Quest completion progress doesn't update until I manually click through into the details.
- A retreating pet is referred to as {{pet_name}} (problem in the template layer?)
- Using just about any special character when naming a pet <, &, \, ', (, will make the AJAX call fail and a pet will end up with untitled<hash> name instead
- A blank name will be accepted (I expected it to revert to the default name) and used as such.
-- "What would you like to call this monster?" alert box message is about as descriptive as "Would you like to perform this action?" (The offending part being just "this")
- If I'm allowed to try to use a capture card just once, this mechanic is not apparent. It just looks like the inventory disappears.
- switch pets screen appears to be cached on first view of the battle. Subsequent switches will not show damage to HP of any party members.
- sometimes the battle will just stop at "You have chosen to use Bash" message. Presumably the client has missed a response from the server and there is no retry logic?
- at some point it would start refreshing the page after every battle move is executed
- is successful escape (run away) supposed to be titled "you lost this battle"? (it also seems to have killed the in-play pet that escaped)
- after the battle, the pet graphics are always fixed, but the experience bars are sometimes re-ordered.
Some other observations:
- it's annoying to go to the dashboard after every single battle.
- the "weak bash" (0 energy move) is not available unless a pet has little energy (what if I want to just tap a wild pet , in a capture attempt?). At that point the UI is very un-intuitive, as regular bash becomes weak, and all the moves (including weak bash!) are greyed out.
- I wasn't able to figure out where pets beyond the 4th captured one are at. No apparent way to select or re-order the party.
-- as such the game quickly becomes nothing but a low-level grind, as first weak pets take up all the available slots and make it impossible to move further into the game.
- do I _have_ to explicitly click on "aquire[sic] reward" if it's only gold (presumably this is always wanted)
Cause it takes a lot of effort to make a 'fake' facebook profile - I had one and it only lasted a few months before it was locked out pending government-issue ID being sent to them, since I wasn't actually using it for anything more than looking at the occasional thing that required an account I can only assume they monitor for unusual use patterns.
I don't think so, it looks like that might have to be done entirely via the programming API, and you need an application registered to do so (or the access token of another application) because it only works on one application: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/test_users/
You can definitely create a user and then turn him into a test account manually, I've created many test accounts that way. You have to visit a special URL that turns the account into a test account (can't remember it offhand, and I'm not going to post it anyway since if anyone clicks on it then clicks "accept" without looking, it nukes their regular account).
Zynga started with "Just another Texas Hold'em" game and followed that with an exact clone of Farm Town[1] which it iterated on quickly and marketed well.
Angry Birds is thought to be inspired by Crush the Castle[2] but with a better control mechanism and friendlier targets.
Minecraft was a fork/clone of Infiniminer[3] which focused on the community aspects of the game rather than the competitive nature of the original.
What starts as a clone today, could be something unique tomorrow.
How did you deal with Tyler's under-18-ness, legally? I remember there was some mention of this being a small issue in terms of entering contracts in a pg essay.
The way I did it was basically to have my parents sign off on whatever contracts I did. My first sale had a signature line for me and one under it for my parents.
Sorry to rain on the parade, but isn't this simply a clone of Pokemon?
You start by selecting one of three monsters (they even resemble the starting three from the orignal game). The battle screen and fight dynamic looks almost identical.
Nintendo has been continuously iterating the Pokemon franchise based around the situation on the ground in Japan, not North America, and as a result there's probably a lot of room for folks to create a Pokemonlike that is more designed for the North American play style. For example, Pokemon Black/White, the most recent version, has a huge amount of innovative local play features, but in NA, commuting to work, you're very unlikely to randomly happen across any folks that will have the game and so these features are for many quite useless.
The primary market for Pokemon remains children. Children tend to congregate in large numbers at schools and playgrounds. Nintendo's lack of focus on the "commuting to work" crowd is not particularly surprising.
I have to agree with this. It's obvious these guys are smart and savvy. Couldn't they have come up with a new, brilliant idea instead of a Pokemon clone? I hope this gets acquired so they can spend their 20s doing something more meaningful.
New and brilliant ideas are much more difficult to gain traction. Great execution on a "cloned" idea is much easier. How many Groupon clones are there? How many of them are making a lot of money? (Hint, a lot). How much money is spent on Pokemon and related collectible card games? (Hint, also a lot).
The point is Groupon Clones did something Groupon wasn't doing (targeting countries Groupon wasn't targeting) meaning Groupon isn't entitled to be the market leader and the other startups are free to create one for their country.
Pokemon is not making a social web game, this is a big difference to the Groupon situation in my opinion as they are different things. I wouldn't say it's a copy just the story/theme is inspired by Pokemon.
Yes that's exactly what's going on. He's attempting to externalize his guilt/shame to create a socially acceptable situation for criticism-- to validate his internal negativity and hate.
He could just be telegraphing his intention so as to minimise confusion. Humour not clearly marked as such is often down-voted. As such, this would be a defensive move in ego-space, rather than an attempt for validation. Hence a self-protective mode of thought rather than an energy stealing vampiric dependency mode. Thus I feel that it is a positive, yang based maneuver, rather than a negative ying based energy flow.
You suggest hate as a primary motivator. Hate is based on repressed anger, and anger is the archetypal emotive of rules that have been broken. What rules do you suggest that he feels have been broken? Perhaps some kind of rule that the things that are valuable are those that are unique and not derivative? What would you suggest is the causative agency of such a feedback based rules paradigm?
Your rhetoric is hilarious and I really wish we could duo this routine in bars.
I suggest the "causative agency" is the voice that says "I am supposed to be getting all the attention. Why is he? He didn't even do anything amazing!"
There's at least two. One is called Monster Galaxy by Gaia Online which launched in December (http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=129748227041...). There's another, the name of which I don't remember, that did a ton of Facebook advertising in the last 12 months.
That was a pretty specific issue, with 2 complaints. One was the name, and the other was that the board layout was identical (location of bonus squares, etc). It relaunched very quickly as Lexulous with a different board. Damage done, but it wasn't an instant kill or anything.
Wow, someone's downvoting every congratulatory comment on this thread. To that guy: congratulations on not doing anything useful with your time (while we did).
Also, congrats to Josh and team! I'm totally jealous and proud of a fellow young dude.
If you're talking about those comments at the bottom, one of the accounts was created just to leave the comment, and all of them were left very rapidly after the actual item was submitted. I don't personally agree with this, but I can see an argument that they're not contributing to the discussion (and could be perceived as noise), which seems to be extremely important to some users on HN.
It isn't just "[one] guy", and I think your insult of "him" is a little bit counterproductive. I honestly don't think it's because they're congratulatory, and I think you're going after someone needlessly -- I don't see any systematic assault on good will in this thread, as a couple people have.
I'm pleased for these guys, but a little surprised as well. Launching a Pokemon social game isn't exactly being disruptive; it's not as if there's any dearth of them on Facebook, particularly at a time when many companies are fleeing the already strip-mined platform for greener pastures.
People are still MINTING money on Facebook. I imagine the top 5 grossing facebook games make the top 5 grossing iPhone games look like adorable little hobbies. The #40 game on Facebook has 6M monthly active uniques. THe #120 game on Facebook has 2M MAU. How many iPhone games have those kind of numbers?
Platform quibbles aside, I imagine it's the fastest/cheapest way to get tens/hundreds of thousands of users to test their gameplay. It's easier to develop for Facebook than mobile, doesn't have the approval nonsense for rapid iteration, has a built in viral channel, etc.
That isn't even necessary as a success condition, but in general, YC invests in Texas Hold'em because they see the glimmer that suggests you're capable of eventually executing on FarmVille. (Zynga wasn't Zynga on day one, either.)
I guess it is normal in the Facebook age, but I think it is a pity that it seems to be impossible to see anything from the game without giving the app access to my Facebook network first. Somehow I can never bring myself to give apps access, as I am not sure what they will be doing. Must create another account just for testing apps...
Still, it used to be that you get to examine the merchandise before you buy it.
I have wondered for a long time why there hasn't been a mobile version of Nintendogs / Tamagotchi. Seems like it would be the perfect way to carry one of those around, along with the ease of local social stuff on top.
And:
a) touch interaction would feel way more immediate
b) constant updates to these apps would allow the dev to constantly change / add to pet behavior
This startup actually has me more exciting than a lot of the other ones here, even though I doubt I'll ever use it. Games are rarely about being novel, they're about being good. And if if pg tells the truth about funding people, not ideas, then I'll be very interested to see how this turns out.
The graphics are really cool and all, but this definitely isn't what pokemon would be.
Where is the ability to walk the world and interact with non playable characters?
It's decent, but it's no pokemon as far as playability. It's just a stripped down version of pokemon with social elements added. It would be really nice if you could actually play as a character, view battle animations (like pokemon fire attacks show flames) etc.
Congratulations Josh. I remember the first time we met in person a year and a half ago. Now seeing you rock it on the big stage brings a tear of pride to my eye.
This is a fine concept, but it would be a serious mistake to limit themselves to Facebook and not take advantage of local connectivity options. A lot of children have iTouch devices, but not many have actual iPhones with 3G connections to take advantage of the kind of social gaming that Facebook promotes. It doesn't seem like this will play very well in the schoolyard, and it also doesn't seem anywhere close to sophisticated enough to appeal to adults.
it also doesn't seem anywhere close to sophisticated enough to appeal to adults.
You mean, like Farmville is sophisticated?
As for iTouch devices-- that sounds like a reasonable idea, but first things first. If they get some traction with the Facebook app, there's plenty of further opportunities for them to explore.
I am ok with constructive criticisms and asking meaningful questions, but pointing out other competitors and implying that this product is a waste of everyone's time is just mean.
Josh and team, I am extremely proud of you (never having met you). Do what you love doing, and keep doing it. Don't listen to the haters.