Danieru

Sounds rather more like a company behind the innovation curve pretending to "skip" the innovation as if to jump into a better innovation.

When the actual truth is they are sticking with the old thing. Reframed as a choice.

If "Ditching 4f" is such a good idea, why show their hand right before their competitors make the foolish choice of releasing it? Why not hold your cards until afterwards?

Unless perhaps this isn't a brilliant strategy but instead a spin for the investors?

No wonder idle stop is so important.

Idling at 900rpm or 15cycles per second is a tremendous waste. Somehow I always assumed it was slower.

0.9k RPM is way too fast to be the low end of a machine.

It is more an artifact of being cut off from the US mint/banking system. For a domestic US bank they can swap any worn currency for new stuff for free.

So as US currency degrades over time it slightly loses inter exchangeability in the third world.

Overstaying a visa is a big deal. You should not be counting days or nights because you should not let yourself be in the country anywhere near the expiry of a visa.

This is a big deal for YKK.

Until a few years ago they had a hold on the upper end of the market. The chinese competitor's quality was unreliable enough that clothing manufacturers were willing to pay a premium to ensure a failed zipper does not trash a garment. That situation has been changing, and chinese companies are offering zippers which are getting used on progressively higher end products.

By releasing a new product with substantial changes and thus patentability they can buy a few decades at the top of the market. I suspect this technology has been in development for a long time, and held back until competitors were threatening the premium traditional zipper market.

The business plan is not about the business plan.

It's only even half about the business. Instead it is about the businessman making the pitch.

If someone is good at baking bread that suggest they are qualified to to bake bread. Running a bakery is a super set of that skill. The business plan request is a fantastic method to give such a person a chance to show they have the right resources, enough experience, and reasonable expectations and strong commitment.

It is important to keep in mind how this "Report Card" is a lobbying tool. A wishlist meant to influence, not an independent assessment meant to inform.

The prognosis is to spend more money building more things. This has been the prognosis every year since the lobbying started. Prior projects built based on this excessive lobbying have since reached end of life this scheme is so old. Now the reports include horror stories of this federal lobbied over building which got poorly maintained: as if the poor maintenance is not the expected result of building more than can be maintained.

Infrastucture funding in the US typically operates such that the federal government gives money to build new stuff, while local governments are left attempting to pay for the maintenance.

Try to find a single page dedicated to identifying over provisioned infrastructure which could be downsized to reduce maintance costs... The ASCE's solution to all problems is to spend more money building more.

Your plan to address the decline in British beach towns is to depopulate the UK?

Seems a bit extreme just to avoid a plane ride.

Ad spending got put on hold or canceled during the covid recession. Companies in all sectors moved to conserve cash.

Even Google froze hiring.

It was a good time to have a conservative balance sheet. I bought some good stock on the cheap, and hired my best programmer.

Hey YesBox! I've been watching your game for ages. I think since you first showed it on the indie subreddit. I'm excited to play it. Sim City 2000 was a big influence for me.

Overall though I'd say: coastal US is a market no one can afford to do gamedev with employees in unless you are a child company of a platform holder. We're based in Japan where cost of living is vastly more reasonable.

Personally I'd suggest you highly question yourself about what sort of studio you want to work in. The environment you want to work in, should be the one you try to make. For me that meant full remote with no offices. I'd honestly be surprised to meet ang gamedev who likes offices and commutes, much less one who list the extra cost.

I remember we got a "devkit" into the studio before public release: it was an entire 1u server.

How are we supposed to use a 1u devkit!? Had no one on their team ever do console work!?

Console devkits fit on a desk because that is where a console devkit needs to go. On the porting engineer's desk, so they can do the work.

In the end Google announced the non-sense business model and we saw the writing on the wall. I do not think that devkit ever got setup.

Warner Bros has been trying to sell off their studios. So I can see Lego succeeding if they buy TT. Otherwise I think Lego will realize what many others have: starting up a new studio is hard, and having money makes it harder.

You cannot will a studio into existence with money. Google tried this. Amazon tried this. Microsoft has tried it a bunch of times.

Games can be a good business, I know my studio is, but it is hard in was that traditional business methods cannot cope with.

So Lego, make sure you acquire TT. That is your only clear opportunity to use money to solve this problem. Otherwise find a bunch of Lego fan gamers and hire them to make experimental games for half a decade. Don't listen to that VP who is promising you can push XXXmillion into an org chart and get an effective studio as the result.

No mineral rights: just gold up front.

The UK paid the US all it's gold reserves. Next it stole of the UK people's gold to use that to buy weapons.

The US was not giving the UK when it exported, it was selling. Lend lease came in once the UK ran out of gold. So the US gave them credit: which the UK tool until 2006 to repay.

That article is 5 years old. Sadly the article lacks a date, but you can tell because it claims Steam is 15 years old, when it had its 22 anniversary last year.

Next that 7M number is for self-published games. Aka, games where the dev is listed as the publisher. OP has Raw Fury as his publisher. Next Raw Fury posted their contract publically a while ago: it is a pretty harsh contract. 50/50 split, but there is a profit ratio baked into the recoup which is super odd. If OP had held off, did his own marketing for a bit, then negotiated with publishers once he had traction, he might have gotten a better deal.

The challenge for Indie devs with publishers is how the good publishers ask a pretty high take. Meanwhile the good deals come from new publishers with poor or no track record. Personally we signed with Hooded Horse which publically offers better deals and is highly effective. The trade off being Hooded Horse is famously quite selective.

Thus honestly: self publishing is the default-best choice. We did that for our last game and effectively replaced a publisher by just spending a bunch on marketing.