randfish

Yeah, we have one, and same thing. Bluetooth to a web URL on the phone and boom, new sharpening angle calibrator just works! Love not having to download a separate app.

Shortly after this book came out, my wife and I read it together and a few months later, formed a studio to make a game together. She's the writer. I'm the creative director. Launch is still a year away, but it's been a wonderful, new part of our relationship.

Unusual that an interview captures such a nuanced take, but I appreciate both Ward's pragmatism and his sadness around the death of human-created art. Grateful for the submission.

Just wanted to say this is wonderful work, timely for a couple of my companies, and I love seeing stuff like it posted to HN.

Deeply curious to know if this is an outlier opinion, a mainstream but pessimistic one, or the general consensus. My LinkedIn feed and personal network certainly suggests that it's an outlier, but I wonder if the people around me are overly optimistic or out of synch with what the HN community is experiencing more broadly.

Thought it was great. Thanks for writing and submitting!

Just wanted to say thanks for the submission. I never would have found this story otherwise, and it's both a powerful read and especially relevant to a close friend—she was one of the airlifted/trafficked babies and has never been able to find her birth parents.

While many of the images were low resolution or just strange icon graphics, and the text felt like AI-slop, the core concept is great. Hope you keep making progress on this.

"Make sure your hook is glowingly radioactively good. Don't overbalance. Leave in some jank. Scope down and finish quickly. And avoid tropes. Stand out."

Sounds like outstanding advice. I hope we can follow in your footsteps! (and thanks for the kind and comprehensive answer)

Incredible work, Brian! I'm in awe of what you've done in such a short amount of time. I started an indie game company (still working on our first title) and had a few related questions if that's OK?

1) If you didn't need a salary or marketing help, would you still have signed a publishing deal? My sense is most of the publisher value lies in getting paid before the game launches, and with marketing around launch, but curious if those are wrong assumptions?

2) Early Access vs. Straight Launch - any insights about why you chose to do a full launch vs. an early access beforehand? Was it something you and the publisher discussed in detail?

3) Outside of Steam's ecosystem, how much marketing, promotion, social media, YouTube, Discord, etc. stuff did you (or the publisher) do? Do you think that pre-launch work had a sizable impact on the launch and post-launch success? Or would you say it's mostly the Steam algo making the game more visible to the right buyers as the positive reviews rolled in?

Truly kind of you to share so openly here. Already sent some of your other replies to our game team