semateos

Thanks! Yeah, Haggle for Bessie is one of Danny's gems - he's a _special_ kind of genius. I think that was the first test of the in-game-LLM feature.

The other super fun part for me is seeing what my friends create. It’s a very different kind of creative community when the unit of content is an interactable rather than a witticism, rant, or selfie. I’m sure not unlike Minecraft, though again, the affordances there dictate the kind of creator it attracts, someone who is willing to spend many hours placing blocks in complex arrangements is very different from the person who has 100 fun ideas a minute and not the patience to spend months or years realizing them. I think Blamo is a better fit for the latter.

I do think in general that UI-heavy game engines like unity are going to lose out to code-centric platforms. The leverage you get from code generation tools greatly outweighs the old ease of use of friendly interfaces. IMO the best interface is a combination of asking for what you want and having it give you the best custom interface for you to apply your creativity. I’ve spent a ton of time in unity, and while I’ve enjoyed much of that time, I also spend a very large percentage of it being infuriated by it. And Unity was, prior to AI, probably the easiest way to make video games that we had come up with. I’ve never had more fun making games then in the last month or so of vibing them with BLAMO.

I think we end up seeing a similar dynamic as other ugc apps, likely 99% consumers, 1% creators. But I think it’s a different group of creators. Personally, I enjoy making vibe games way more than selfie dance videos, or hot takes on X. This is, for me, the first form of social media that I truly love. I feel way better spending my interstitial time being creative on BLAMO than on scrolling through the other slot machine apps. I am personally hooked on the creation loop, the slot machine reward is when it generates something that is pure gold. That said, I’m sure I still spend way more time playing the games than making them. And it’s easily seen in the data that there are at least 100x more plays than creations in any given time period.

OK, thanks for the feedback.

Hahahahaha - that's awesome. Just think - that happens to some people and lasts their whole life.

I appreciate the thoughtfulness of this response. I spent my high school junior year of english reading most of Rand and writing a 30 page paper on her. She has some very useful and powerful insights - but beyond my initial enthusiasm I grew to find her morally repulsive. There is some really weird shit in there like her constant need to be submissive to powerful men. Still, 20ish years later I'm a designer, engineer and entrepreneur and I find myself often referring to moments and characters in her books. However, I find it slightly upsetting that Atlas Shrugged is so often on people's #1 list.

Yes! Would highly recommend that one or 'How the Mind Works' by Pinker. I'm constantly blown away by how few people are aware of modern cognitive science and just how much we DO understand about the operation of the mind. It's also super useful if you do any kind design, UX, marketing or interact with other humans.