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Just a status update of sorts, I threw together about a minute of short clips from different parts of the movie/game I'm working on over the last 10 days.

For those not familiar with the project, this footage is from "The Labyrinth" a planned youtube game where you can win actual cash by being the first to guide a cat through a sort of multiverse maze.

Other work over the last few weeks involved running numerous calculations and creating custom python scripts to manage shifting maze layouts while maintaining a low probability of winning, preventing cheating from being effective (people skipping to the end of every video, which is the first thing they will all try), and similar top down design optimization.

Still using the original batch of cat animations at this point, but a second more advanced batch is already in progress. A lot of this stuff still looks a bit rough to me, not quite there, but at this point I can just refine as I go with no backsliding. Animation overall will smooth out to a polished state very soon.

I'm going to push for a fall release for this, with about 4-500 1 minute videos, and starting with smaller prizes at the beginning, like $100 at first, and then I can start recycling the ad money into the jackpot once google enables it, some thousands of dollars of lost cash later.
 
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If you can account for people skipping to the end I'd also think about people that play the video at 2x speed
IDK if that's possible or not.

Even with improved animations and more polish (it looks great already) i dont think it's going to keep peoples attention for long if it's doesn't have extra characters and story and stuff going on. Solely looking at cool cgi locations doesn't cut it for me for long peroids of time, and I feel like everyone younger than me has even less attention span with tiktok, etc.

What age group are you targeting as your primary demographic?
 
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If you can account for people skipping to the end I'd also think about people that play the video at 2x speed
IDK if that's possible or not.

Even with improved animations and more polish i dont think it's going to keep peoples attention for long if it's doesn't have extra characters and story and stuff going on. Just looking a cool locations and stuff doesn't cut it for me, and I feel like everyone younger than me has even less attention span with tiktok, etc.

What age group are you targeting as your primary demographic?

Basically, the resistance there will be achieved by very mild visual puzzles. This means current AI can't auto solve it, yet... It also means people that skip every video will miss important clues needed to get the probability of winning down to a reasonable level. You could find the treasure chest by accident, it's just designed to make that incredibly improbable, since brute force will be a default strategy for many lower end hackers. That will be easy enough to guard against, but I'll still have to worry about geniuses, who will likely break through the safeguards multiple times before I can counteract every possible cheating scheme.

It will have story and danger and events and some mild puzzles. You just see a lot of stages and walking animations early on here because that's the backbone of an exploration game with a mute protagonist. I'll add a narrator to do a lot of the heavy lifting, and that's when you'll start to see a stronger narrative develop. "The sun beat down on him as he crested the dune, only to find the sand stretching out as far as he could see before him, without a drop of water in sight. He had made it one day without water, but he knew he would not make another in this heat. In the ravine below, he could make out the entrance to a cave, which might contain water. In the other direction, he saw a flock of birds circling. They had to drink eventually, and he could try following them, but that might not work, depending on how far away the water was." You can kind of see how adding a larger variety of cat animations and shots, coupled with narrative VO, could create something a great deal more compelling. That's what all those Attenborough shows are, and I think they are up to episode 1000 of "generic nature show". Mainly though, for this thing, I'm counting on lower income groups playing with the intention of winning, and enjoying some of the animation, music, and story here and there. I couldn't get the public to watch an Indie film if I had a quarter million dollars and the movie was good, but I can get people to try and win 10 bucks, with 10 bucks. People in my area are out stripping copper wire out of abandoned houses in 30 degree weather to make 20 bucks a night, so I'll get some takers for watching youtube for money, I would think.

Key demo is probably the ever increasing number of unemployed college kids. I suspect many younger people will play it, I've marked it as intended for adults on all youtube posts, but then I was watching Aliens when I was 10. It's basically PG anyway, with some sort of grim death scenes here and there. No gore or blood pooling on youtube, or they'll likely demonetize the channel.

A secondary demographic, and what might end up as the primary, would be lower income regions. A guy in Pakistan offered to work for me for 1 dollar an hour, like photoshop work, I didn't hire him, but I did note that there were places in the world where people still got excited to see a 100 dollar bill. Even in my town, which is amongst the poorest in America, I've seen at least two people get murdered over around 100 dollars in the last 20 years. Point being, I thing that there are places where something like a 2.000 dollar prize would still attract a lot of interest.

Finally, there are just people that love story choice games, and these range from 8 to about 35. It's a small niche market, but enough to succeed if SP makes it far enough to become widely known in that community.

Bottom line, this is a workaround that lets me run an internet casino (cha ching probably) while building up experience and internal synergies across SP. I understand that people want to see an engaging and entertaining final product. I'll just need the same advantages that every other person who accomplished that has had, maybe 20 million dollars, and there has to be a staging process to reach that.
 
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Even with improved animations and more polish (it looks great already) i dont think it's going to keep peoples attention for long if it's doesn't have extra characters and story and stuff going on. Solely looking at cool cgi locations doesn't cut it for me for long peroids of time, and I feel like everyone younger than me has even less attention span with tiktok, etc.
I was in a weird mood earlier, and having gotten some rest, feel I can give a little better answer here.

What you're describing is a really serious part of the problem that has to be solved. It's a good question, and something I spend a good amount of time thinking about.

Did you see the red flags in certain shots, the title cards, the birds flying in some direction? Those are all kind of early shadows of me implementing the pacing concepts. So I'll share my current design thoughts and see if you have any good ideas. You had some great ideas on the Flood project. I'll admit that what I have is basic. Keep in mind that it kind of has to be, which is what always leads me onto funding rants. Constraints are prohibitively tight when every job on set is just a slice of a pie chart of one person's time. It would be great if it had been 60 people as planned.

1, The Maze now has an easy to understand structure. there are 7 concentric rings, in each ring, there are around 4-5 choices. Make all 5 choices in a row correct, and move to the next ring. Some bad choices set you back a ring, at a different starting cell. Some end the game. Some lead into an auxiliary section which serves as a midrange setback between the two other options. Our income comes from people playing longer, so killing off the main character, while dramatic, would severely impact the bottom line if overused.

2. You get a big audio visual indicator when you've successfully progressed to a new ring. I'll make the first one easy, and quick, so that newcomers get that first "accomplishment chime" early on. I might even do a little intro tutorial sequence where you get the chime every decision for the first few videos. These chimes both visual and audio, are a key component for games of many types. Think everything from Mario to slot machines. A bit of a fireworks display, sometimes literally, after an in-game accomplishment helps a lot.

3. Occasional special events that appear only on the right path. This will encourage people that are doing well to try and complete the maze. I think it's important that people can see clear signs of progress to sustain interest. That's something I'll make clearer in an official trailer.

4. A subplot where the cat can rescue some animal friends who help him, by finding something further in the maze that helps them. Unclog a dam in the next ring to restore water to the otter village, that kind of thing. Basically layering shorter term goals in with the clear, central goal.

5. Frequent scenes where the goal can be seen at a distance from many parts of the maze. The goal is to "reach the White Tower" in which "the light" is located. So starting around the second or third ring, you start seeing that tower on the horizon, first from a great distance, just a spec, and then closer and closer with each ring. I'll maximize the psychological value of this by making it appear really close for the last 3 rings, to give it the point of no return feeling just over half way in.

6. To provide drive in the final stage, the 7th ring, or finale, will be all story, and no maze exploration, like the actual Save Point product is designed to be. It will be kind of a boss battle type thing, a tense game of cat and mouse, with the cat as the mouse.

So, subplots cost 10x more time than travel sections, so they need to be used strategically, I'm thinking maybe just 2-3 per playthrough. Layer them early and then let the endgame propel it from there.

Lastly, I've been doing some strange research on this very topic of late. Watching Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, Bandersnatch, Detroit Become Human, The Quarry, etc, and some animated films like the old Bluth movies.

Here's the interesting thing I found. Attention spans were always kind of short, at first, and animation directors have found some surprising answers to this issue.


Ok, so watch like 1 minute of this early 80's movie game Dragon's Lair. Here's what I took away. Even when absolutely nothing is happening, Dirk is in constant danger. There is rarely a 3 second period where he isn't about to get killed by something terrible. So adding a lot of danger will be another tactic. The only surprise here was the sheer rate of speed these guys were presenting the character with new dangers. Obviously it's a different type of game, but still, it's pretty rapid fire.

I'm thinking there's a ring where he's constantly chased by a pack of whatever, and has to escape. Maybe some where it's man vs nature, you know, starvation, freezing, etc. I can do combat scenes, but it's tough in this format, to reward strategy but keep it modular. At least one major combat scene at the end. Battle of wits with a lot of on screen action.

Probably the most significant design constraint centers around the ads, and the ratio of time they take up in the maze. There's definitely a point where even people that like it will stop playing if that ratio is too high. Otherwise I could do sections of shorter lengths between choices, and that would be helpful in so many ways.
 
I watched a bit of the dragons lair video and its not just the constant danger, it's also a constant change of environment, he is going into a different room every couple of seconds. reminds me of that old game WarioWare -- a massive flood of minigames in succession, designed to keep the focus of people with a.d.d. If you're bored just wait 4 seconds and it will change.

IDK how helpful I can be here, no exciting thoughts bubbling to the surface.
There is a subreddit here https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterEveryLoop/ that focuses fun to watch videos that repeat

I, too, worry about all the ads for non-premium YT users, like you're saying that is the biggest constraint, unless the viewers are like .. under 18, broke, and bored, I would forsee a large chunk of them getting fed up with the youtube ads after the 10th ad .. the ads are repetitive and they come in batches of like 2-3 at a time, it's going to get old really fast. It's a big problem and I don't see any brilliant solutions around it.

There is an option of a massive undertaking of building your own game software that loads videos off a private server, and damn that sounds like an awful amount of work and a lot more upfront costs to get going, i don't think that is the answer. so it's still left with this problem of youtube ads and a lot of travel sections with nothing going on.

Lots of ads + lots of walking around without dialogue/characters/story= people going somewhere else, idk how to fix that.

Here's the best i can come up with rn -- Maybe if your videos of walking/location were a lot more dynamic the way that dragons lair is constantly changing locations for people with a.d.d., if your 2 minute videos had 12 differnet locations, and it changed every 10 seconds, then you that would help me to stay interested and it seems like you've gotten to the point where you can pump out locations and walking quickly. it would also help with the repeating nature of the maze, since the locations are faster you would be able to appreciate them a second time around
 
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Low stimulation video can be okay if I'm laying back and relaxing, like a TV screen saver of deep sea life or a drone flying through a metropolis.

The mix of low stimulation video combined with interval disturbances has never worked for me. I need high stimulation interaction, or low stimulation non-interaction -- constantly being lulled into a state of relaxation and then uncomfortably snapped out of it is unpleasant for me. I want one or the other, depending on my mood.

I've never understood savepoint as an engaging consumer product, and it seems like you sort of get that, we've talked about it, and you're trying to circumvent it by PAYING people to play your game, instead of making a game people want to play on their own accord. Maybe that can work, I really have no idea about that, seems kinda perverse to me but if it makes you rich that would be amazing, I'd be happy for you.

personally if I saw a quarter on the sidewalk I wouldn't pick it up, wtf do I need a quarter for? I've got quarters at home. I'd never engage in something that I don't enjoy just for a small chance of winning $100, you can never get that time back and we'll all be dead soon enough. money doesn't motivate me like that.

I know there's lots of different ways of thinking, and I've never considered myself normal, so I figure I just don't understand your demographic, cause I'm certainly not it, so who exactly is this for? Knowing your audience is really the first step to any sort of business strategy.

If you had $10,000 to spend on advertising what demographic would you target?
 
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I watched a bit of the dragons lair video and its not just the constant danger, it's also a constant change of environment, he is going into a different room every couple of seconds. reminds me of that old game WarioWare -- a massive flood of minigames in succession, designed to keep the focus of people with a.d.d. If you're bored just wait 4 seconds and it will change.

IDK how helpful I can be here, no exciting thoughts bubbling to the surface.
There is a subreddit here https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterEveryLoop/ that focuses fun to watch videos that repeat

I, too, worry about all the ads for non-premium YT users, like you're saying that is the biggest constraint, unless the viewers are like .. under 18, broke, and bored, I would forsee a large chunk of them getting fed up with the youtube ads after the 10th ad .. the ads are repetitive and they come in batches of like 2-3 at a time, it's going to get old really fast. It's a big problem and I don't see any brilliant solutions around it.

There is an option of a massive undertaking of building your own game software that loads videos off a private server, and damn that sounds like an awful amount of work and a lot more upfront costs to get going, i don't think that is the answer. so it's still left with this problem of youtube ads and a lot of travel sections with nothing going on.

Lots of ads + lots of walking around without dialogue/characters/story= people going somewhere else, idk how to fix that.

Here's the best i can come up with rn -- Maybe if your videos of walking/location were a lot more dynamic the way that dragons lair is constantly changing locations for people with a.d.d., if your 2 minute videos had 12 differnet locations, and it changed every 10 seconds, then you that would help me to stay interested and it seems like you've gotten to the point where you can pump out locations and walking quickly. it would also help with the repeating nature of the maze, since the locations are faster you would be able to appreciate them a second time around
Sorry it took me a second to answer, kind of did a work marathon last 2 days.

The big issue right now is that I just have very limited control over the ads. I could probably make it work a lot better if I could dictate that I only wanted the super short 5 second ads. I could decide what ads had videos and which ones didn't when the project started, and then a year in they changed some legal stuff to where youtube can just do whatever it wants. End of an era. When google started out, they passed on a lot of money for ethical reasons. If it tilted the table, or screwed someone, Larry and Sergai just wouldn't do it. Now new blood is in charge, and over the last few years they've started to abandon those ethical positions. In example, Google had previously decided not to make the entire first page of search results for x just route directly to google owned stores. That's a rule they got rid of recently. It's a lot of small things changing slowly, but it's all going in a pro business anti consumer direction now.

Now premium youtube users should be perfect for Labyrinth, though of course it's an opposite demographic. People who pay a monthly bill to not have to watch ads, probably aren't the people that are desperate to win a single hundred. Premium users get an ad free game, and I get paid by youtube directly. Great. it's maybe 1% viewership, but every little bit helps.

The way the choice screens work, it makes it hard to make a video short enough that it's ad incompatible. I think it's like 30 seconds to become eligible, and the choice screen takes 20 seconds of during video time. So I'd have to make a 9 second video to fly under the ad radar. IDK, I might find clever ways to do this. Also, if a video has fewer than 100 views, google won't put an ad on it, so I could just swap out identical cog videos I suppose, seems like that would turn into too much maintenance

About building my own game server, or just making a conventional game. It was literally the first option available to me. But it's not available to me. Did you know a lot of TL (the labyrinth) is actually built playable inside Unreal engine. Like I could put it together as a standard controller driven steam release. The reason I don't is because........ Youtube pays for a lot of things I can't afford, in return for half of my profits or so. Everyone knows youtube, nobody knows "Unadvertised game engine #837494638476" So I'd have to pay for it to become famous enough for people to find it, install it, and learn to use it. Typically the price for this is 20-80 million dollars, for just US territories. If a game was really catchy and fun, like tetris for example, it still takes usually at least millions, and several years, to catch on. Bottom line, I could build my own game software almost overnight, it's no problem, it's just how would they ever find it? No money until they find it, no advertising until money, no one finds it until advertising. The cycle of "only the rich can earn money" is now complete. Also, what could be the best game on youtube, would not hold up so well competing against Apex Legends directly.

I think these early reels have probably given an incomplete impression of what gameplay should be here. The travel and exploration stuff is the "filler" and then the actual game is the events and choices and challenges, etc. None of that has been shown yet, or very little, so I understand your perception. Basically those sections are more difficult and time consuming, and right now bulking up is the main drive. So to clarify, I'm not expecting exploration to be the only gameplay. Unfortunately, for this unique formula about the maze and prize to work, there really does have to be a lot of cells. Like probably 3500 would be ideal, and I'll be lucky to produce and organize 400 and launch this year.

Almost every problem I'm dealing with is ultimately one huge workaround for not having the normal resources that business owners start a company with. Everything has to be done inside out and backwards, like an astronaut trying to eat a pizza out of a capri sun bag because everyone in the human race except this one guy has gravity available. That's how I feel about having the one career with no grants or business loans. You basically are forced to do everything wrong, because the right way to start a business, any business, is with a business loan.

About the flashing scenery, lol. I get it, your comment is valid, but I think I probably don't have to go full dragon's lair speed. Honestly, that's the fastest paced thing I've ever seen. I spend the first 4 minutes of every "better call saul" just watching silent black and white footage of a guy cleaning a cinnabon. The first 2 hours of "close encounters" is mainly just a guy eating dinner and chatting with people.

I think that even in previous videos, I'm changing the shots every few seconds. Average across all film is 7-8 seconds a shot, with the fastest director on record (Michael Bay of course) averages only a shot every 3.5 seconds or so. Dragons lair, is crazy, that's like 1 second per shot or event. For the record, those 2 boomers were paid 52 million dollars for 22 minutes and 18 seconds of animation, half the amount I made in one day, last year for 0 dollars. Their animation was better, like 6x better, but not 52 millioin times better. You could put a downpayment on a house for 3 grand in the year they were paid the 52 million.

Changing the whole location every 3 seconds is not going to work, that's insane. Think about it. There is no way to tell any kind of coherent story, so I'm assuming I just misunderstood what you meant. Changing to an interesting new shot every 3 seconds is now possible, and I was kind of showing off that new speed in the OP video, which you may note is the fastest I've ever made. Even Dragons Lair only changed actual locations every 15 seconds or so. It's more that a new "event" happened like every 2 seconds. That is certainly way faster than what I've been doing. Still, a lot of youtubers just talk about nothing for several minutes at the beginning of each video, and still become rich, so how do they have 2 minutes of leeway, and I only have 3 seconds? It's a different product, but still, feels a bit unfair. I'm going to try some of the things I've seen in DL though. I like the idea of the cat kind of constantly escaping danger passively. Like it almost falls off a cliff, but recovers it's balance and moves on, or a giant venus flytrap tries to eat him, and he runs, the plant snapping its jaws shut an inch from it's tail. That kind of thing. Regular escapes from danger to keep tension up.

I keep going on and on about how I'm making this part and that faster, and this is what it's all about, because at the speed I'm at now, I really could keep up with changing shots really fast. I wish I had just invented pong. Got the one line done, and now the ball, and one more line for the tennis court, ok time to retire! Boomer Power!

1685575327357.png


The computer I had to build and program to get a sliver of a shot at earning $2000 for every one million customers served.

Basically, I think the breakthrough I'm looking for on the gameplay end needs to be an economic (from the programming end) way to supply frequent dopamine pings. That's why I'm looking at stuff like "valediction screens" as a possible way to spike dopamine on a more regular basis.

1685576204579.png


In example, if I used only hand crafted, non repeating, payoffs, which are the best of course, it would be an impossible amount of work for one person, and you can see in the picture above, even funded game studios with a crew working together don't always do it. 16 screens like this, then a cutscene on the last level.

I think the big question is, how do I build "investment" in the game as it goes. RPG, you get a better sword every hour, so you're motivated to keep playing, since you have now invested in making the game easier to solve. TL already has a bit of that, but in my opinion, not enough.

Maybe you could find bonus coins throughout, that add money onto the prize if you do win. That would work, because the more coins people got along the way, the more motivated they would be to try and reach the treasure.
 
Low stimulation video can be okay if I'm laying back and relaxing, like a TV screen saver of deep sea life or a drone flying through a metropolis.

The mix of low stimulation video combined with interval disturbances has never worked for me. I need high stimulation interaction, or low stimulation non-interaction -- constantly being lulled into a state of relaxation and then uncomfortably snapped out of it is unpleasant for me. I want one or the other, depending on my mood.

I've never understood savepoint as an engaging consumer product, and it seems like you sort of get that, we've talked about it, and you're trying to circumvent it by PAYING people to play your game, instead of making a game people want to play on their own accord. Maybe that can work, I really have no idea about that, seems kinda perverse to me but if it makes you rich that would be amazing, I'd be happy for you.

personally if I saw a quarter on the sidewalk I wouldn't pick it up, wtf do I need a quarter for? I've got quarters at home. I'd never engage in something that I don't enjoy just for a small chance of winning $100, you can never get that time back and we'll all be dead soon enough. money doesn't motivate me like that.

I know there's lots of different ways of thinking, and I've never considered myself normal, so I figure I just don't understand your demographic, cause I'm certainly not it, so who exactly is this for? Knowing your audience is really the first step to any sort of business strategy.

If you had $10,000 to spend on advertising what demographic would you target?
I understand everything here, and pretty much agree.

However, I think I can explain it well, it's just a bit contorted, for the reasons explained above. When the Lira (our current creative market) crashed so hard that a millionaire could barely afford a hamburger, people started having to do crazy things that didn't make conventional sense, just to try and circumvent the disaster. I remember seeing a person with a farm wheelbarrow full of 100 lira bills, pushing it to a food market to buy bread for the day, with what used to be 100 dollar bills spilling over the side into the mud. That appears insane right? It just got to a point that was so hard on these people that they had to go to psychotic extremes just to equal the reward that was once given to a person who simply put a single bill in their pocket and walked down to the food store.

Tik tok now pays 20 dollars for 1 million viewers in example. Growing up here in Indiana, there was a local guy who would show up to gigs and play banjo music for a crowd of 20-30 people, and that guy retired with a business, a home paid off, 2 kids in college, and some savings, for entertaining 20 people at a time.

As far as how holding an open PG contest is perverse, maybe check out my competitors. Some of the highest grossing youtube channels are just mental cripples pouring ketchup on their exposed feet for sexual thrills.

I doubt if Apple gave away a free iphone to every 1000th page visitor, you would find it perverse. If a rich person does something, it's legitimate, and if a poor person does the same thing, it's unethical. Try and understand how that particular bias is at least partially responsible for the destruction of the middle class.

Addressing whether the game is fun to play. It's going to be like every other game ever made. Some people will like it, most will not. Dad's favorite game is minecraft, but you'd need to pay me to play it. Zack loves Subnautica, but I hate undersea monsters, they make me nervous. He played for 250 hours, and needed no incentive other than the game. I could not play for 10 minutes. I played elden ring for 100 hours. Zack tossed it after 10 minutes. Mom enjoys the dullest content she can find. Mara likes pure drama that's done well, and will put up with significant filler for a good drama. I'll watch a sci fi movie with a bad plot just for the SFX. And the anime market? Don't get me started. I have no idea why people have sunk 1 billion dollars and 1 trillion hours into that genre, and I cannot make it through even one episode of DBZ. Lastly, there is a kayak game in VR, and I think I'm the only one in the world who plays it. About an hour a day I go and kayak through jungle rivers, canyons, and the like, but I've never actually spoken to anyone else who enjoyed it. It's super niche, but the developers found enough people globally, to be set for life, so it's all good.

About demographics. It's a question that gets asked early on, and people like me pretend to know the answer to seem confident, but here's the real answer. You don't really know your target demo until the product is out in the wild and you can do proper market research. Good feedback on the actionable scale can come from one person, but in general the real answers come from averages across millions surveyed. I THINK that younger people, enthusiastic kids looking for a free adventure, exploration enthusiasts, youtubers looking to make challenge videos, and poor people like me looking to participate in a free lottery, will be interested. The reality may be very different. Realistically, I'll know a lot more actual information a year after it launches, than a year before.

What actually happens here is that I work that year in the adwords interface, which is like a giant reactive spreadsheet. Every day, and I mean every day, I get statistical results based on what markets were targeted, which ads they were shown, and how effective those ads were in several ways. Reacting to this new information, I alter and tailor the ad campaigns, either doubling down on what's working, or diversifying tactics to increase my actionable dataset. I would bet 1000/1 against my initial guesses as to key demos actually being accurate.

Here's my starting data, from just normal web research.

average age of a video consumer today - about 33

Average age of a gamer today - 44 (that's about how old I am)

Ratio of gamers who value story and choice more than gameplay - about 35%

For the record, I think there are a lot of people who will enjoy the game on some level or another. Since I have no defenders (maybe I should go find a ketchup bottle) I'll defend myself here. A lot of the footage is beautiful, well composed, as is a good bit of the music. It seems almost strange to just disregard all of that. I have literally seen a crowd cheer for a guy juggling 3 balls, why such a harsh attitude towards Simon's symphony he composed in the background of the cell? Surely some person could find enjoyment in his hard, well constructed work?

I'm not offering money to make the game interesting when it's not, that's a limited view. I just think that the audience that does enjoy this game will be small enough that I need an auxilluary income stream, since it's main goal is to produce funding for a game that actually IS designed to be fun and interesting with no contest. With this tactic, I can get two seperate audiences, and have a built in monetization channel.

Also, I personally find it to be an interesting work of art. Just the concept of a single youtube video that led to a seemingly infinite maze of other videos, some of which had never been seen.

I do agree with you that it needs, in it's final form, to be one or the other, interactive, or relaxed and casual. As you said, they serve different purposes. I think many will just play casually, barely watching the videos, and just dropping in to an open browser tab to advance once every few minutes. A way to gamble spare time against a jackpot at work or whatever. I actually get paid more when they do that, because no ad skips.

Anyway, it's all stuff I'll be working on and tweaking up until the last minute, and beyond. I think you'll find that's the case for every game dev. I've heard so many stories about how one last minute change made all the difference, and I try to find that change every day. I think they were like 80% done programming the original "Diablo" when one guy said "we should make this real time". That one change produced literally billions of dollars in revenue and established the Blizzard empire.
 
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Just as an extra note, I've likely been responsible for some confusion on one point -

The two projects Save Point (the main one) and The Labyrinth (the smaller cat one) are totally different types of games, sharing an identical pipeline and interface. Building on one helps the other.

The Labyrinth is a Maze, with goals and puzzles here and there, where a single goal is sought. It's a low key adventure game with an added cash pool to interest clients outside groups natively interested in the genre.

Save Point is an interactive film about a man's life, in which the player embarks on a grand adventure across time and space where story choices can change the entire game forever. The first open world biography of the most significant person ever to be part of the human race - you.

EG - the same situation as it would appear in each design

TL - "The airport seemed abandoned, and the doors leading forward all seem to be locked. As the cat's gaze swept across the deserted concourse, a few details caught his eye. There was a ramp where the baggage came up, disappearing into darkness below, and a security desk and terminal, with what looked like some buttons he could reach."

SP - No narration. He checks behind him, but it's impossible to tell if he's being followed in the dense airport crowd. He doesn't have long before they track him here. A bead of sweat trickles down his forehead as he uses his phone screen as an impromptu rear view mirror, watching for that person walking strait at him a little too fast. He was a sitting duck in the cue line, and was visibly anxious to get to the desk. Finally! She looked up and asked which ticket he wanted. This is where it's totally different. Pick a plane to Germany, and you start going on adventures in Germany, meeting Germans, and starting plots there. Sweden? Same thing, you'd never see the same scene or story in one country that you would in another.

One is a more traditional choice based game, same as everything else really, and one is a totally new thing, where we pass what's seen as an unbreakable barrier in interactive fiction design via technological advancements.
 
Giving away an iphone is really a terrible analogy to what I was saying, people want and crave the iphone, they are engaged with it, it's the product itself that is coming first, theres nothing perverse there that i find, i don't get your analogy at all and it sounds like youre just deflecting with nonsensical talking points about how the rich get away with stuff. Money has its priviledges but it doesn't mean that they escape my own personal judgements. anyway I don't want to get caught up in analogies or symantics.

I think you have something really cool here with the technology, maybe you're right about finding that one change like in diablo to really strike gold. or maybe it'll be a massive success and I just don't get it, either way the tech is super cool and you've got a platform to make a move

As it exists it looks cool and the music sounds great, but there is an overabundance of stuff that looks cool and sounds great, i need way more than that, i need a lot of stimulation and i need a story structure that keeps a fast pace. There's tons of movies with super awesome lighting that looks amazing and then 5 minutes in I get bored as hell and turn it off cause there was no substance or pacing
 
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I feel as if nate, you discovered a big pile of treasure over a giant wall, so you came up with a plan for a team to get over that wall


But then you never got the team necessary to climb the wall, but you also never changed your plan, so you're left clawing and scraping at a wall that cannot be surmounted. That's why i was pushing so hard for the Flood idea, I see that as something you could have success with and even possibly sell to netflix.
 
Well, it's kind of important not to change the plan. This plan was based on building up synergy. I know corpos have basically ruined that word by repeating it until it lost meaning, but it does mean something here.

For me, and basically everyone in a 2-300 mile radius, money basically doesn't exist. The average income in this area is about 22k annual household, That leaves time and intelligence as resources.

I spend as much time as I can on this, probably around 60-80 hours a week, with a few crash months each year in winter. It's not enough though.

I stick with the same plan because it's a solid plan constructed to work better and better the longer I stay the course. It operates on a simple principle, compound interest.

People make life harder than it has to be, always. They try something, fail the first time, and the strategy is to completely switch up tactics because the last thing didn't work. My dad invested some money with some financial hustler in the 70s. Just once. The guy did what financial people do, took his money, and then shrugged and said it disappeared in the market. Maybe it was that one stock, maybe it was a crooked broker, maybe dad was just unlucky. Whatever it was, the lesson he took away is that any investment just gets you ripped off. So he never invested anything for the rest of his life. Plan didn't work first time I tried, so 180% turn. Here's the thing. If he hadn't tried to infer too much from a very limited experience, and continued to learn and develop his investing skill, it wouldn't have been but a year before he discovered safe and reliable investments, and learned which were which. If he had started investing in real estate, or just silver bars for example, or just bought stock in some solid companies, all of our lives would have turned out great. I'd be happily married right now, living a productive, lower stress life in a city somewhere.

Think of it like being lost in a huge forest. You know that many others have reached safety, so the edge of the forest is definitely in walking distance. You try walking one direction for an hour, but you are still just surrounded by trees. Frustrated with this bad plan that didn't work, you turn 90 degrees, and try a new direction. This direction is probably better, I've got a good feeling about this one. One hour later, you're still lost. Maybe this direction wasn't a good choice either. better turn right 90 degrees again, try a whole new angle. A person could remain lost forever in a 10 mile diameter forest doing things this way.

Here's how you could have a chance to escape. Set a direction to head in. You set your marker on the rising sun. Every time you walk, you walk straight for that rising sun. Given that you don't really know where the edge of the forest is, there is no better way to ensure you make it, than just setting yourself up to build on existing progress.

You know what happened after my last film? I was back to square one. Worse off really. All that energy gone for a break even. You know what happens if the Labyrinth doesn't fly? I start over on another project with the same engine and resources, and I'm starting off 70% of the way to the finish line. That's why I stick with the plan. I'm simply investing in the future, with strategy based on math, rather than my emotional response to any specific situation.

I'll admit being surprised that it was so difficult to find like minded people. It never really occurred to me that I would make it this far without team members. Lone people don't win at film. I've done the research. Getting struck by lightning twice is statistically more likely. It takes a lot of intelligence to design a rocket that makes it to the moon, but even if you were actually smart enough to do that, you just absolutely cannot do it without 70 warm bodies involved. You just can't be 70 places at once, no matter how smart you are. Have you seen how fast a video goes viral when you don't even have one person other than you posting it? You could put up something the quality of shawshank redemption on youtube, and never earn even 100 dollars. It's a death sentence.

When I came to an independent film community, I thought I'd find a lot of people like me, but it's a ghost town. Why are we the only two people talking about this? I just automated a bridge between live action and animated film, and crashed the up front costs of animation. This should be exiting stuff, but it clearly isn't of interest to the group of people that should be most interested out of any group. For the right person, this system could change their life, but like a person who designed a really great aircraft carrier, I'm just going to look like an idiot if I end up trying to drive it around by myself. What would be extremely helpful to a large group of people, is basically a huge, unwieldy burden for one person.

Why didn't I just build a canoe then, people will ask, seems stupid to set up for something too large to handle. Look at the stats on the bottom of the front page here. 30,000 canoes, and no one ever reached the shore. I can either put together a crew and investment, or die. That's the options.

Anyway, I really do appreciate your being supportive of the project. None of this is meant as argumentative, I'm just kind of thinking out loud. Indietalk has become more of an "anne frank's diary" for me since everyone left. I can just write anything, because no one is reading it. I've been trapped alone in a 10'x15' room for 5 years now. Too poor to go even one city over, too poor to eat out at burger king. Too poor to seek investment, too poor to even run the ads to get people to the page where they might invest. People used to call and invite me places, but I said no every time until they quit calling. I haven't turned my phone on in months. It's just not fun to keep stopping the group at the door of a restaurant, and say, Oh, can we go somewhere a little cheaper? I've ruined their day. They worked hard to learn how to sand wood, and they deserve a 70 dollar lunch that costs my weekly income. I'm probably going insane and just don't realize it. My reward for constant work at a high level is almost the same as the punishment given to prison inmates when they murder other prisoners. Solitary confinement, with some books and a tv.
 
I get that and I'm not saying to abandon your pipeline I'm just saying to shift strategy from firstly relying on this unlimited choice models, and start out with a first project that is more manageable for a single person, such as flood.

but hey if the end is almost in sight then stick to it so you can see for yourself how people respond
 
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at first when i first saw how long your post was I asked chatGPT to summarize it for me, i was curious how succinct it would be
so weird to read it this way

This passage highlights the author's frustration with their personal and professional life. They express concern about the tendency of people, including their father, to abandon strategies after a single failure, instead of learning from it and improving over time. They emphasize the importance of consistency, resilience, and strategic planning based on logic rather than emotion.

The author also discusses their struggle to find like-minded collaborators, comparing the need for a team in film-making to the need for multiple individuals to build and operate a rocket. They feel disappointed and surprised at the lack of enthusiasm from their peers in an independent film community, especially given the innovative system they've developed to lower animation costs.

Finally, they convey feelings of isolation and financial struggle, comparing their life to solitary confinement and expressing distress over their inability to engage in social activities or seek investment due to financial constraints. Despite the hardship, they continue to work diligently in the hope of eventual success.

-- i'd probably have a similar summary on some of my posts, I can relate to the feeling of solitary confinement, thankfully I have a girlfriend now for the past year and a half so that helps tremendously. Also I live in a gilded cage so that helps a lot too, there's a lot of priviledge that keeps me going.
 
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at first when i first saw how long your post was I asked chatGPT to summarize it for me, i was curious how succinct it would be
so weird to read it this way

This passage highlights the author's frustration with their personal and professional life. They express concern about the tendency of people, including their father, to abandon strategies after a single failure, instead of learning from it and improving over time. They emphasize the importance of consistency, resilience, and strategic planning based on logic rather than emotion.

The author also discusses their struggle to find like-minded collaborators, comparing the need for a team in film-making to the need for multiple individuals to build and operate a rocket. They feel disappointed and surprised at the lack of enthusiasm from their peers in an independent film community, especially given the innovative system they've developed to lower animation costs.

Finally, they convey feelings of isolation and financial struggle, comparing their life to solitary confinement and expressing distress over their inability to engage in social activities or seek investment due to financial constraints. Despite the hardship, they continue to work diligently in the hope of eventual success.

-- i'd probably have a similar summary on some of my posts, I can relate to the feeling of solitary confinement, thankfully I have a girlfriend now for the past year and a half so that helps tremendously. Also I live in a gilded cage so that helps a lot too, there's a lot of priviledge that keeps me going.
Yeah, I'm just having a depressing week or something. I've just never done this much work for this little return, ever. I used to record 3 minute gameplay clips for Machinima.com and get 60k views per video easy. I just hit the record button, sent them a file, and got paid. Now I work for years breaking through to entirely new levels of capability, and it's literally like 20 views with zero income.


I just took a 15 second shot of this guy drinking a beer, and that got 35,000 hits. Now thousands of hours of focused work has gotten me less than 15 seconds of screwing around. Thus the Lira example.
 
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I quit my job as a software developer to start my own company once, worked almost 2 years for 80 hours a week creating some really cool, practical, useful software that still would be making money to this day. I got so burned out, nobody would help me, i just needed one fucking person to help me, but nobody would do it, and i got so burned out that with the final six months remaining I gave up. Couldn't stand it for another minute, one of the huge failures of my life.

Then I spent an entire decade in solitary, like I was a resident of the chateau d'if. a fucking decade of solitary life.
dantes was only in solitary for 6 years before he met the priest...

Well at least I made some short films and stories that basically nobody watches or reads, and used, spent, and robbed all of the money i had from my past life. At this point I've been so thoroughly humbled by life I've mostly accepted the insigificance of my life and that nothing I do will ever amount to anything
 
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I quit my job as a software developer to start my own company once, worked almost 2 years for 80 hours a week creating some really cool, practical, useful software that still would be making money to this day. I got so burned out, nobody would help me, i just needed one fucking person to help me, but nobody would do it, and i got so burned out that with the final six months remaining I gave up. Couldn't stand it for another minute, one of the huge failures of my life.

Then I spent an entire decade in solitary, like I was a resident of the chateau d'if. a fucking decade of solitary life.
dantes was only in solitary for 6 years before he met the priest...

Well at least I made some short films and stories that basically nobody watches or reads, and used, spent, and robbed all of the money i had from my past life. At this point I've been so thoroughly humbled by life I've mostly accepted the insigificance of my life and that nothing I do will ever amount to anything
I think if we knew the real numbers of how commonly this scene is playing out across the world right now, we'd be shocked. I'm thinking that people in this situation mostly hide it, meaning that every time you see evidence, there are 1000 invisible cases out there, or more. It's humanity's fault really. It's just so well known that we provide the most support to those who need it the least.

I noticed something in succession that I don't think anyone else noticed. No one ever did anything productive, creative, or worthwhile for even one minute of a 4 year show. Out of everyone we saw, no one produced so much as a paper airplane, or a good idea. Maybe Logan, but we heard about that more than we saw it. Everyone depicted was probably being given millions of dollars annually in personal resources. No one ever had to do anything to earn it. All we ever saw was people bickering and jockeying for position inside a construct that produced absolutely nothing. They do acknowledge it at the very end. "We are bullshit" Roman says, as though the sad truth of their facade reality is finally dawning on him. He finally understands that none of them ever mattered, that their empire, their ideas, their constant rat race to the top of a system that had been running on autopilot before they were born, was ultimately meaningless. You could have swapped in any random human into that room, and it wouldn't have mattered. Ego was their only contribution to this world. Interestingly, not one person on that show ever questioned whether they had already gotten more than they deserved. Each flight on the gulfstream to an overnight drinking party in switzerland, some invisible person like me disappeared from the timeline, like Marty McFly fading out of that picture in Back to the Future. Without that scholarship, or investment, or prototype that the same 50 grand could have paid for, that person's entire life just goes to waste, so that one of these people can get drunk for six hours and then forget it happened a week later. Sadly, I think only the really bright ones ever have to face that Roman moment.

I think it's all fake. Our failures, their successes. I think if we could all see things clearly, we'd understand that no person alive ever got what they deserved. Everyone I've ever met is either getting paid way more or way less than their work justified. To my brain, which kind of sees the world in spreadsheet format, the dissonances are beyond insane. 1 person is set for life because of how they look, another is labeled as a failure after decades of genuine effort. 30k an hour for a person that works 8 hours doing paperwork, and 9 dollars an hour for another person working 8 hours doing paperwork. It's not like you pay some people twice as much as others, it's like society will throw 1000 people under the bus to satisfy the desperate need to deify some person that's maybe 5% more competent. Why didn't you just give them 5% more, instead of 50,000% more? We wouldn't be here discussing this if that were the mentality. We'd be directing films, and enriching the world by providing viable, funded, entertainment people could enjoy.

I think film and art is disproportionally affected by this.

As far as getting our films or work seen, I just think that only works out for people with large support groups. At least that's what I've seen happen. Those "Filmmakers" who were given 5 million dollars to make a new Dune movie? They had never made a film as good as what you or I have made, and in fact, when they got the money, they knew so little that they bought the first edition of the book, thinking that it was the IP. Now they have a 5 million dollar book, no movie, and no IP. Here's the difference. There were over 5000 people on that website, and they all rallied together behind a single flagship idea the benefits of which they could potentially share. It would have worked if they hadn't singled out the dumbest person in the room and given them the resources of a dozen geniuses. God that happens a lot.

My first major post had a link showing 5 people do exactly what we are trying to accomplish "create an entertainment product they could be proud of, and made enough money to support them". They met on an internet form, created a plan, worked on a pitch and demo, got a publisher, and are now a legit production company, with everyone on salary for creative work they love. It's possible. People pull this off every year. The reason that can't happen here at IT, is nothing personal. It's just a low number. If 1 in 20 of us could align interests and skills enough to cooperate, we'd need a regular community of over 100 for it to be even possible. At thousands of regulars a day, it would begin to be likely to happen.

just FYI, I bought that game that those forum people got together and made, and it was really a good game. People liked it, and it's the start of a career for those people. I know I say a lot of grim things, but the light at the end of the tunnel is that it is possible.

If it makes you feel any better, we are far from alone in this situation.



 
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If it makes you feel any better, we are far from alone in this situation.

I'm actually fine. I only posted those adversities to empathsize with you over the resemblance of our plights.

I was doing a little better, made some friends, then had my last $14,000 in cash robbed from me on NYE by the only two friends I was seeing regularly; i cant use banks because I have so much debt from my condo, that loss took me down to $200 cash in my name this past january. crazy stuff. I didn't want to post anything about it out of fear you might create a donation thread for me 😄 😄 😄 I don't need it.

I'm fine now, lost my safety net but I'm back on my feet, worst part is actually losing the friends from betrayal. the destitution only bothered me for a moment, cause I'll be the first to admit I don't live in the real world anyway. I have no right to complain about financial hardship when I pay no bills. I don't even read my mail, my lifestyle is a joke. I take bills and throw them straight to the trash can without ever opening anything. Can't remember the last time I looked at a bill.

I'm only still here by the grace of fate, and there were years... literally years, during which I felt deeply resentful of the fact that I was still alive.
Cause I feel it's insane that I am still here, like act of god insane, viewers raging online about plot armor insane, I really should not be here and I couldn't come to terms with it.

Raining Jim Carrey GIF by Laff


The human mind has a way of making life so much harder than it needs to be, why can't we just exist and be happy like dogs?

I'm doing pretty good now! Not looking for a pity party, I'm talking about things in the past.
These days I'm hoping I get to stay on the planet long enough to write a couple books and reminding myself to be grateful for the opportunity my lifestyle affords me. Few people my age have such an excess of free time at their disposal, I've got a GF I get along with and my book is coming together. It's not so bad. It's not so bad.
 
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Wow, that's terrible, having your two best friends conspire against you to steal everything you have. Sorry to hear that happened. People are frequently terrible. I used to have an active social life, and I'd meet new people all the time, and I'd get robbed all the time. Like twice or three times a year. I'd say I lost about 200k over the years to shrink. Mostly a friend of a friend. After a while you can see it coming. You get introduced to a new person, and there's this momentarily stunned look on their face as they behold your great wealth, like you have an Iphone. Then about 2 weeks later the lock on the door is broken, or the window is smashed.

I'm not looking for pity either. Because it's functionally useless. I've just lost any incentive to filter my speech. Being depressed is a bad look, so I'll get fined down to 0 dollars income for that. Working hard and acting polite is a very overabundant look, so I'll get rewarded 0 dollars income for that. Write a 400 page novel, 0 dollars. Finished Indie game no marketing 0 dollars.

I'm glad you're doing ok. I am also basically fine, in terms of immediate danger, or I wouldn't be able to even do what I've done. I'm certain that I'm in a good situation compared to many many people. Who isn't though. Compared to that guy who fell into the volcano while he was trying to take an Instagram selfie, we're all extremely fortunate. It's a low bar.

Basically, I try to plan ahead responsibly. I'm stable and medium healthy, but I'm one major setback away from being destroyed. I could live forever on residuals and dividends of past projects, as long as - I never get sick, I'm never in a bad car crash, no home appliances break down, the pipes never burst, I never get married again, I don't have kids, I never go on a vacation, and none of my organs ever send me a bill for drinking my first decade out of college. So I see the combine rolling towards me, very slowly, and I'm trying to move out of the way.

The other thing is that I'm aware of the financing it takes to create a product, market it effectively, and provide service for consumers. If I don't get a financial break at some point, I will fail, without question. I think that's true for almost any real business.

Have you read the crowdfunding how to guides. LOL.

Step one - make sure all 75,000 of your facebook followers know about the campaign months before you start it.

Step two - have a countdown, so all the thousands of your existing supporters can stay up late waiting for midnight to hand you money

Step three - invest a tiny amount in advertising to prime the page, just 3-5 grand, or whatever change NY people have after buying lunch, or whatever you got in donations for playing minecraft yesterday
 
Lisa Kudrow Its So Exhausting Waiting For Death GIF by Friends


There was a guy that used to post here, lucky hardwood, he was riding a motorcycle and crashed into the side of a van and flew through the wall of the van, through the interior, and then through the other wall of the van and ended up dead on the road. And they revived him after that.

Lots of crazy stories to go around.
 
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