spacemarine1

I feel the need, the need for speed. Talk to me, Goose.

One of our earliest Humble Bundles featured Voxatron as did the Humble Mozilla Bundle (where Voxatron was featured as a snippet on the Firefox home page). Will always have a soft spot for Voxatron.

While in Japan last year for Tokyo Game Show, I got to grab lunch with Joseph, the creator. He is an awesome dude.

This is so good. I keep making jokes with founders I know that all AI agents are like meseeks. Life imitates art (and art imitates life).

Thank you. I agree. When done well, a good mashup can feel “easy” and “obvious” but really the devil is in the details. Creating the perfect balance of features across the whole design space for a shippable game takes extreme skill, taste and a lot of effort.

Garry often describes the fast iterative development loop for startups. Launch, test and get user feedback, polish off the rough edges and then do it again. I believe the same process is necessary for excellent game development.

The founder, Wouter, has created or helped design 10 programming languages. Voxile is built in his newest language: Lobster. Wouter has been a major contributor to WASM and LLVM while also inventing flatbuffers. He’s worked at Crytek, Gearbox and Google among many other places. I’ve never seen anything like Voxile.

One EGG studio is wiring LLM’s to npc’s in a hilarious way. We’ll be curious to see everyone’s feedback when they make a playable available.

However, I’ll say that as a result of their AI integration they are also doing way more human writing in the form of prompts and other procedural elements than if they just used old fashioned dialog trees.

I think AI can only be used as an enhancement in certain specific and controlled ways.

One mistake I see a lot right now is the assumption that you can delegate design and creative direction to AI. I think that generally yields slop. In fact I think the Creative Director/design role at a game studio may be the hardest digital job for an AI to replace. I had the opportunity to express that idea to Sam Altman once and he did refute it.

I was just having some fun with the John Wick poster. I too have heard that Keanu is a good, honest human who works hard.

PG does say he actually looks for “naughty” founders as one of the key filtering traits. I link this essay in my post.

But you still have to be ethical and do what you say or it won’t be possible to grow your business long term.

The gamer in me wonders if the “ideal founder” can be described as “chaotic good”?

Well said!

Both Mark Andreessen and Andrej Karpathy say AI is unique as a new technology in that small teams and individuals seem to be the earliest and most cutting edge adopters. (unlike computers and the internet which were used by government and then large companies)

YC just so happens to invest super early in small teams.

So the overlap of YC and AI is inevitable. AI is not an investment genre per se but it can be used to accelerate or improve any ecosystem if used carefully and cleverly.

Since my Humble Bundle days, I’ve always been partial to small companies and small dev studios. Not all EGG companies use AI but they are all keeping tabs on the technology. Mitch Lasky has said that AI may have opened a window in which small studios may have their best shot at outsized success in recent history. Eventually the big dogs will catch up and adopt the new tech themselves but right now David has a shot at Goliath.

Agreed. It is possible to make money in video games while treating customers with respect. This is the way! (and what EGG looks for because it builds stronger IP and longterm retention and good will)

I helped Indie Fund Hollow Knight back in the day and look a them now!

Many people agree that being a video game founder is harder than being a tech founder. Staying small and being as resourceful as you can is a good way to mitigate risk.

The industry has experienced slowed growth and is restructuring which is scary for many people right now. There have been continuous layoffs and studio closures. That sucks (though is not all caused by AI).

But a few quick thoughts: Video games have always been about cutting edge technology. Because they are interactive, they are best positioned to leverage AI tech. (unlike static media)

Prototyping tends to be the most important but most neglected process for finding the fun. AI is a catalyst for rapid prototyping such that a studio can more quickly build and assess game loops and de-risk the rest of their dev cycle before staffing up or pulling team members off other projects.

AI may long-term create more leisure time macro-economically for everyone, meaning more consumer time that may be consumed playing games. (Owen Mahoney thinks the industry will soon triple in size)

I think it is possible to be successful in games without being predatory. Humble Bundle was a demonstration of that.

I don’t believe that ultra-predatory mechanics are long-term sustainable. They usually yield a “ring of fire” effect that creates a growing ring of users for a while but really you’re burning out all your core users and will implode. This is how many describe the original Zynga model.

Supercell (founded around the same time) has cultivated longterm ecosystems and IP by respecting their players.

EGG takes a similar long-term perspective.

AI tech has the spotlight right now for sure amongst VC’s. But I believe AI is also a huge tailwind for video games.

Namely, small, clever teams will be able to do big and entertaining things that were not possible before.

(But yes there will also be tons of slop.)

It was all of the above in my opinion.

VC’s raised easy money (ZIRP era) and they wanted to deploy fast. Founders told VC’s what they wanted to hear to secure capital.

Fair point though Humble Bundle was B2C.

There are clever gaming platforms out there and the best games seem to turn into platforms effectively.

Y Combinator forged a long-term, high-trust ecosystem to the benefit of all tech founders. The video games industry needs to do the same.

Very cool!

Rumor: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1iheqzg/valve_is_...

Interestingly, Steam’s first hardware product was a Steam Box: a little computer brick that could boot Steam on linux and let you play all your games on your TV (with a Steam controller or game controller of your choice). The cycle is now complete.

Government subsidies are a wonderful source of pre publisher funds but in many places (like the US) they don’t really exist for video games.

You’re right.

Though I haven’t formally announced yet. I’m more lurking in the shadows talking to studios quietly than trying to be noticed by the public at large.

I will post more info soon.

I see equity funding as useful starting funding.

Publishers are great for finishing funding once you know what your game is.

I think early equity funding has a role to play in video games… a role that’s very similar to YC. So I started EGG:

https://www.elbowgreasegames.com/

Humble Bundle has put together a Stand With Ukraine Bundle. It is over $2500 of content for $40 and all proceeds go to Razom for Ukraine, International Rescue Committee, International Medical Corps and Direct Relief. Only 6 days left.