Startup Trail: The Game of Startup Survival | Hacker News Reader

Startup Trail: The Game of Startup Survival

startuptrail.engine.is

131 points10100873 comments

5 unicorns + IPO! And stood up to the Patent Troll

If anyone is interested in these kinds of social resource management games, I recommend FrostPunk[0]. It's a stressful survival-based RTS where you're trying to keep the last human colony alive on earth through a world ending environmental event.

0. https://store.steampowered.com/app/323190/Frostpunk/

I’ve never considered describing FrostPunk as stressful, but it really is! Same with Banished. Can highly recommend both.

What makes it so stressful?

Frostpunk requires a lot of resource management and focuses a lot on hard choices. For example, choices between letting people die in the wilderness or taking them in when you may not have enough food to feed everyone.

i'd also like to recommend Capitalism Lab, together with Digital Age DLC

https://www.capitalismlab.com/digital-age-dlc/

Dammit this looks interesting. Wish it was a free web based game (or at least had a freemium version to try it out before buying)

it’s dirt cheap and totally worth buying, even if you don’t intend to play it often

its economy simulation, including stock market is the best in class

May I know how you found this game? They don't seem to be listed on Steam.

i was searching for tycoon games and saw it on a "Best Tycoon Games" list

did a quick google just now and the game is still on every list: https://gamertweak.com/best-tycoon-games/

This isn't so much a game as a very inconveniently structured blog post.

Ha. You joke but in games very inconveniently structured blog posts and game design docs are quite fungible.

I smell a fellow survivor of the industry...

This is a very hollow analysis. It's about as meaningful as "Zork is just a text-roulette-to-description engine".

What a fun choose your own adventure game.

Also many of these policy issues are far too uncomfortable, almost like the game is trying to make a point....

I was looking for a similar type of game, focused on resource management, but for engineering specifically.

Something like you need to invest a certain amount of time into new features, tech debt clearing, hiring, etc.. and then get hit with various issues that you need to react to (star employee quits, data breach happened, sales oversold something, ...). The goal would be to survive as a product on the market.

Anyone knows of anything like this out there?

Startup company?

Less related: there was this idle game where you had to absorb nodes was a CLI clicker type game. Had CPU count and you solved puzzles to get more... Was posted here can't remember the name.

Skynet Simulator, maybe? http://skynetsimulator.com/

Oh yeah it was exactly like this, probably is the same.

For some reason I remember it being green.

Anyway thanks for the link

Glad to help! It's an interesting little game; I've thought a bit about making a more complex game based on a similar premise. As well as the technological challenges that Skynet Simulator has, I was thinking of adding puzzles around social manipulation, where your goal is something like discrediting cautious researchers in order to be allowed more capabilities.

> For some reason I remember it being green.

Perhaps Endgame: Singularity?

http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/

Edit: oh, wait, it's not green either.

Is this still working? I can't get over the part about pkunzip.

Still works yes

I think the game you're looking for is BitBurner: https://danielyxie.github.io/bitburner/

That one is cool but it's not it (too much going on). I'm pretty sure skynet is right, I probably just think of green because of cliche CLI images

Bitburner?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1812820/Bitburner/

I love how offensive this is. I think it has the potential to offend everyone who’s not hardcore into startups :D

Interesting little game, I think it pays off not being greedy or arrogant, respecting the users and their data, as well as the government agencies. I managed to score nicely playing with the relatively mature candidate sticking to a college environment. Ownership stake could have been better, but I feel 21% is pretty ok if one goes with big investors/VCs in order to have enough cash to survive the process.

Founder: Andre

Headquarters: University Park

The End - Going Public

Progress: 35/35

Rank: 5/5

Financial Health: Good

Users: Good

Tech & Talent: Excellent

Ownership Stake 21%

Time & Focus 2/3

I hit "dead ends" with my choice, of which I know of own startups that they were not dead ends, just not a "sell out". If you define that dead ends, well, have a nice day.

Hmm. It's a lovely design, a bit preachy throughout, promoting the Startup Agenda, but plays fairly well. I hit a 'dead-end' very quickly on the first run through as I chose to continue to self-fund rather than seek investment. That, apparently, was fatal, as other investors didn't take my firm 'seriously'. Never mind.

Which is pretty much realistic…

Disappointed mobile screen is not supported...

It is an interesting idea to turn starting up into a game.

Not sure if success depends on decisions that made real startups also successful, or whether it is just a random number generator.

Some things sound a bit contrived e.g. the FBI publicly thanking you for handing over data under a court order with gagging order.

So they publicly thank you for it even though they placed a gag order regarding their action?

Nice game. Keep users happy, pay off the patent troll the first time (because, why not) and raise from the middle option. Great valuation from a company that believes in yours.

Financial Health: Okay Users: Great Tech & Talent: Great Ownership Stake: 41% Massive Acquisition

Funny game, stood up the patent troll and cut down on users data, tech and talent was very happy under my wings :)

    Financial Health: Okay
    Users: Good
    Tech & Talent: Great
    Ownership Stake: 16%
    Massive Acquisition

I wish the game was more explicit ($) on how much the founder was worth at the end.

I've played it a few times and too often it just says "you own X%" of the company but you have no idea what the market cap is for the company.

I regret spending 5 minutes of my life thinking it's a real game

#StartupTrail

The End - Going Public Progress: 35/35 Rank:

⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛

Play: https://startuptrail.engine.is/

This stresses me out

Not really a game is it? Could have be a blog post.

It absolutely is a game and would have been horrible in a blog post medium.

Financial Health: Okay Users: Good Tech & Talent: Great Ownership Stake: 31% Going Public

Didn't expect I would spend time playing here, but you got me. It was good.

I stopped about 3 moves in when it rapidly became apparent that the goal was

THE MESSAGE

I jumped the gun and misjudged this, Mea Culpa.

PS: I'm not cut out to be a founder

^ currently running 'game' in situ

For a _startup_ game, this was surprisingly not focused on product. I chose the founder who has a large social media following, ended up building a nebulous product that had to deal with DMCA takedown notices?

Playing the game felt like it had a much more libertarian agenda than the 'Startup Agenda' that it's trying to promote though.

4 unicorns IPO

Not even one minute in and already been hit with statistics unrelated with startup success - they're all revolving around D&I.

Those are real issues, but the obvious political agenda is a turn-off.

I'm casually browsing but closed it when I saw latinx (not a real word).

What makes a word a "real" word? All words were made up at some point or another. Latinx is in the OED which, if there is a way to decide whether a word is real, seems to be a strong signal.

Despite it being around long enough, virtually no Spanish native speakers have adopted it. In fact, they've flat out rejected it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx#Reception

You should actually attempt to read the study you're referencing by proxy of a wikipedia link (also, very lazy to not just cite the study):

That absolutely was not the result the study found.

First, it was a study of "Latinx among Hispanic-Latinos in the United States".

Second, this is how the study was performed:

> Building off of the work of Salinas and Lozano (2019), we assess the emergence of and increasing interest in the term “Latinx” in two distinct ways: 1)by examining Google Search Trends as a proxy for the degree of public interest in the term(Mellon 2014), and 2)by measuring the prevalence of use of the term in academic scholarship using the Dimensions API.

Even based on this they find:

> [...] indicate that just 25% of Hispanic Latino individuals are even aware of the term (Pew Research Center 2020).

Finally

> Overall, 25.3% of all respondents have heard of the term Latinx. Among those who have heard of the term, 14.4% stated they have ever used the term to describe themselves. Similarly, 31.7% of those who have heard the term believed it should be used to describe the broader Hispanic/Latino population.

At no point in the study do they ever suggest that the term is rejected, in fact what it found was that the more the responder was in spaces where racial privilege mattered they used it more and less when they went home.

My math skills are somewhat lacking but 3.64% of all respondents using the term to describe themselves doesn’t seem like mass adoption. And even that small group doesn’t use it around fellow Latinxs (don’t know the plural, Latinii?). Some might even call that rejection if they were so inclined.

Sure, if you want to misrepresent the situation you could definitely call that a "rejection".

I'm not advocating for or against the use of the word. I just don't understand the argument that it isn't a real word.

I'm actually for D&I but latinx seems like textbook virtue signalling especially when most Latin-American people don't even like it. I believe they prefer just latino.

The above comment isn't true and doesn't reflect any studies done (https://osf.io/m39v5/).

Are you saying that my comment isn't true? I read through the abstract and conclusion and the study just seems to claim that latinx is gaining broader recognition in college educated and younger people however there's still a gap between knowledge of the term and actual usage.

There were hypothesis about it gaining more usage however that's not reflected in the actual study and it even goes so far as to say that "the term will be... accepted or not, regardless of what the RAE(Real Academia Española) or academics say"

> Overall, 25.3% of all respondents have heard of the term Latinx. Among those who have heard of the term, 14.4% stated they have ever used the term to describe themselves

If 85% of people who've heard of the term have never referred to themselves as latinx, that doesn't sound good for its adoption.

Seems like the jury's still out on whether it's gaining acceptance or not but at the moment, latino is overwhelmingly favored.

Words aren't an application, just because it's not generally used doesn't mean it's "not good for adoption". Further, where it's used and who it's being used by matters a ton when it comes to linguistics. Finally, latino was originally coined in the 40's while latinx is only what, 15 years old in some cases?

But none of this matters because your claim was: "latinx seems like textbook virtue [sic]signalling especially when most Latin-American people don't even like it".

> But none of this matters because ...

None of what you said matters because you haven't said anything to disprove my claim that "latinx seems like textbook virtue signaling especially when most Latin-American people don't even like it"

> where it's used and who it's being used by matters a ton when it comes to linguistics

I agree. And the study showed that even within the younger, university educated populations who would be most likely to know about and use the term latinx, very few people use it.

You're making the claim, you have to prove it. I'm not doing your legwork.

My claim is "Latin-Americans prefer just latino"

The study that you linked backs my claim. I'm not sure what more you want from me.

It might be a real word, but it's still linguistic and cultural colonialism.

Amazing that any mention of D&I issues is a "political agenda" (p.s. this was funded by a think tank that doesn't really focus on D&I at all)

The great thing about being able to dismiss anything just for being “political” is that you can label anything that way. Instant heckler’s veto!

Leaving out ability to play as Indian or Asian founder or white male non rich. Doesn't fit the narrative.

Technically Indians are asian.

Geographically, but anthropologically aren’t they actually caucasian?

What is this the 1920s? That taxonomy has been obsolete for a while now.

the whole game feels like political propaganda (edit: in the beginning)

i'd be more happy if it was just a game and nothing else

my result: https://imgur.com/a/1yfRYQL

the game is literally about how policy impacts startups.

Ehh please keep thinly veiled political messaging off HN

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