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Comment by physcab | Hacker News Reader

Let me make one counter-point here though.

> Gamers may be fickle, but they are loud and they are loyal.

Zynga. Zynga has made a fortune profiting off of other smaller outfits, just merely by studying and copying. They didn't have source-code (to my best knowledge), but they knew how to make a game mass-appeal. This happens more often in gaming than you'd like to think.

My advice (I work at a gaming company) is to hold all your IP close as possible. Game design, art assets, source code, whatever. You have a right to own it so why not hold on to it for a while until you establish a solid competitive advantage.

On the otherhand, your IP is very closely tied to how well you can integrate teaching. This is something others cannot do easily, so you have atleast that protecting you.

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Your main point seems to be that opening their source code will make it easier for someone else to clone their idea:

But that's wrong because, as you say, if some company wants to clone an idea, they're not even going to bother reading the code, let alone steal the code. And I know of no one who's ever stolen code for a game since, say, 2003, and gotten away with it. Reddit changes the game. You can crucify a competitor for such behavior, and gamers will shun them.

I think your advice is coming from a gut feeling or intuition rather than experience. But empirically it's mistaken. It's a natural reaction to be hesitant to release code powering your product, but I'm pretty sure it's never been a problem in practice. They will get major major PR and respect, both of which can only help a fledgeling startup.

Competitors with lots of money and who have most to gain from squashing competition, won't be affected by Reddit or bad reviews. They can just buy more traffic (we're talking studios with tens to hundreds of thousands in ad budgets per week).

I don't share your point of view. Zynga - which is what I consider a web startup - has been at the origin of a revolution in the game industry. At the same time Activision did with Call Of Duty, this is one of the first company which leads the XP + items revolution. That was the first time you saw XP + items in a game from another style than RPG. This is also the reason of the success of the Call Of Duty franchise: COD 4 was the first FPS to have XP + item which were previously reserved to RPGs. Nowday, you can't find a game without XP + items. These things came from companies outside the game industry - except Activision and a very - very - few others.

The energy for example is now a main game design and monetization component you find in many, many video games published by the industry now and this is Zynga's invention. Also, Zynga uses big data far before any other big publishers did - except Valve.

Sorry, I think what they are doing has nothing to do with a video game IP. They are doing a product which solves a problem: it teach to code.

For all those common misconceptions (ie. see my other comment below), I strongly advice the codecombat devs to be careful of what is told from and about the game industry.

Their game is inextricably linked to how well it teaches people to code. Lets consider that their "game engine" is their competitive advantage. If they open-source their game, they are giving away that edge leaving another company with more money easily able to take it and run.

That said, I'm not sure how many gaming companies would actually do that, since they are not in the recruitment business.

The concept of limiting a user's action with an energy bar should not be attributed to Zynga. I played games before Zynga that was limiting the number of "turns" I would have access to.

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