21-year-old computer geek makes £1m with online game (Torn) | Hacker News Reader

21-year-old computer geek makes £1m with online game (Torn)

telegraph.co.uk

80 pointstortilla66 comments

There is a slight element of sour grapes in the undertone of many of these comments.

"Its just php scripts", "I could knock that up in a weekend".

These are pretty poor arguments.

Not that many of you care but im slightly surprised at some off the negativity.

What exactly is the difference between people paying him 3 quid and neopets, facebook ( the list goes on ) which sells virtual goods.

One side, comments regularly complain about sites with ads.

Here is a guy, who has an income stream on a website which is not purely ad based. Yet half of you guys are ripping it apart as a simple knocked up site.

I wish I could knock a text-based game up in the weekend, yet we all know there is a lot more to building an app ( yes this would be an app in my eyes ).

As rightfully pointed out, he has somehow found a huge userbase. Tapped it and has made something which gives value ( i'm guessing in the form of entertainment and escapism ) to his users, so much so that they come back everyday.

As for his actual site, I read the article and signed up, took me less than 5mins to leave. Thats just me. His site is shocking and thats polite. Yet it works for him very well.

These are my thoughts I accept I might be in the minority here and most of the people who comment on HN own / run websites which have turnovers of more than 100,000 pounds / month.

Commence downgrading of my karma;)

Slight? It reminds me of the reaction to http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ - that site's so simple!

[12 < x < 24] year old computer [geek | programmer | hacker] makes [$500k < y < infinity] with [Facebook game | iPhone app | social network]

Don't you guys just love how easy it is to be successful at making money on the Interweb?

As a relative recently said, "You know the Internet, right? Let's do something and we'll make a lot of money!"

Plastics!

My old boss used to pester me in this way all the time...funny thing is, he was the IT manager for the branch I was in.

Now you know why I still have to use COBOL quite a bit :(

Fly to Haiti and get a decent voodoo exorcism done. That took care of my pain++, it might work for your cobolitis.

reminds me of an old 'net meme :

Step 1) Make [Facebook game | iPhone app | social network]

Step 2) ????????????????????

Step 3) Profit !

But this guy actually has a revenue stream tied to the game.

Yeah, step (2) is apparently quite well defined :)

Are you the developer in the story? Your handle "Torn", same as the game.

[Edit: Obviously not. Will leave this here in case someone else has the same question.]

Sorry just a coincidence - I've been using this handle for eons though.

You'd think so, but it seems like that's where a lot of people get lost.

Its actually crazy, because his game isn't on a platform and hes making $1.5m. He could probably make much more than that if he found out a way to leverage his current userbase on Facebook, Iphone et al.

Not shown: other 100,000 computer geeks making $0 from their online games.

I'd like to think those geeks are at least having fun. Seeing this article actually made me think I'm going to try my hands at making something like this—not for money, but just because it seems like a fun way to spend college.

So why do those 100'000 other geeks make no money? And why does torn make money?

95,000 of those geeks made their "game" by stacking a bunch of HTML pages on top of each other.

4,500 more are in "beta", which means they didn't finish making it.

400 more were built by people who didn't understand CSS, and so are ugly and Times New Roman'd.

70 are blatant copies of other existing games.

20 are played by a small group of friends, but didn't spread beyond that.

5 thought they would make money by selling t-shirts or something silly like that.

4 make money, but not a million dollars worth.

So you make sucky games and have a poor advertising stragety? Big deal!

That is like saying you won't succeed because 99% who went into martial arts never made it to black blet because they never took martial art seriously.

That's the point I was trying to make. If you take only the people who're good at what they do and put a serious effort into what they do, I doubt you'll see as many failures as the 1 in 100,000 would indicate.

Mmm, chi-square.

To be fair, I recently started a text based game (nothing but html, JS and a few minor icons - no flash) at the beginning of last month and I'm making reasonable money purely from ads - a single ad, in an unobtrusive place.

I haven't even introduced the premium features yet - people get very addicted to these games and are happy to pay for UI enhancements. Hell, I've ever had multiple people contribute designs, graphics and JS to the site wanting nothing in return.

It's been running less than a month in beta and has had 0 public advertising (this being the very first time) and has 150 active players purely from word-of-mouth. Admittedly its not making any worthwhile money currently despite me putting hours and hours of work into it but its been great fun and a great learning experience so its worth it never the less - so long as it breaks even I'm happy. - http://islandor.com

150 players and making reasonable money from ads does not compute, well unless you consider 5-10 bucks reasonable

Read the rest of my post :) Reasonable = Break even - which is all I ever hoped to receive, I only did it for fun and as a side project. When I implement the premium features I suspect to increase this given the amount of interest and my experience with other similar games.

Games like this are based solely around a community, people get friends on these games so don't wish to leave - the game itself is just an addon to the community.

Oh, and its more than $20, I think people must just be clicking as they want the game to survive or something - I've no idea. Not to mention I'm getting spammed with evony ads. I also suspect having a very direct advertising target helps, compared to other sites which often have a very broad market and thus struggle to advertise.

Those text games really are addicting. I played that mob game on iPhone. However they made on big mistake, and it was that after a while you can't do anything because of the time limit they set for actions. So when that happened I stopped and deleted the game. So yea if you can hook them, don't give them any reason to drop the game, always give them something to look forward to to keep them coming back. Good luck.

This another classic example of how people can make lots of money simply by making a game that gives people a chance to do illegal things. Personally I don't view that as a healthy thing, but I know there are those that say that giving people a chance to "try out" murders, muggings, etc in a game is healthy.

But I think Torn's TOS (http://www.torn.com/tos.php) says it all:

Torn accepts no responsibility for the actions of its members i.e. Self harm, Vandalism, Suicide, Homicide, Genocide, Drug abuse, Changes in sexual orientation, Bestiality. Torn will not be held responsible and does not encourage any of the above actions or any other form of anti social behaviour. Although Torn is highly addictive we encourage you to spend time with your family and loved ones, do not forget them. Remember Torn is just a game, if you hit someone with a hammer in real life, they may not just go to hospital.

Torn makes a lot of money because it is an interesting online game. It is interesting because you can build your character and watch how it performs over time, not because it is about crime. Very similar to other online multiplayer games, e.g. Legends of Zork.

As far as I know, there isn't any statistically valid data in favor of the concept "letting people try it out in another reality decreases crime rate" or the opposite. I tend to think trying it out virtually does decrease crime rate. It has the same effect as an experience of a vaccine injection, where one gets an infection in low dose, which helps them gain immunity to it.

That is true chimariko but you have to admit that most of the biggest money making games involve violence.

This is a common cliche but I am not too sure there is really a correlation, just think of

- Civilizations

- The Sims

- Snood (Not talked about much but used to be installed to many many computers, I would suspect it means revenues)

- World of Goo (Sure it is not super big but if you consider the cost compared to popularity, it is interesting)

- All the EA sports games

- All the poker and board games

or many more where violence is not the main topic.

True. However, for every simulation game it seems that there are at least two or three first person shooters.

And the big ones like Grand Theft Auto are very popular. Back in 2007 they had already sold 50 million units, making over a billion in revenue. And that was two years ago. With a cursory check I couldn't find recent sales stats.

Btw World of Goo is a great game and really shows that fun doesn't have to be violent. ;)

The statistics this discussion needs are these:

Seven of the top ten best-selling PC games are violent (the exceptions are Myst and Sims 1 and 2).

Four of the top ten best-selling console games are non-violent, five have the cartoonish violence of Pokemon and Super Mario Brothers and Mario Kart, and one is the definitely violent Grand Theft Auto.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game...

I'd rather emphasize that the key factor in making money in online gaming is sustainable character development.

One could also argue (without data saying either way) the opposite: that repeated exposure to this sort of thing just serves to desensitise and feel less guilt.

Note: I don't actually think that there's a causal link between violent media and crime: it takes an already marred individual to go out and commit atrocities, which the media are happy to scapegoat. 99.999% of people playing or watching violent games or movies would never even dream of replicating scenarios in real life.

One could also argue that repeated exposure to this sort of thing increases one's likelihood of becoming a professional juggler.

Without actual data, all we have to run on are intuitions, probably-broken metaphors, and guesswork. I don't generally trust any of those to result in a rational decision.

That's exactly why games with such content should be allowed.

It could very well be that people who are already marred enjoy violent games more and that contributes to the supposed connection between violent games and violence in real life.

IIRC, there was a study on younger athletes playing video games, visualization, and the improvement of on-field performance. Can't find the link...

I wonder how he got all those users in the first place. http://www.torn.com/ is poorly designed and doesn't elaborate on what the game is. I'm going to sign up anyway because it must be a pretty good game to keep all those users, but I wonder how he marketed it in the first place - that strikes me as the harder part.

(Update: I signed up and played for several minutes so far. It's a handful of PHP scripts with little to actually "do" - at least at the intro level - training is merely clicking on some JavaScript buttons. This guy must be a Derren Brown-like master of persuasion if he really has 40k regular players - wow, hats off to him.)

I wonder how he got all those users in the first place. http://www.torn.com/ is poorly designed and doesn't elaborate on what the game is.

It is ability to gain a community rather than design that matters for this type of web-service.

It's a handful of PHP scripts with little to actually "do" - at least at the intro level - training is merely clicking on some JavaScript buttons.

What difference for the player does it make what technology was used for scripting and buttons? An average guy from these 40k users might not even know such words as JavaScript/PHP/Flash.

<em>It is ability to gain a community rather than design that matters for this type of web-service.</em>

Yeah, I get that, but the front page is just a signup form. If I set up a page like that, it wouldn't magically get signups. There must be some marketing involved someplace.

I hope you are not serious. People are not only in touch with each other through the internet. There are lots of different ways for people to hear about a game (friends, school, work, etc.)

You make a good point. I first heard about Hacker News from a giant magenta squirrel who was fighting a toad with chopsticks.

I used to make these types of games all the time when I was younger, and they're still pretty popular. I guess it all started with A3 http://alienaa.com and some space trading game I forget the name of. They were probably just a natural evolution of BBS games. Making text-based browser games was why I even started programming to begin with when I was 14 or 15, and for a while there were a bunch of games derived from code that I wrote and handed out long before I really knew how to do open source. Seems stupid of me now to have never thought of trying to make money off of them.

I started programming for the exact reason as well. Created Medieval Battles [http://medievalbattles.com] while I was in high school, quickly realized that creating a BBMMORPG isn't profitable and turned this into a career.

Planetarion? I was well into that.

Yup, if what you describe is true (and I suspect it to be true), I will be really interesting in knowing what keeps people coming back to the game and actually paying real money for extra points.

Because if it were just handful of PHP scripts, hey, I can code them in a weekend :)

I guess it's just the drive of being the strongest, or the richest, or whatever the goal of the game is. It's pretty satisfying to see your name on some sort of leaderboard. The text based nature doesn't bother a lot of people even now. The real problem is making a game that's fun, and that's the hard part.

I just realized, we're all on a text-only site and getting onto the "leaders" page was a big motivator for me for a short while. Perhaps I should quit throwing stones in my glass house.. :)

maybe the kid has somehow hit on the right level of random feedback - just enough to make the game addictive?

and then the leaderboard as you point out would be a strong motivator as well.

I eagarly await the day when someone's age is no longer a determining factor in how cool, interesting, or innovative someone's work is, especially in programming and technology.

Fortunately, what the media decides to take interest in does not necessarily coincide with what is actually cool, interesting, innovative, or profitable. But if you want press for the glorification of your ego, there are a variety of avenues you can take.

The rare event here is that a million pounds were made and how the person did it, not that the person who did it is a certain age. A 50 year old making a million pounds in the same way would be just as much of an interesting story. "The media" likes to present youthful success as an exception (perhaps because, as we all know, the youth of today are lazy do-nothings who need hair cuts and should get off my lawn), when it's just as much of an exception, at these levels of success, at nearly all age groups. You don't see stories with headlines like "50 year old computer geek makes £1m with online game", it would just be "online game makes £1m" or would mention the person's name rather than hiding their identity behind an anonymous age. It's semi-presented as though the young don't deserve success, or shouldn't be able to do something interesting because they don't have as much experience as people at some other random cut-off age, when really that has nothing to do with it at all. It's sensationalistic.

Although, I admit that complaining about sensationalism in journalism isn't very interesting in itself. Maybe I'm too young to buck the trend and complain about something, and seek change, in an interesting fashion.

We'd have a more interesting society if there was as much appreciation for biz mags proffering "30 over 30" gee-whiz start-up stories as there is for the more common "30 under 30".

It's not a matter of personal ego (graying geekster though I may be) but helping more people doing more things get the attention they deserve.

It's about broadening people's scope of the world they live in.

There is a whole bunch of these games now that allow you to train attributes and gain experience. I remember being hooked into MUDs, but those were really geeky. Now everyone has been turned into MUD players because they are much more approachable now.

Exactly the first thought I had. I started into MUDs back in '98 (high school) with CarnageMUD and even worked with some of the immorts there on a VB-based MUD. We poured so many hours into that and the project eventually fell apart because we figured, "who's into MUDs these days?" When WoW hit, I felt vindicated. Then, just a few months ago, my brother tells me he's playing this text-based online game called Mob Boss or something.

I gotta think one of the keys here is that our MUDs were fantasy-based and these more successful MUDs are crime-based.

"users can pay extra to receive extra status".

oh hello, a one sentence explanation of life hiding in a gaming article.

I worked for a couple kids like this for 5 years, until July this year. They got lucky, they were in browser gaming really early with one of the first micro-transaction backed games out there. It also spread itself virally, pissing off a lot of people on the internet. Nonetheless it did gather a pretty large userbase and grossed more than 100k/month for a couple years. But that's where it stopped. The kids that started the game had one good idea for the time, hired myself and a couple others to keep it a good idea for an extended time, but failed to move on and grow the company. Now they're grossing around 60k/month and panicking, rushing to add something else to their library.

It's one thing to hit on something that works, once. It's another to actually be an entrepreneur and know what needs to be done to sustain growth. Not very easy in the gaming industry because people get bored and move on pretty quick.

I was surprised to hear that most of the 40,000 users are happy to pay £3/month to the creator in exchange for small bonuses in what seems to be a very niche (and I say niche because it's text-only, online) game.

I wonder what the retention rate for new users is, and whether the experience will deteriorate as more people sign up to try it out and it moves from a friendly 'niche' community towards something more reflective of the wider internet (youtube comments anyone?)... or whether the fact that it is a text-only roleplaying game will pose a sufficient barrier to entry to those that wouldn't hesitate to act like trolls, and they'll rapidly lose interest, thereby preserving the atmosphere?

It's especially interesting to me, because my online game is far less successful financially. (I make a living at it, but it's not a glamorous one.)

To be honest, my gut reaction was initially "there's no way this game has 40k active users", but then I clicked the online tab and sure enough there were that many people listed in the last 24 hours. Colour me impressed.

Just to give you one datapoint: I played forumwarz episodes 1 and 2 pretty much like an addicted fiend when they initially came out. But I am not sure if I have been to the site in between and since (if you made an episode 3 in the interim, I don't know about it). If your TOS allows it, perhaps you could notify your users when new episodes come out? I'd personally enjoy episodes with a much longer story arc--I think that would keep your users more active and for longer--but I realize that is easier said than done.

Finally, I just want to let you know that I have always been pretty impressed by the online chat functionality that you implemented for the INICIT game.

Isn't that sort of the premise of this site as well - there is sort of a filter/mechanic that preserves the site's culture/intent by dissuading trolls.

I think you're hitting on something pretty profound though - so much of what is out there says that casual/web games need to be inclusive to the point of genericism. This instead is pretty exclusive by today's standards in that you need to interact with the computer in a non-graphic interface. So maybe this shows that one can be successful even without catering to everyone (in online games).

If the numbers are right in the article, 40% of his "active monthly users" are making the micro-payment. That's an unbelievable conversion rate.

Just for a bit of background - this game has been around for years, used to be at torncity.com, first registered in 2004 it seems.

I used to play way way way back, and it was pretty addictive (to me, although I was like 16). Most of the people paying are literally paying to win, since you get direct benefit in-game by paying (unless it was changed).

It's been through quite a lot including horrible lag and a month-long server fuck up, but I'm glad to see it turn out well for him.

Published in a major UK newspaper - and discussed on HN. This guy has some good skills in getting attention. And we're part of it!

And if a newspaper writes that he says he's making £50K, it doesn't mean he actually is. He could be all part of the PR campaign.

I suspect that this is not an uncommon tactic for some start-ups, iPhone app developers, etc.

"In Torn players earn points and status by carrying out muggings, murders and heists in an imaginary city.

"But Joe claims the game is about 'meeting people' not committing crimes and revealed one couple have even married because of Torn."

Hilarious! What's next? Torn-dating.com? Stay tuned...

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