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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Patrick gave an interview to The New Scientist when we announced last week. We're a little worried about Starfighter Fatigue and are definitely trying not to get too much onto the front page (Erin's diligently writing the game details post, which we want to be the next thing people see from us).

In the meantime though, if any of you have questions, we're watching and will answer.

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What Thomas said. In particular, while we're really glad that many HNers like Starfighter, we were members of this community far before we were co-founders. We're keenly aware that a) HN is a community, not a marketing channel and b) the community frowns on saying the same thing over and over.

I'm CEO of a company and am pot committed to spending the next several years of my life repeating close variations of the same three things to anyone who will listen. ("How is that different from the last eight years, Patrick?" Answer: Previously I only had two things!) We would prefer people exercise their discretion in posting them to HN, to avoid boring anyone here.

Patrick, best of luck to you. With the success of Appointment Reminder (and consulting, and BCC . . .) I was very surprised to see you launching into something new. But your most recent "annual report" (which felt much more personal and vulnerable than usual) makes me glad you're trying to find something that makes you happy and motivated. I'm skeptical about Starfighter, with so many others trying to gamify and "reinvent" hiring, but you folks have the talent and audience to succeed, like Joel Spolsky with Stack Overflow. Thank you for all you've contributed to us programmers (which I still call myself :-)---it has made a tremendous difference in my life and in many others. I hope Starfighter achieves everything you are dreaming for it.

> the community frowns on saying the same thing over and over.

You must not be aware of the pros and cons of working remotely, how terrible we are at hiring people, and the real reason that YC is awesome. ;)

You missed SQL/ORMs :-)

Oh my. Have you heard about how NoSQL is or isn't the superior replacement for all platforms?

> HN is a community, not a marketing channel

I wish the YC people saw it like that.

Oh, we do; that's what I spend all my time on. But there must be some reason behind your comment, and I'd be happy to discuss it with you at hn@ycombinator.com if you'd like. (Just not here, though, as the topic at hand is game-driven recruiting.)

dang, "reply" is not available for your reply to A07bei3s - I suggest it should, and not to start that conversation (agree it should be done separately), but in case someone would like to reply to you.

HN pro tip: try clicking the post's timestamp (not sure if this still works).

With the speed that things pop on and off the front page these days some times it's nice to see frequent stories about the same thing at least when there is something new to tell. I hadn't heard about the microcorruption site until it was mentioned in the first post about starfighter.

Why does the story say "video game"? I wouldn't call Microcorruption a video game. Was this your word choice or something New Scientist did on their own? Or is Starfighter actually going to be something I would call a video game (instead of what I was expecting which was an experience akin to Microcorruption)?

The term makes me flinch too. We're working on the best way to describe it, but mostly we're working on code, so we'll need some slack.

> Why does the story say "video game"?

I would be because for a large number of people, including the people writing the New Scientist story, games played primarily on or with dedicated or general purpose computers are all "video games".

because of that choice, my brain spam filtering just gave up on the story. If not for the comments here, I didn't know that it was about microcorruption.Maybe I should give it a chance.

What will be the official policy for sharing game footage on websites such as Twitch and YouTube? Will you officially support content creators who might want to make something like a Let's Play of Starfighter?

I'm only asking because if it's actually a fun standalone game (independent from the job hunt aspect) this is going happen.

Will you officially support content creators who might want to make something like a Let's Play of Starfighter?

Heck yes. Existence of many Let's Plays is necessary (but not sufficient) to prove we're actually doing our job.

I'm peripherally aware of the mechanics of what I have to do to get Big Daddy G to be OK with this, and it's on my checklist. (Not asked, but the answer to "Are you OK with people monetizing those videos?" is "We have no objection to it but if you are both capable of programming and motivated by Youtube CPMs please let Patrick buy you dinner and explain how many astoundingly better options there are in life.")

Thanks for the reply. The unasked part is exactly where I was going with my question. I should have just stated it explicitly.

> if you are both capable of programming and motivated by Youtube CPMs please let Patrick buy you dinner and explain how many astoundingly better options there are in life.

Ha. I understand your sentiment, but what you've said is pretty condescending. I would agree that creating content for the sole purpose of making "YouTube money" is silly. I would argue that, to the vast majority of YouTubers, it's simply an enjoyable hobby with RPMs as a potential bonus. The RPMs are intrinsically motivating. There is nothing wrong with being honest with yourself and admitting that they play a factor in the motivation needed to create vs. do something else.

Anyways, my point is, if a capable programmer enjoys making monetized videos on the side, the fact that there are "astoundingly better options in life" is irrelevant.

"¿Por que no los dos?" I think the spirit of Patrick's response is "Knock yourself out." And I get the feeling, having followed what he's had to say about how programmers typically negotiate salaries and consulting opportunities, that he's encountered MANY who truthfully don't know the market value of their skills and are subsequently under-paid. I suspect the condescending tone you're picking up is really just him just trying to shed light on a place he's seen members of the community routinely overlook. There's definitely nothing wrong with earning money making videos. But there exists a group of programmers who honestly don't know how much more they could be making, and I think all he's trying to do is let them know.

Please also consider pushing Twitch "Let's Plays" as well. We have a lot of programmers watching!

I agree with what you're saying about video advertising CPMs, though it is quite possible to make a living on Twitch once you add in subscriptions at $5/mo.

How can you judge programming (not security) skill with a video game? I find it hard to believe that there's any way to gamify maintainability.

How much of the game will be about "learning new skills"? Patrick mentioned at some point that it will be good for that, but I'm not sure how much of a focus that will have vs. testing out skills.

More specifically, are you planning to use this to eventually teach very specific skills (i.e. you'd use Starfighter to learn a specific new programming language?)

P.s. Incredibly excited about this. The last time two heroes of the programming community built something together, we got StackOverflow!

How close to launch are you guys?

Close enough that the question makes me want to barf into my sock.

So you only have the last 20% to go!

Good one!

Thanks for the laugh, definitely know that feeling!

In my opinion you should have kept your mouth shut about the project until you were ready to launch, even if only in beta. Now you get all the marketing, but people can't play the game and have to guess how it works.

I'm not impressed that your submarine PR effort lead with a marketing line / hope, presented as established fact.

That's crossing the line from self-promotion to skeeziness, especially in a publication that calls itself "Scientist", and attracts readers who don't know it doesn't respect the culture of scienctific communication.

You probably ought to direct that concern to The New Scientist, who reached out to Patrick out of the blue. We're not soliciting press coverage. It's just a slow news week, I guess.

I wrote this story, and can confirm what Thomas says (although I suppose you have no reason to believe me).

All glory to the hypnotoad!

/ot

This comment is cynical even by HN standards.

If you believe HN is cynical you should spend some time on Reddit.

What percent of your team is women?

Erin Ptacek is a co-founder of the company, with Thomas and myself. We're the only people formally working on Starfighter at the moment.

Why didn't you ask about trans people or people of color?

How about asking about Muslims or Wiccans?

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