I wrote a thing

jere · 2015-05-11 19:06:40

I've been meaning to write a little on my experience over the last 6 months. Combine that with a little concern that the game is not seeing the exposure it deserves and I decided to finally do it.

http://jere.in/13

Yea, the numbers may not be as flashy as Nate's story but I tried to make it interesting. If anyone thinks this is worthwhile, maybe we can try to get it posted somewhere. I keep harping on the Hacker News thing. Just what I know I guess. About 5 votes, coordinated properly, would almost certainly do the trick (although I'm hoping the clickbait title on its own is enough). If you're interested let me know (before you do anything with it).

Last edited by jere (2015-05-11 19:14:02)

jasonrohrer · 2015-05-11 19:35:10

Well, I posted it to HN. See it on the NEW list here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newest

jasonrohrer · 2015-05-11 19:38:13

Have you thought about going old school with this and posting it here:

http://slashdot.org/submission

jasonrohrer · 2015-05-11 19:38:25

That's a great thing you wrote there, by the way!

jere · 2015-05-11 19:39:09

Yea I wouldn't even link to the new page, just tell people to go to it. You never know what kind of weird algorithms they have in place.

You know I heard a similar thing about reddit, interesting. Apparently, if you up/down vote posts on a user's page (like you are just across the board downvoting them) none of that counts at all.

Edit: oh thanks!

Edit: I've never used slashdot beyond reading a handful of linked threads. So that's your call.

Last edited by jere (2015-05-11 19:40:41)

jasonrohrer · 2015-05-11 19:43:57

Also posted it here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments … d_against/

.. · 2015-05-11 19:45:42

That is a fantastically written article. Hard to improve. The detour into the game description seems too early before much story happens? More significantly, the ending of the piece is a bit dull. When I hit "So that's my story" my thought was "What! That story didn't have an end!". I would remove those words, to the end. Also it would be good if there was something else to put in the conclusion. More information about or quotes by cullman? Also, I don't think you explained that all players are anonymous, which is very important and explains what the whole point of the twitter bot is (without that, the bot seems irrelevant). Note that the bug bounty is still running.

I resisted for years, but created a HN account for the purpose of voting up Jason's submission the other day. Luckily now I can use the noprocast setting.

Damn cool to read that you were using the twitter bot to wake you up in the middle of the night. Did you really have a profit ratio of 4 at one point?

Edit: wasn't expecting it to get posted so fast; upvoted. Edit: It's nowhere to be seen; I imagine Jason and I are heavily penalised for being new users. It's always possible to resubmit later

Last edited by .. (2015-05-11 19:51:37)

Cobblestone · 2015-05-11 19:54:40

Hey, this is awesome!! Man, I'm slowly getting over my loss adversion (I'm almost comfortable with $1 games!) but $200? I'd be a wreck.

jere · 2015-05-11 19:56:59

It's still on the front page but only for a couple minutes. It literally only needs like 2 more votes. You only get ~30 min to make this happen.... this is always so painful to watch

Yes I had a 4x profit ratio on the original boards, but JA would have a much higher one now. Like you just realized "Ooooh, so we don't have a leaderboard that gives the ratio of profit against initial deposit." I think we did initially.

.., the story part at the beginning is just meant as a teaser and I also really enjoy long form stories that interweave an ongoing narrative with exposition (though this is pretty short). Plus I figured the part where I get woken up by the bot is indeed the most interesting lead.

We can try reposting it at a specified time later.... (the url has to be different, but I can manage that).

Last edited by jere (2015-05-11 19:59:57)

.. · 2015-05-11 20:11:38

You mean the first page of the 'new' page?

I tried upvoting some other articles with almost no votes, and notice it didn't increase their rankings... instead they decreased as they aged.

jere · 2015-05-11 20:18:50

Here's what I'll do.

I will repost the article (with a different URL) tomorrow morning around 11:00am EST (8:00am PST). I'll make a note here when I do. At that point, go to new and vote if you want. If you miss it, you can keep going back pages with the "more" button. That's all I got. Thanks for reading my piece and I hope you enjoyed it.

^Yes, everything starts on the new page. It needs to get more votes than the lowest upvoted thing on the front page to get there. New submissions will scroll off of the new page until they're either gone or they make it to the front. Obviously, some sort of decay is in place as well along with plenty of algorithms behind the scenes.

Last edited by jere (2015-05-11 20:21:27)

Professor Chin · 2015-05-11 20:21:41

Great article Jere!
Thank you for writing it.

.. · 2015-05-11 20:41:38

The story at the start is the most important part.

I meant that I was voting for articles a few pages behind the main page, and their ranking did not improve despite changing; I strongly suspect my votes count for nothing until it decides I'm not a shill.

jere · 2015-05-11 20:44:16

If you mean the upvotes next to them, you may have to reload the page. I have that problem and I am in the top 1000 users by karma and my account is 3 years old.

If you mean the order, that's just chronological. You can't affect it unless it gets bumped to the front page.

Edit: Are you talking about the votes or the order? I still don't get it. You may be right about the anti-shill stuff. I have no idea.

Last edited by jere (2015-05-11 20:52:10)

.. · 2015-05-11 20:50:06

I did reload, and even used incognito/private browsing, and I'm talking about position on news.ycombinator.com/best, not /newest. Over the years I've heard many mentions of anti-shill measures being built in.

EDIT: I also notice user karmas don't increase when I upvote their comments.

Last edited by .. (2015-05-11 20:59:31)

.. · 2015-05-11 20:59:36

Upvote count doesn't actually matter at all, I wasn't talking about it; I have read that it's literally meant to trick shills into thinking their votes count. Actual ranking is calculated using non-blocked upvotes.

jere · 2015-05-11 21:07:10

Interesting. Well I'm just going to post it again and hope for the best. I was confused. I didn't realize no one here had an active account.

jasonrohrer · 2015-05-11 21:19:48

All this experience confirms what I've come to believe over the years. Self-promotion efforts rarely work.

Dan_Dan84 · 2015-05-12 02:10:05

It's a lovely piece, jere.

EDIT: I also read your series on The Castle Doctrine. Really interesting. I like the detail about players' "shaking hands."

Last edited by Dan_Dan84 (2015-05-12 03:03:33)

jere · 2015-05-12 15:09:00

I reposted. If you have an active HN account, please check out new. Meh.

^Thanks Dan. The similarities between TCD and CM are pretty striking if you thinking about it. Both involved very painful LOSS (either time or money) and neither have luck, though sometimes you feel like you are making choices at random. Either way you're still trying to read somebody's mind and predict what they would do. And yes, it was very intense.... I'd say even more intense than CM. Dying in that game was unlike anything else.

Last edited by jere (2015-05-12 15:11:18)

Discordant Mind · 2015-05-13 01:33:27

A fascinating read. Thank you for writing this. I am new to the game myself, and was surprised to see so few players during peak hours. This is a unique game and it needs more exposure (and big betters!)

Dan_Dan84 · 2015-05-13 01:42:58

I admit that I never played TCD. I lurked in the forums and followed the Steal Real Money launch contest, but in the end, I just realized that I'm bad at building stuff like that (I was never into playing with Lego, or building forts, or even making booby traps). I think I'd really enjoy the robbing part, and I'd probably get so swept up in it I wouldn't maintain my house properly. It'd just be a matter of time until I came home to find everybody dead. And I just don't think I'd have the patience to rebuild my house.

But the concept was fascinating.

jere wrote:

Either way you're still trying to read somebody's mind and predict what they would do. And yes, it was very intense.... I'd say even more intense than CM. Dying in that game was unlike anything else.

I woke up this morning with a knot in my stomach, and I can't get rid of it. It's a familiar feeling: the same one I get when I have the second highest score.

jere · 2015-05-13 02:02:18

Yea, I know that feeling. Real quick anecdote to illustrate. I came in 6th place in the Steal Real Money contest. But while trying to win the contest, I got near the top of the list and died FIVE times. To put this into context, it sometimes took several days to start a new life and build your way up to one of the top houses. I did it 5 times in a weekend.

One of the reasons the game is so brutal is that you only get ahead when you stole from others or they died in your house. Kill/steal or be killed/stolen from. It's sort of like a food chain and if you get to the top you are a sort of super predator. In grade school, they would drill into our head the food chain: plants at the bottom, and then herbivores which are X times less efficient, and then small carnivores that are X times less efficient, and so on. Basically, at the top you as an individual are surviving by killing a whole PYRAMID of organisms below you. That was TCD. You had robbed dozens of people to get there. And when you died you lost alllllllll of that progress instantly. That real life feeling when something really horrible happens, you see red, and all you can think is NOOOO!!!!

Anyway, during one of my early attempts I had built up a lot of money and I was going into a fairly simple looking house. There was wide open spaces and a bunch of wooden hallways with doors (e.g. Door #1, Door #2, Door #3...?). Each hallway was a "commit trap." Once you go in, you ain't coming back without tools. It looked dirt cheap. Basically the most you could build with the starting money.

I didn't have tools. I was just poking about. And I noticed something: through the fog of war I could just barely make out that all the hallways except one were dead ends within 1 or 2 tiles. "IDIOT!" I thought. This newb doesn't know that I can clearly see that the safe is going to be behind the remaining door.

I stepped through without thinking. Behind me an electric floor started buzzing, as expected. And instead of a safe, the house just opened up more and I just saw more hallways. It was a feign. SHIT SHIT SHIT NO. I knew I was doomed right then. And carrying a single cheap water bottle would have saved me, but I got cocky. A day's worth of work down the drain. I was the idiot.

Last edited by jere (2015-05-13 02:05:18)

Dan_Dan84 · 2015-05-13 02:53:07

Wow, that is intense. I read a comment somewhere that watching that final security tape, when you've lost it all, is absolutely stomach churning.

I don't know if I'd be able to bounce back. I'd click the Suicide button, and that'd be it.

At least in CM, if you lose a game, you can take a deep breath, maybe take something from your opponent's strategy, and move on. Of course, if it's a $6,666.66 game, that might be hard to do...

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