I totally disagree with his point of view. He could simply sell the game to an established company that is already set up to handle the responsibilities that come with running a business. Throwing away $50k/day is just a stupid thing to do.
As he wrote, he didn't put the game down because he was afraid of the money or didn't want to run a business, he was actually afraid of the effect the "addictiveness" of the game had on some of its users.
With that premise, selling to an established company would have been the most irresponsible thing he could do. After all, the biggest assets of the game are its large user base, the media hype and just that "addictiveness". So this would probably be the first thing any buyer would have exploited, making Dong's problem worse instead of better.
Agree, funny how most comments focus on the money aspect of the conversation. He wanted to feel socially responsible again, did not like the impact that his game had on people's psyche / addictive behaviors and pulled the plug because of it.
In fairness, the three games he's currently working on follow that same mold of being super easy to learn and super hard to beat--not a good recipe for warding off addiction!
You have a point there. The article states he wants to introduce reminders to take a break, though that sounds like the usual excuse feature in such cases.
The average wage in Vietnam is $2,200 a year.[1] He made over 22 times the average yearly wage in a day. The average wage in the US is $50,233.[2] 22 times that is $1,105,126.
If you did that for a month, that would be the Vietnam purchasing equivalent of maybe about $33,000,000. He still has income coming in from the game, it hasn't stopped. He has enough money to retire and live a nice life in Vietnam.
For many people (myself included) enough is enough! He made enough and now he wants to get back to his quiet simple life. That is what he values, not an endless quest for more money. He felt the game was destroying his life. I don't blame him, I wouldn't want that kind of attention either.
Some people can just be happy with what they have.
Yes but let's be clear, he was making $50k/day with no effort of his own besides the work he did last year. There was no chase or action to give up, so his motives lied elsewhere.
Let's be clearer: he has the money he needs to live comfortably. For some people, that's all the money they need. "But you could have even more if you gave it to an agency!" Yes, but a) that means negotiating with an agency (which includes /finding/ one) and jumping through a bunch of hoops, and b) still having to deal with being a 'maverick personality' on the internet.
Or you could just take the Bill Watterson route, shut up shop, and live the rest of your life comfortably and in private.
I don't know why is this so hard for people to understand? Once you have enough so that you don't have to work anymore and live comfortably, one choice is to stop and actually do it. I already have my mark set, f I by any chance get 1.5 million US$, I'll quit. Even if I could keep on getting more and reach twice that.
> I already have my mark set, f I by any chance get 1.5 million US$, I'll quit.
That's the Workaholic Test™ -- if you make a million dollars, do you drop everything and sit on a beach somewhere reading a worthwhile novel, or do you move the goal posts and carry on toward a new, less realistic goal?
Most people won't make a million dollars, so most people will never know whether they're workaholics.
Ditto. This "test" assumes lying on a beach producing nothing is an ideal to strive for. I enjoy my vacations, but I wouldn't want to do that all the time!
I won't sit on a beach all day, but maybe I'll move to a beach house somewhere safe, and enjoy the hell out of my children growing up. And will read/learn/do interesting stuff. And I think I can get to be worth 1.5 mil someday.
Ha, I didn't read your name before I replied. You actually stopped when you reached your mark, and travelled the world on a boat. Awesome. I also read your 'Cottage Computer Programming' when I was a teen. Double awesome.
People still have the game, his money was being made of in game ads, which are still running for the people that are playing. I'd say he's probably doing fine.
The article mentions that he IS still making a ton of money. In fact, the announcement that it is being closed down, actually millions of more download in the next 22 hours
Beyond basic survival, money's a tool that lets you avoid having to do annoying things or to deal with annoying people. What is annoying is deeply personal. So if pursuing the tool to de-annoy your life is more annoying than some threshold, it stops being worth it.
1. He's still earning ad revenue from existing installs.
2. In the last 22 hours of the app's existence (when he announced
he would be taking it down) more than 10 million new people
installed it.
In other words, he's likely making just as much if not more today. He could have instantly removed it from the app store instead of saying "in 22 hours", so it's entirely possible that he's way better off due to all the publicity and attention from the app's removal.
Yes, quite possible he managed to snatch the last boost from an app that would otherwise have met a decline. It was already being covered all over the news. Reporters were looking for something more to say about it and he gave them that chance. Instead of being featured all over the news once, he got one mention for the initial spread, another one for the takedown threat. Now as a final (?) third one he achieves cult status for the game, increasing replays for the already installed base and ensuring interest for his future games.
I'm sure everything he says is true and it is not a conscious strategy, but the end result is the same.
So what if it's stupid? We know how much damage greed does to the world. The world would be a better place if more people stood up for principles over money.
The problem there is that there's no universal set of principles that are right or good.
For example "don't leave money on the table" or "make as much money as possible" could easily be a principle someone adopts. In such a case, she would be standing up for her principles by maximizing her acquisition of money at the expense of other things.
I don't need a universal set of principles that are good because such a thing is impossible. The entire world of human thought is a subjective abstraction. This need for objectivity is a common failing of the scientific mind, and it is a struggle in vain as our brains are far too puny to truly comprehend the nature of things—we must deal in abstractions, and abstractions as, any programmer knows, are leaky.
And people who put wealth and money before everything else are generally seen as assholes or even evil.
Example: The asbestos industry officials knew of asbestos dangers of asbestos since the 1930s and had purposefully concealed them from the public. To make money.
>>Throwing away $50k/day is just a stupid thing to do.
I would have done the same thing if I was in his shoes; just get out of the spotlight with whatever money I already made(and still making from previous-installs). Getting paid 50k, even just once, for a mobile game I wrote over a weekend is more than enough. I wouldn't care how many millions I left at the table by dropping it and running away.
I'd just upload it to github, throw on WTFPL[1], and run away never to be seen again.
Depending upon one's starting debt load, any person of average intelligence or better would be able to, after a few days to a couple of weeks of that income, "retire" to a lower stress job, or even have the freedom to work for oneself in a less public arena.
In the US, $350,000 (1 week @$50k/day average) works out to somewhere north of $200,000 after taxes. That's a lot of money, even if it's not life changing for somebody in the tech industry with a typical salaried job in the Bay Area.
He did not throw away $50k/day. He walked away from it because he had enough money already and did not need any more of it (especially since he did not particularly enjoy all the attention that came with the money, but even if he did not mind it, that would not change my point).
