

Ask HN: Review our startup - Taxi Mogul, a persistent browser game - villiros
http://taxi-mogul.com/

======
Mystalic
Okay, I'm going to rail into you. This is only because it will help you out in
the long run

1) Your website looks like a slipshod piece of junk. It's a crap blog format
with some images. Where's a video overview of the game? A column showing
recent scores and users? A smoother interface? Come on, there's tons of things
you screwed up on.

2) Where's the hook? I need a 6 word hook, a tagline, something to say "Maybe
I should keep reading about this." Nothing.

3) I don't give a damn about taxis, so why should I give a damn about your
game? At least with other games, I'm building a galactic empire or taking over
the world. Those far more attract to imaginative personalities that play these
games.

4) What's the reward?

5) Your logo's a piece of junk built with standard templates in photoshop. The
lack of effort in your logo shows.

There's an entire lack of effort on the front-end and a lack of hooks to get
me to EVER play this.

And what's the business model? Advertising is going to make you money? Not in
this market. Freemium is dying.

This is jumping on an ancient business that's dying out rapidly. The Facebook
application is the only positive I have.

Sorry if I was harsh. This is how I feel, and I hope it helps.

~~~
mlinsey
Agreed with the design criticisms; disagree strongly about 2 and 3. It sounds
like you might not be in the target audience for these sorts of games. I
absolutely loved games like Theme Hospital, Sim Tower, Roller Coaster Tycoon -
all games which are about rather mundane businesses, certainly not "taking
over a galactic empire" or "taking over the world". The idea of a Sim
Taxi/Taxi Tycoon game on real streets with google-maps street-level views of
my taxi routes tickled me. That enough was a "hook".

Granted, there are probably more gamers like Mystalic than gamers like me,
which is one of the reasons why Civ II and Imperium Galactica sold more copies
than say Theme Hospital. Which market you go after should depend on your
business model.

That said, here's some more criticism (hopefully constructive!) from someone
who buys the idea but not the execution (yet):

1\. You badly need a strong artist/designer to give the game its own
personality and charm. One common thread around these quirky business games
like Theme Park or Gazillionaire is that they are _funny_ and amusing to look
at, which is important when large parts of the game are spent simply watching
your business run.

2\. Your interface has far too much clicking. Why do I have to click on "cars"
to send my one taxi somewhere? Why can't I see how tired my driver is just by
hovering over his cab? Etc,etc.

3\. Your tutorial isn't very helpful. Not only does it look like experts-
exchange.com instead of a game (see #1), but because it's all in one place
instead of some bright AJAX popups showing you around the interface, I don't
even learn where my vehicle page is because I click the link in the tutorial.
Why there should be a "vehicle page" that isn't clearly marked by a brightly
colored icon of a car is another matter, but at the end of the tutorial I
still had no idea what I was doing.

4\. I don't think what appears to be your core gameplay mechanic of trying to
"find the best route" by clicking a bunch of short-distance waypoints to form
a route to your passenger and the destination is very fun. The fact that your
interface is on top of a Google Maps mashup only reminds me of how a computer
could do a better job than me at this.

When I thought "taxi sim", I immediately thought that the game would be about
keeping your taxi busy and managing the balance of (a) getting people there
fast by avoiding traffic (you are using google maps for a taxi game and don't
incorporate traffic?!) in hopes of getting better and more tips and (b)
getting people there slowly, choosing the bad routes, and stalling in traffic,
just like it seems my cab drivers always do, risking fewer tips but ensuring
you're getting a fare for every mile you drive. Or how about choosing what
areas of town to patrol to try and snag fares from rival firms, rather than be
presented with a plain old list of customers to click on?

I'm not saying that any of the above gameplay suggestions will fix the game or
are even necessarily a good idea, but if you're dead-set on trying to make a
company based off of one game (as opposed to a site hosting or aggregating
games), you'd better spend lots of time brainstorming and refining your core
gameplay and making it fun before even worrying about your logo or artwork or
front page videos or any of the other stuff suggested by either me or the
parent. Spend some more time playing Railroad Tycoon and Sim Golf and how
about Crazy Taxi, which you can find for like $10 for your PS2, with a
critical eye towards what makes those games fun.

------
cellis
I just tried playing your facebook app. I've gotta say you should just do this
a facebook app and nothing more. 86 the website or hire a designer. Do not
waste people's time: i am not going to enter text into any inpot boxes to get
started playing your game. Perhaps this is because you _hit me with too much
text to start out with_. Pictures are worth 1000 words.

People see login fields and cringe. On the facebook app a instructions form
came up. I clicked through as far as i could but I'm very ADD and there was
nothing to keep my attention, and since the app didn't catch my attention, I
didn't even read the instructions. It needs to be painless. My suggestion for
you (and anyone that wants to build a facebook app) is to add e.g. MobWars ,
Playfish and play them. See how long and how many gestures you have to do to
start having fun.

Kudos for googlemaps integration though... and releasing! Its tough i must
say.

------
pclark
> You need to confirm your email address to play Taxi Mogul. Please proceed to
> the activation page.

ugh.

~~~
villiros
This has been removed. Thanks, guys. :)

~~~
pclark
awesome :)

------
ars
Add a guest mode, where I can try out the game without registering.
Registering is the point where I stopped, even though it looked interesting.

Make sure you can covert a guest account into a real one by registering if
someone is interested.

------
teej
Here are a few critiques solely from the game & Facebook perspective:

\- You've got an iframe app and you have both horizontal and vertical
scrollbars (on mac FF at least). Get rid of them, they drive people insane.

\- First time experience is pretty horrid. The "tutorial" is 20 click beast
that goes through every aspect of the game at once. Make the game learning
process a little more progressive. Don't let me do all 50 things at once. Give
me one thing to do, and once I've done it, unlock another 2-3 things I can do.

\- User interface, as has been stated already, could use some re-work and some
polish. That being said, my old app (Warbook) looks terrible and still got
pretty big.

\- The virtual goods + advertising model is solid in this space right now.
Ignore what other people are saying against it, you're pretty close to a great
revenue model. Just remember - people buy virtual goods for two reasons: to
"speed up" time and to gain social status.

With all that said, I think the game concept is pretty novel. Hopefully other
people find it fun.

~~~
dominik
What sort of virtual goods could they sell in their game?

And how do they prevent people buying virtual goods from feeling as if they're
"cheating"? Perhaps it's an old-style complaint, but virtual goods feel
against the "purity of the game" -- imagine playing chess online and being
able to drop $5 to get an extra move -- sure that "speeds up" time, but it
also (to me at least) breaks the game... I'm not sure yet how to design
compelling virtual goods that don't kill gameplay but yet remain compelling.

Fortunately, social status remains a powerful motivator, but it seems that for
social status to work players have to feel invested in the community, else
they won't care what the community thinks (and thus won't buy anything to
increase social status).

~~~
teej
> What sort of virtual goods could they sell in their game?

The Taxi Mogul game already offers "items" that speed the game up (pay $5 or
wait 5 hours). They could also sell faster taxis, better drivers, etc. Really
doesn't matter.

> And how do they prevent people buying virtual goods from feeling as if
> they're "cheating"?

I hear this asked -all the time-. Two things.

(1) It's much less of an issue in games that aren't PvP. "You beat me in one-
on-one combat because you paid" is completely different than "You have a
higher score/advanced faster than I did because you paid". The "cheating"
feeling doesn't go away, but it's much, much less pronounced.

(2) Allow players with time to trade with players with money. The simplest,
turnkey solution to this is a dual currency model. Simply put, players with
time get credits and players with money get tokens. Players can trade credits
and tokens on the free market. This allows market forces to determine the cash
value of credits, instead of you pegging a pricepoint to it. I cannot stress
how important dual-currency models are for games dealing with virtual goods.

> but it seems that for social status to work players have to feel invested in
> the community

Absolutely right. Social status virtual goods only work when there's high
community interaction and visibility. A lot less people would care about
achievements on Xbox 360 if it weren't for Xbox Live.

------
trevelyan
I signed up and it dumped me on a page that looked like a blog. Lots of
buttons I could press to do things but no idea what they do. And this page was
clearly not fun. Why does it look like a bad blog and why aren't I doing
something fun at this point?

So I disable the tutorial because it's the most prominent button on the page
(I'm thinking that maybe it gets me into the FUN part faster, although if I
need a tutorial it isn't a good casual game). Aha - now I see that activation
is required. Genuine wtf moment. I can take a tutorial without confirming my
account but nothing else? Honestly, if you are going to insist on email
confirmation, do it BEFORE you show people your actual game page. Right now
you are making a bad impression and then pushing people away.

Review: I need to give you my email address. Then you want me to LEAVE YOUR
SITE and go to a more addictive site. Now I am wondering why you need to
verify my email address at all? If you really need it and I gave you a bogus
one then give me a way to change it. Have I just signed up for daily spam?
Trust meter starts tilting downwards.

If you have a free service it doesn't matter if your users are anonymous. Why
harass them? And if you ARE monetizing traffic you STILL shouldn't worry about
authenticating email addresses. Not unless you want to send a lot of email, in
which case you send the authentication note but don't send anything else until
they've confirmed. It's a tinyint field in your database
(email_authenticated). If people have fun they will do it.

We run a paid site where authentication actually matters and don't care as
much. Every now and then we have a payment come in from someone who is not in
our system. It is sort of a problem, so we write the person who pays and say,
"which account did you want to upgrade?" Email authentication is a good way to
prevent yourself from spamming innocent third parties. That's about it.

All that said, I think this could be a cool service. The concept is fun. I
want to like it. But I have no idea what I should be doing after signing up
and you are pushing me away from your service and haven't thought through how
to get someone INTO actual gameplay. Instead it is WALL, WALL, WALL. So I
leave. I've got about 6 tabs open and when you sent me away to Gmail I didn't
come back.

------
m_eiman
I think it's a fun idea, with three area that can be improved:

1) Like the others are saying, you need to find a (better) designer

2) Playing the game seems to be a massive time sink. I could never spend that
much time on a game, regardless of how good it is. And I don't think it's just
me, pretty much nobody with a job could spend a few minutes every half hour to
run their taxi company. Which ties into..

3) Too much micro management. This is mostly a personal preference, but I'd
get tired of micro managing my cabs pretty soon.

Things that would make it easier for me to play:

a) Make it possible to play in a rewarding and competitive way spending no
more than a quarter to half an hour per day.

b) Less micro management, but that should be a requirement to achieve a)
anyway.

I can see the Challenge thing as a mini-game, maybe it could make it on its
own as a game widget. Maybe make a Wordpress et al widget that doubles as a
game and as an ad for the "big" game?

You have an interesting idea, looking forward to see how it evolves!

~~~
m_eiman
As an update a few days later I'd like to add that the new "improved" version
with ads is.. Let's just say that there should be less ads than game. I know
that they're there to annoy users into paying for the premium version, but
this is just too much.

~~~
m_eiman
Sneaky thing with the "earn us affiliate money to pay for your premium
account" scheme, though! And I mean that in a positive way :)

~~~
villiros
You got it. We didn't actually change advertising stuff at all, it's just that
it only kicks in after a few days for each user. In general, advertising
performs terribly in these kinda games, so our revenue model is based on
transactions and premium accounts. Ads are just a way to force users to pay.
It might be slightly over the top at the moment, though.

------
imasr
Loved it! To all the harsh comments, do not forget it's not a google beta.
These guys are probably working their ... off to create an original gaming
experience, that as far as I could see, is really adictive, took me 1 minute
to start playing and really really liked it. Great work. Congrats!

------
cperciva
Run a taxi company? Thanks but no thanks -- that sounds far too much like work
to me.

I'm sure this game must be more entertaining than it sounds, but you might do
better if the website makes it more clear where the fun part of the game is.

~~~
fallentimes
I agree with your second point, but there's plenty of games like that: Sim
City, Any Tycoon game, the economy aspects of RTS (where the fun is obvious),
Diner Dash etc.

As the Wii Fit has shown, games are a good way to trick people in to doing
work...or exercise :).

Oh, and don't make people register.

------
paul7986
My constructive feedback...

This is game, when page loads let me start playing the game right away. Not
read about the game. I read a little but ultimately left cause there was too
much text and no interaction.

You use a lot of buzzwords free and stuff like that, but that just adds to why
I left. Too much text ...I just want to load page and play a game and interact
right away! Id like to learn the rules by interacting with the game along with
some text and a link to help page if need be.

hth

------
bemmu
Registered for account, was happy there was no confirmation email. Wanted to
get quickly to core game, so dismissed tutorials. I tend to believe that games
should be self-explanatory, going over tuts isn't much fun. Got a taxi and was
very confused trying to double click around the map. I got near what I believe
may have been the passenger I was supposed to get, but didn't know how to pick
them up. Tried clicking all over the place, gave up and closed tab.

------
villiros
Thanks a lot for all your feedback, guys. It far outstripped my expectations.
HN once again proved to be a fantastic place :)

We've addressed some of the most pressing issues, and based on what we're
observing from new users, it did help a lot.

One thing I definitely learned, is that providing context in the original post
would have been tremendously useful for everyone. Writing a few lines in the
original post would have helped everyone involved.

------
ii
It would be great if you put a big shiny button on your website: "Play now" or
"Test drive" and let people try it without registration.

Also, I think if you start charging money for premium services and make some
features paid-only you will immediately look more serious and increase
satisfaction from game for those who pay, it's human nature.

Just my 2 cents.

------
Tichy
There is another game based on Google Maps where you play a truck driver.

From a hackers perspective I like the idea of using Google Maps, but as a
player, I guess I am more into fantasy and epic battles. I felt no desire to
try being a taxi driver.

------
r7000
Spelling Nit to fix immediately: "Purchased cars are delivered immideately"

BureauPoints seems like an odd name at first.

~~~
villiros
Haha, fixed, thanks.

BureauPoints was meant to evoke feelings of battling bureaucracy. I suspect
that got lost somewhere along the way.

------
annoyed
i placed the waypoints but wasn't shown the resulting route...the routing
needs to be explained more clearly

~~~
thasmin
I agree. I really enjoyed optimizing my route, but it was somewhat frustrating
when my route turned out to go down the Belt Parkway then make a u-turn
because I placed the waypoint on the wrong side of the road, then make another
u-turn to get to the next waypoint.

------
enki
signup required. ugh.

i won't register before i know if i like it.

------
pclark
looks cool, super slow though?

How are you gonna make money?

~~~
dominik
I'd be curious to learn more about how you plan to make money as well... The
home page reminds the visitor no less than four times that the site is "free"
-- that's setting up a pretty big mental adjustment for if and when parts of
the site turn out not to be free... Curious how you guys plan to handle that.

Review-wise: It's not immediately evident -- from just reading the front page
-- what the gameplay consists of. I get that it's about taxis and on real
world maps. But what do I do? How do I win? Or at least rack up some sort of
higher score than my friends? What's my goal? Or is this purely a sandbox?

The page tells me that I can "Build things," "Run [my] company with friends,"
and even "drive on a real map" but it doesn't make it clear how do I any of
these things or why they'd be fun apart from any initial novelty...

~~~
villiros
Our business plan is fairly typical of these sorta games. It is free to play,
however players can pay to get extra abilities and items. Usually, a game
develops a core group of people who do enjoy it, and they're willing to pay a
few quid a month (or more, on occasion). Since our cost per player is pretty
miniscule, that works out pretty well. Of course, we also do advertisment
(which only shows up after a few days, to avoid scaring new users away), but
that tends to do terribly in such games.

Btw, this has been incredibly useful, and we're busy reworking issues pointed
out here (new users' experience, for example.)

------
hotshothenry
you guys need a better looking website _cough_ email me _cough_ =D

~~~
hotshothenry
lol well i got owned.

but seriously, you need a better looking site that's more appealing to the
eye. the key features should be highlighted and easier to read, especially the
introductory paragraph.

