

21-year-old computer geek makes £1m with online game (Torn) - tortilla
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6264082/21-year-old-computer-geek-makes-1m-with-online-game.html

======
learnalist
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;)

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

------
MicahWedemeyer
[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?

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

~~~
thismat
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 :(

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

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

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

~~~
unalone
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.

~~~
kiba
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.

~~~
unalone
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.

------
NathanKP
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._

~~~
chimariko
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.

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

~~~
igrekel
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.

~~~
NathanKP
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. ;)

------
petercooper
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.)

~~~
jdp
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.

~~~
jonursenbach
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.

------
thwarted
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.

~~~
zackattack
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.

~~~
thwarted
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.

------
bemmu
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.

~~~
CatBaby
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.

------
nazgulnarsil
"users can pay extra to receive extra status".

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

------
akernander
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.

------
Torn
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?

~~~
EvilTrout
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.

~~~
joeyo
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.

------
decadentcactus
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.

------
stevoski
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.

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

------
kakooljay
"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...

