Top all-time · #927
Lars Doucet
Personal blog · fortressofdoors.com · on HN as larsiusprimegameseconomics
Lars Doucet writes Fortress of Doors, a personal blog at fortressofdoors.com about games and economics. Since 2012, 70 different Hacker News readers have linked it 118 times, most often “Four Magic Words”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-08-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 14 of 36 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Lars Doucet's blog for essays on the games business and platform economics, especially the Steam and Roblox competition posts, along with the 'Four Magic Words' short story and pieces on piracy and pixel art.
- Recommended for · 14 comments
- Called the piracy essay insightful, the Steam competition article the best and excellent, the Roblox platform post informative, the Four Magic Words story wonde
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 36 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Lars Doucet's personal blog -- Game design and stuff.
Most-linked posts?
- Four Magic Words11 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2024-01-08
- So You Want to Compete with Steam (2018)7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2018-09-30
- So you want to compete with Roblox6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-07-01
- AI: Markets for Lemons, and the Great Logging Off (2022)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-12-29
- Piracy and the Four Currencies4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-12-29
- So You Want to Compete with Steam: Epic, Discord, Kartridge, and RobotCache3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-01-23
- The Future of Games is an Instant Flash to the past3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-06-24
- Take the pedals off the bike3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-01-07
- Memory Eternal, Nikolas Doucet3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-11-17
- G2A, Piracy, and the Four Currencies3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-06-28
What Hacker News says?
Way back in 2012, this affected a lot of my thinking around software piracy/selling software, and I think a lot of it has proven pretty insightful in the intervening decade: https://www.fortressofdoors.com/piracy-and-the-four-currenci... The images are shot, but that may be all the attention his site is getting today. Edit: Many others are already saying it, but thank you for sharing, Lars. No one should have go thr…
Comment linking /piracy-and-the-four-currencies/
on “Losing my son”Submitted Losing my son as a story · 2437 points
HN discussionHis other post might help you understand the author's point of view: https://www.fortressofdoors.com/four-magic-words/
Comment linking /four-magic-words/
on “Losing my son”Submitted Take the pedals off the bike as a story · 497 points
HN discussionPeople are downvoting you, but yes, his situation is worse than death in a sense. In some ways it's a comfort to still have what's left of him with me, in other ways it's worse. I definitely have a DNR in place for myself. I have complicated feelings about... well, everything, which I did my best to exorcise in this piece I posted a few days ago: https://www.fortressofdoors.com/four-magic-words/
Comment linking /four-magic-words/
on “Losing my son”Submitted Narcolepsy is weird but I didn't notice as a story · 284 points
HN discussionI have to say I'm really humbled to suddenly see this on the front page. Today was a particularly hard day; I won't go into details but taking care of a permanently disabled invalid involves a lot of ups and downs and some fairly messy manual labor to keep them comfortable and in good shape. I love you all. Hug your kids if you have em. EDIT: The above blog post here was one of three things I wrote in the immediate…
Comment linking /four-magic-words/
on “Losing my son”Submitted Doing an HD Remake the Right Way as a story · 254 points
HN discussionI have yet to have a reason to use this, but I keep it in my pocket until do. > Stand at the brink of the abyss of despair, and when you see that you cannot bear it anymore, draw back a little and have a cup of tea. > > — Elder Sophrony of Essex It's a quote from the end of Lars Doucet's post, Losing my son. Stay strong, and if not strong, then just stay. https://www.fortressofdoors.com/i-lost-my-son/
Comment linking /i-lost-my-son/
on “The year I didn't survive”Submitted So You Want to Compete with Steam as a story · 244 points
HN discussionI summed up all my complaints about NFT's in this (short) article: https://www.fortressofdoors.com/the-degraded-blockchain-prob... > In short, the minute you connect your blockchain to an app frontend you now have a degraded blockchain, one that cannot even in principle guarantee immutability, trustlessness, and decentralization – at least not for assets that the app's customers actually care about. Scratch the surf…
Comment linking /the-degraded-blockchain-problem/
on “NFT projects are just MLMs for tech elites”Submitted The Future of Games is an Instant Flash to the past as a story · 222 points
HN discussionAnother[1] relevant short-story! Also, I don't think MMAcevedo qualifies as an AGI, he/it is rather a VBI (Virtual Brain Image). [1] https://www.fortressofdoors.com/four-magic-words/
Comment linking /four-magic-words/
on “We made an animated movie in 8kB”Submitted So you want to compete with Roblox as a story · 195 points
HN discussionGood to know. I may never use the information. I did, however, nose around the site a bit more, and found this[0]. I have known a number of folks that have lost kids, for various reasons. It's not something any parent should suffer, but I do see them (usually) move past it, and get to a state of (probably grudging) acceptance. [0] https://www.fortressofdoors.com/memory-eternal-nikolas-douce...
Comment linking /memory-eternal-nikolas-doucet/
on “Take the pedals off the bike”Submitted So You Want to Compete with Steam (2018) as a story · 187 points
HN discussion> quality of neighborhood which is proxy for access to high paying jobs In other words, the value of the land (which is to say, the value of the location). To be clear it's not the amount of land, it's the value of the land in particular places (especially urban land next to valuable jobs). If you think land (location) isn't a big factor, perhaps you could explain why in the heart of San Francisco this 2,300 sq. foo…
Comment linking /content/images/2021/08/image-22.png
on “Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin”Submitted Four Magic Words as a story · 145 points
HN discussionAs far as I can tell, there's nothing to "get": https://www.fortressofdoors.com/the-degraded-blockchain-prob...
Comment linking /the-degraded-blockchain-problem/
on “Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer”Submitted AI: Markets for Lemons, and the Great Logging Off (2022) as a story · 111 points
HN discussion> the value is all about how developed it is If by "developed", you mean "built upon", that's empirically not the case: Here's an empty lot in the heart of San Francisco for $2 million dollars: https://www.fortressofdoors.com/content/images/2021/08/image... Here's a building next door to it on a similar sized lot for $2.3 million dollars: https://www.fortressofdoors.com/content/images/2021/08/image... Location, Loca…
Comment linking /content/images/2021/08/image-22.png
on “Low interest rates in advanced countries have pushed money into real estate”Submitted Dark Mirror Ideologies as a story · 75 points
HN discussionFun fact -- the majority of bank loans are also for real estate, further bidding up the price of housing. The Great Mortgaging is a great source on this: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w20501/w205... Just look at this scary chart: https://www.fortressofdoors.com/content/images/2021/10/2021-...
Comment linking /content/images/2021/10/2021-10-14-17_25_56-w20501.pdf---Vivaldi.png
on “Low interest rates in advanced countries have pushed money into real estate”Submitted Was Localizing Defender's Quest Worth It? as a story · 75 points
HN discussionI find ChatGPT to be great at research too-but there are pathological failure modes where it is biased to shallow answers that are subtly wrong, even when definitive primary sources are readily available online: https://www.fortressofdoors.com/researchers-beware-of-chatgp...
Comment linking /researchers-beware-of-chatgpts-wikipedia-brain/
on “GPT-5 Thinking in ChatGPT (a.k.a. Research Goblin) is good at search”Submitted Four Magic Words as a story · 14 points
HN discussionI absolutely agree that this is 100% possible with HTML5, and the only we’re not seeing it happening on a massive scale is a because of a cultural blind spot - as evidence, most of the comments in this thread. The technologies we have now, like Phaser, are vastly superior for building games for the web than Flash ever was (I was a full time game developer for 10 years, and a full time HTML5 game developer now.) And…
Comment linking /tag/instant-games/
on “WebAssembly: The New Kubernetes?”Submitted Game Maker, Security, and Freedom as a story · 12 points
HN discussionIf you're interested in more info about the platform dynamics of Roblox, I found _So You Want to Compete with Roblox_[1] to be informative. 1. https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-...
Comment linking /so-you-want-to-compete-with-roblox/
on “Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers”Submitted Bounds, Bottlenecks, and Digital Marketing as a story · 11 points
HN discussion
