Top all-time · #7980
Puppyblog
Company blog · puppygames.net/blog · on HN as princecgamesbusiness
Puppyblog is the company blog at puppygames.net, writing about games and business. Since 2010, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 14 times, most often “Because You’re Worthless: The Dark Side Of Indie PR”. The last post was in 2018, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Puppyblog, the blog of indie developer Cas (Puppy Games), for posts on game sales, DRM, the App Store and gamer behaviour. Commenters cite it when discussing indie game business.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Because You’re Worthless: The Dark Side Of Indie PR3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-08-18
What Hacker News says?
That looks very similar (in gameplay) to https://www.puppygames.net/revenge-of-the-titans/ which is another great game.
Comment linking /revenge-of-the-titans/
on “Factorio 1.1 stable”Submitted DRM done right: Puppygames as a story · 63 points
HN discussionIt is awesome... They did make a lot of changes (like 12 or so new versions since then) so you should fetch the latest when you are ready to give it a try. The whole gameplay is different, basically they released a "pretty good" game for the bundle #2, then iterated with feedback to get to "awesome". Got to admire this attitude. Also played their Droid Assault, sell it on their site in a bundle as well. It's an inst…
Comment linking /droid-assault/
on “The Humble Frozenbyte Bundle”Submitted Because You’re Worthless: The Dark Side Of Indie PR as a story · 13 points
HN discussionhttp://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1307
Comment linking /blog/?p=1307
on “When Game Development Stinks”Submitted Guess How Long Ultratron Took To Make? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionMost mobile games don't make money either. He responded to that idea. http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1369#comment-54311
Comment linking /blog/?p=1369
on “When Game Development Stinks”Submitted Puppygames Pricing Experiment: 3 Games for the Price of 1/4 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI remember Cas (the game's author) from waaaay back in the day on Java game programming forums. Always seemed like quite a character, but as far as I know he's been plugging away at indie game development for at least a decade. His company has a really slick asthetic. The games they make aren't really my cup of tea (genre-wise) but they look fantastic. http://www.puppygames.net/
Comment linking /
on “When Game Development Stinks”I think that the entire "AppStore is broken" section is pretty well put into perspective by the Puppygames blog ( http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1677 ). It's not that the platform owners are doing anything right ...it's that they've built walled gardens and effectively tricked devs into going there.
Comment linking /blog/?p=1677
on “Things will not change”The tl;dr bullet points: 1) Sharing with friends and family is allowed, and encouraged 2) Your e-mail is your registration key - when you try to activate on another computer, an activation link is sent to you via e-mail, and you can do this 10 times. After that, you've just got to ask Puppygames for more activations and they'll almost always approve them (I assume the main exception would be if someone was passing a…
Comment linking /revenge-of-the-titans
on “DRM done right: Puppygames”Great post. Random question: do the game storefronts offer much help with (or indeed, exert much control over) how to get value out of sales? I'm reminded of the famous "Dark side of Indie PR" article[1], where the author suggested (2nd comment) that devs selling through Steam don't necessarily control when or how much their games are discounted. Though your account of Jason Rohrer's game obviously tells a different…
Comment linking /blog/?p=1574
on “A game developer’s guide to sales”They'll hire you, exploit you, and then fire you when the funding dries up. Your "customers" will whine endlessly about every change you make, and every change you don't, and then cry out at having to pay more than nothing for your game. The industry mostly only has big publishing houses and captive studios left, and has bar none the very worst sort of customers you'll ever get--just go read through the user feedbac…
Comment linking /blog/?p=1574
on “Ask HN: How long is the road from web dev to game dev”A much better read about gamers and what's probably the big problem: http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1574 ~ The posts you've listed pull in a lot of "oh no 4chan is evil" and honestly a lot of fear and victim rhetoric unrelated to the games industry proper--bad stuff, to be sure, but hardly limited to games. It's strange to see people being so shocked ( shocked! ) that many people are perfectly willing to be shitb…
Comment linking /blog/?p=1574
on “'Gamers' are over”