What Happens When You Piss Off the Internet

I like open source.  When I sought out on the endeavor to create a mobile tower defense game, I announced that the game would be open source, and it would be free.  The game is called Meme Defense.  As one might guess, it’s about Internet memes.  Not exactly an original concept, but I was more concerned about the engineering aspects of the game rather than the skin.  Tower defense games, to date, are an over saturated genre consisting of very little evolution.  Therefore, I spent most of my time worrying about innovation, making the game fresh and addicting to play.  In fact, I had no concerns at all about the memes.  

Clearly, I should’ve been more concerned.

Last month, I launched a kickstarter project for Meme Defense with a $5k goal.  The money would go into the $7k it would take to hire an art studio, and the $2.5k it would cost to hire a musician.  The money would’ve been nice, but mostly the campaign was to feel the pulse of the community, and see how they might receive the game, or how they feel about playing a game featuring the memes they helped to create (Sadly, it probably won’t be funded).

And they responded in the way they know best.

To date, the video has over 35,000 views, 1,000+ comments, and 3,000+ likes.  It was launched yesterday.

And then came the hate spam:

  • Sirildo ”You are the scum of the Earth. 
    You are the cancer.”
  • JulesBondTF2 “PLEAAAAAAASE DONT MAKE YOUR SHITTY FUCKING TOWER DEFENS EGAMES MEMESD XDD LELELE XDD Just kill yourself, man.”
  • HolanderSSF “you piece of shit”
  • TheBigDeniz “You are a horrible person, just wanted to tell.”
  • TheOldFatDuckGamer “You’re human shit.
  • AltF4Games “die”
  • MmmCouchPotato “you’re a fucking cancer to the internet. die.”
  • bl00dpk145 “Support for your epic meme project!!!! please read!!!!
    No just kidding, kill yourself.”
  • OddlyOriginal “Hey cunt,
    fuck you and your game you ugly fucking piece of shit. ”
  • Gerard De Vries

    • I hope you die, you are the cancer of the world

And this was before I got out of bed this morning.  

I’m building a mobile tower defense game which includes Internet memes, and I’m the ‘cancer of the world’ for it?  It appeared as if I was caught up in a flame war between 4chan and Reddit.  I went for my morning tea (decaf), still chuckling at how funny the video was, and decided to look up the creator.  

His name is Ken Ashcorp, pretty talented guy from the UK.  Sings, plays instruments, draws, makes Internet videos, enjoys World Wrestling Entertainment.  You name it.

But something seemed familiar from the YouTube description he put on his video.  It seemed familiar because I wrote it (except the parts in CAPS) and I had only sent that draft out to Gizmodo (and one other publisher but I can’t fucking for the life of me remember!). So clearly, someone from Gizmodo (or other) forwarded the email. 

Out of curiosity, I tweeted him.  Here’s how it went:

  • I said: “ Hilarious video. Even though I was the butt of your jokes, you’ve done the Internet proud.”

  • He said: “ hahaha oh shit. I was going to say, I respect your making it free and your ability to code but come on bro :(“

  • I said: “ Guess I should’ve used something other than memes. Could’ve saved myself a lot of shit. How did you get that email I sent out?”

  • He said: “ I can’t reveal my sources on that, but I can understand why you picked memes and the market appeal that they hold ): Hope you do good”


Hmm, well at least his 9 minute video wasn’t personal, right?  By this time, I’m casually deleting hate emails until I see that Whynne, the creator of the famous trollface, has sent me a personal audio recording:

Just before this recording, he threatened to send a C&D.  Btw, he’s the same guy who issued this letter to Reddit last year for using trollface.

I think I’ve learned a lesson in all of this.  Most of what Internet communities like 4chan, Reddit, and 9gag produce are highly-regarded garbage.  If you try to harness that garbage to make something out of it, you will be put in the center of an unending war of whose garbage is better (or made first).  And that is a dangerous place to be.

The point that I’m trying to make is if you’re going to spent months of your time and thousands of your dollars drafting a concept, hiring a team, and building a free and completely open source video game as a hobby, you better use zombies as your theme.

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Inside A Live Kickstarter Campaign: Part 1

With 15 days to go, Meme Defense has raised 36% of it’s campaign goal and it has 398 likes on Facebook.  Most of the campaign money has come from Twitter at 22%.

  • Feb 10th - Feb 14th: Most all of the pledges were from people I knew.  I received a few pledges from Kickstarter’s Discovery and one from Kickstarter’s Search.  At this point, I did very little marketing except tweeting.  I announced music producer K-Murdock and gaming company Retro Style Games will be on the project.
  • Feb 15th-16th: I started marketing Meme Defense on indie game forums.  I put an ad out on Reddit.  Zero pledges came from either site those days.  I launched the alpha gameplay video here.
  • Feb 17th-21st: Started marketing on Facebook and humor based forums geared towards memes.  There was little to no response in the campaign, but Meme Defense got it’s first press 
  • Feb 22nd-now:  Went to college forums and spread the word there.  Announced the Android version.  The pledges start to trickle in.  More press
  • Today: Announced that Meme Defense will be free.  Even more press

An interesting aside resulting from the Kickstarter campaign, I’ve been approached by several interested parties in helping to market the game once it is live.  I will keep you informed if anything comes out of those.

Stay tuned for part 2.

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Efficiently Managing Two Jobs (AKA working 16 hours a day)

When I saw this post in November about Jack Dorsey, I was taken aback at the skepticism the article received, but I had nothing to say to the contrary…until now.  

Listen, working 16 hours a day is nuts, and probably not cut out for many people at all, but I do it, and I love it.

Qualifications:  

  • I’m a software engineer for a San Francisco startup called Eventbrite.  I spend 8-11 hours daily here.  
  • I’m an independent video game developer for a company I’ve started, and we’re building an iOS game called Meme Defense.  I spent 5-8 hours here daily.

Skills you’ll need:

  1. If you’re seriously looking to spend two-thirds of your time working, the number one thing you’ll need is to like what you’re doing.  If I felt Eventbrite wasn’t a rich, worthwhile endeavor or if I wasn’t laughing my ass off building a video game about memes, I would drop one of them.  It’s that simple.  I think it was Steve Jobs that said something along the lines of, “If you’re not thrilled about what you’re doing too many days in a row, something has got to change.”
  2. Friends who understand (or no friends).  I used to go out every night, meet new people, drink wine, play yahtzee.  I still do that, but not as often.
  3. Be in touch with your body.  Working two jobs is tough, and breaking down is easy.  Make sure you get some exercise in and eat healthy.  You should know when to take a vacation, and when to sleep.
  4. Iron fucking willpower.  You’re going to be tired.  Some days, you’re going to be pissed at a co-worker, or you’ll lose faith in your side project.  If you have days like this, see point 3.  If not, ship it!
  5. Know how to eliminate distractions.  TV, Reddit, Hacker News, Facebook.  All of these are production’s worst enemy.  In the morning, I open up Hacker News with a coffee and I pick 2 or 3 articles.  I read those articles and regardless of what branches I could follow based on the article’s content, I make sure I put it down, edit my /etc/hosts file to block all distraction sites, and I get shit done.

Separation of Passions:

It’s important that the two jobs you do are different from one another, otherwise you’re copying and pasting.

At Eventbrite, I work in Python in a web-based world.  It’s mostly feature work with some generation of some technical specs, writing docs, coding, coding, coding.

On Meme Defense, I work in Objective-C (mostly) on a mobile device.  Aside from the engineering work, I also manage everything from the other employee/contractors to the product direction.  Additionally, I negotiate contracts with an art studio for the visual assets and a musician to get a proper soundtrack (almost got something in the works with the people who make this!), legal work, finance, determine a marketing plan, set up campaigns like the one on Kickstarter.  

Two completely different products, and two sets of skills.  The great part about it is that the learning curve is still steep for both, and man, it is rewarding.

Something Jack Dorsey’s article failed to mention is the importance of separating the two jobs.  I never work on Meme Defense while I’m at the Eventbrite office.  Even when I’m finished for the day and the office is perfectly acceptable to, I’ll still go home/to a coffee shop and work (Of course the opposite doesn’t hold true.  If Eventbrite needs me while I’m working on Meme Defense in my off hours, I drop Meme Defense for Eventbrite).

Typical Week Day:

  • Wake up 6 hours after I go to sleep, every day, no exceptions.  I might write some emails in the morning about Meme Defense while I’m still at home or I’ll finish the piece of code from last night, otherwise I go directly to Eventbrite.
  • Code all day.  Lunch is brought in, and I always bring it back to my desk.
  • Around 6:30 PM, there is always a series of epic fucking ping pong battles.
  • Depending on where I am with Eventbrite tasks, I might stay another hour or so, otherwise I go home.
  • Quick dinner with no electronics nearby, and quick shower (because of the ping pong).
  • By 8 or 9 every night, I’m onto Meme Defense.
  • I go to sleep the moment I get tired and without hesitating.  When I am tired, I’m useless, so I know it’s better to write down what I’m doing and pick it up again tomorrow.

Weekend:

I really splurge.  In the last month and a half, I’ve been to Reno, Tahoe, New York, Las Vegas, and Seattle.  And I have a trip to Mexico approaching pretty quickly.

Of course, there are weekends when I have to write some code, or think about work, but mostly I want to take two full days to sit back, disconnect, and really take in all the things I’ve accomplished over the week.  It is an awesome feeling to have done so much.

The End:

Meme Defense is just a passion project, and soon enough, I will launch it and it will be less hectic than it is now.  Based on feedback and market response, I might make an extra stage or two, but it certainly won’t be 5-8 hours a day anymore, and I won’t be working 16 hours a day.  I started Meme Defense at the end of October last year, and although difficult to maintain, it’s been one of the most rewarding undertakings I’ve ever done.  When it ends, it’ll be bittersweet.

Working 16 hours a day is nuts….but I recommend you give it a shot, just for a little while.

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