Lots

I'm also just going to chime in here and say that not saying what the video game is about is completely absurd as well. Ideas are worthless without execution and no one is going to stop what they're doing to steal an idea for a video game and start devoting their time and money to stealing it from you. Plus, what makes you think it's going to be some huge success if you haven't actually validated with a large audience that it is indeed something they could picture themselves shelling out their presumably hard-earned cash for?

Again, let me reiterate: Ideas are completely worthless.

A similar concept that is a bit less harsh is that ideas, and the quality thereof, serve as multipliers of the dollar figure generates by the quality of the execution of the idea.

I can't find the graphic at the moment, but the basic premise is this:

Good idea + bad execution = $100

Great idea + brilliant-holy-****-style-execution =$10,000,000,000

Great idea + mediocre execution = $10,000

Etc, etc.

Allow me to demonstrate what I mean about ideas being worthless:

The website my brother and I are working on uses crawler/scraping bots to scour over 500 skateboarding websites for videos and images of professional skateboarders, attempts to figure out the names of the skateboarders pictured, returns the scraped content to an approval page, and is either posted to the "filter" for the skateboarder it pictures, or is posted to the one where it belongs if it was sorted incorrectly. Select users in the community, after proving their loyalty to the site, can earn so-called loyalty points by aiding us in this sorting process.

Essentially, when you visit the site, you search for a skateboarder, and then you are taken to their "filter", where you see all of the latest pictures, videos, and articles they are featured in. This is much easier than manually visiting the websites of their individual sponsors, though we do link to their pages to ensure we are not in violation of any copyright.

Anyone here going to quit what they're doing to steal my idea?

Even if it was worth something, and therefore worth stealing, we have a huge head start. So good luck.


Here is another example:
Let's build an app that lets people take pictures of things they are doing and then put cool filters on them. (Even though the original idea for the app was completely different -Google Burbn and they changed what it did to satisfy the market they were researching while they were building it.)

Sounds like a pretty mediocre idea.
But then, suddenly...

$1,000,000,000.00

So yeah. There's that. Instagram certainly wasn't kept a secret when it was under development, and if it would have been kept a secret, it would have been a completely different app because they wouldn't have had community input and therefore it would have flopped miserably.

It's not just an idea, it's in working development (ie. enough for Timex et al. to play games) and it makes sense to keep it under wraps until we are ready to tell the public more. Just like uhh, almost every game that isn't in beta yet. Also this isn't me jerking off into the wind and some fantasy idea, this is something that has been under development for a long time and with many people involved.

It's not just about protecting ideas, its about protecting a brand. If you talk about cherry coke and how its going to be awesome and you don't have any product imminent for people to drink, people are going to be turned off before they can even buy it and the hype is going to fade. Here no one can be turned off because they don't have expectations, they don't know the name or what it does, etc. and no one is going to care or remember it yet.


--
About eh777, sorry to troll you in that MTT thread. I will give you a serious answer, she was trying to bluff out a better pair.

I don't agree with this, point zero spent 1 year hyping their products without having a single piece of cloth ready and when the clothes finally came out it was a big success. I actually think that many other company used a similar marketing technic with great success.

If ideas are worthless then why do companies pay millions to billions of dollars for patents?

You can't patent an idea, a patent has to be an exact specification of how something will be built, essentially being a description of the full product.

I actually don't think there's anything wrong with not releasing information about the game at all.

My issue is releasing a game is an unbelievably ambitious task, and independently releasing a game that won't lose vast amounts of money let alone actually make money, is extremely rare.

I know more about business than I do poker, so I like this thread.

i think computer games marketing might be a little different from clothing shop marketing

I just don't understand why so many poker players think they can easily turn their hand to business, it's so incredibly naive and arrogant.

If anything I would say being a successful poker player is a huge negative in business, I would never invest in a poker players business unless it was something very special and being run by someone else.

do your thing alex. F all these haters

ding ding ding ding

I get the distinct impression that he certainly does not care what people think, and I applaud that

Happy upswinging from here on out Alex.

Can you keep the discussion about this thread in here and not go back to my strategy posts...

I'm not mouthing you off, I'm discussing this thread the same way everyone else is - completely irrelevant to your trolling (except the first one - that was me being angry).

As far as updating this thread goes, can you really blame Alex for not consistently updating after he's lost almost 100k in a month at the tables? I can't imagine him waking up and being too thrilled about doing that.

OP after grinding 8m VPPs in a year

god forbid people try to do something and fail! how would being a successful poker player be a negative? If you say you would take a college grad from an ivy league school over a successful poker player(someone whos made significant money) I think your insane.

lololol

So random 24 year old vs 24 year old professional poker player, you take random 24 year old?

Lol yea so this, I'm not the model citizen or even a great example but just a random comparison....for being a 21 yr old I'm not doing bad for myself, most of my close friends from back home are in 100k+ worth of debt (from college/uni for your non NA folk) and without a job, not really doing anything.

On top of that, the avg 24 yr old professional poker player is more likely more intelligent than the avg random 24 yr old, can get into all sorts of comparisons etc on the topic but I'll stop there

Not to mention that on top of being successful poker players, 80% of the team are doing their PHDs in CS or math at a school that is equivalent to or better than the ivy league schools in those fields

Poker and the learning process that goes into it is probably one of the best things in the world for removing irrational biases from your thought processes yet it seems that the vast majority of poker players who advertise their business knowledge have some of the most substantial and irrational biases of all.

Ok I get your point with the poker player vs an avergae person vs poker player, my point was just that the 'gamble' and work-ethic most poker players have does not work well in business.

I respect your point about poker players, it may have been a silly comment when you compare it to an average person. But the 'gambling nature' of poker players doesn't translate well into business.

My point was that the 'business ventures' I see poker players taking on are ill-thoughtout and executed with a complete lack of understanding of the industry they're going into, yet at the same time an extreme arrogance, almost as if they think making money in poker means ANYTHING in the business world - it's irrelevant.

This is sort of a perfect example of this, maybe I'm wrong and I'd be completely fine apologising - but I doubt OP has even done any market research - if he did, he'd find that independent games rarely manage to break even (usually losing huge amounts of money).

I mean honestly, I hope I'm wrong, and good luck to you.

Yeah honed risk analysis aptitude, fearlessness and the dedication to spend tens of thousands of hours perfecting a craft have no place in the business world

I think applies this with people that have more money than they know what to do with rather than poker players in general. Usually it's more charity to friends than it is a business venture.

Successful businessmen also think they can play poker...