Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by m_eiman 6356 days ago
I think it's a fun idea, with three area that can be improved:

1) Like the others are saying, you need to find a (better) designer

2) Playing the game seems to be a massive time sink. I could never spend that much time on a game, regardless of how good it is. And I don't think it's just me, pretty much nobody with a job could spend a few minutes every half hour to run their taxi company. Which ties into..

3) Too much micro management. This is mostly a personal preference, but I'd get tired of micro managing my cabs pretty soon.

Things that would make it easier for me to play:

a) Make it possible to play in a rewarding and competitive way spending no more than a quarter to half an hour per day.

b) Less micro management, but that should be a requirement to achieve a) anyway.

I can see the Challenge thing as a mini-game, maybe it could make it on its own as a game widget. Maybe make a Wordpress et al widget that doubles as a game and as an ad for the "big" game?

You have an interesting idea, looking forward to see how it evolves!

1 comments

As an update a few days later I'd like to add that the new "improved" version with ads is.. Let's just say that there should be less ads than game. I know that they're there to annoy users into paying for the premium version, but this is just too much.
Sneaky thing with the "earn us affiliate money to pay for your premium account" scheme, though! And I mean that in a positive way :)
You got it. We didn't actually change advertising stuff at all, it's just that it only kicks in after a few days for each user. In general, advertising performs terribly in these kinda games, so our revenue model is based on transactions and premium accounts. Ads are just a way to force users to pay. It might be slightly over the top at the moment, though.