GetInTheSoup!
Smash Rookie
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2009
- Messages
- 13
I've been a member of smashboards for a long time, probably since 06. My first boardname was archangelicremix or something, but, in the LI, NYC area my smash tag is Soup. I've played melee since I was 13 and I've loved it ever since. This game taught me so many things: how to try, healthy competition, raw honesty, how to have real guy friends (grew up in a house of girls), how to learn for the sake of learning and love, how important practice is. It taught me so many things. I really love this game, and, probably more than the game itself I love the community that taught me how to fall in love with this game.
To be honest, I've played this game on and off, never really taking a complete break but really putting it on the background, and really, only for one reason (beyond various life circumstances)-- the business that smash encouraged me to create.
As I played and began caring about this community, I realized that, ultimately, this community would never make any money if it continued the way it did. And I wanted to play this game for life, I wanted it to be my profession. And I wanted to make that possible for as many of my fellow smashers as I could. I realized that the maximum a smasher could feasibly earn if she/he was the best would be $25k a year -- I live in New York, a part time secretary makes more than that. It just wasn't going to cut it. I thought about this community, and, I looked at all of it's parts and I realized that there was only one thing from keeping it profitable. It had 4 important things already -- 1) Knowledge and instruction regarding how to play and improve yourself, people were even teaching each other. 2) It had passionate people willing to reinvent the metagame and help the game progress and grow beyond staleness. 3) It had a growing community, probably due to the amazing brilliance of the metagame and it's technical precision 4) It was decently marketed with its awesome combo videos, its community jargon, and its decent tournaments. So it had Knowledge, Doing, Networking, and Marketing, it was just missing a way to actually make money: it didn't have enough sponsors, it wasn't featured as a big thing on G4, it wasn't recognized, and the community wasn't doing it's best to make it recognized or make money.
After thinking about this idea for a while it came to me that these 5 concepts applied to pretty much every idea of success (even if the idea doesn't make money, you still have to be able to afford committing to the idea: smash needs gas money and tourney money if you wanna go to tournies). I realized that I could make this idea into a pseudo-game, a framework in which people could strive for success regardless of the goal, personal or professional. I thought that I could improve the idea by creating large sums of money as prizes (accrued from ad revenue) and also I could create a sixth idea for success to help make the world a better place: Sustainability and reputation-- making sure you take care of the world and aim to improve it with all of your actions, making sure you take care of all those you affect. I wanted to make this something for the global community, and, I've worked on this idea for a very long time. I've worked on it with various people throughout various times, but, with a couple of amazing exceptions, I always feel as though I'm getting screwed by the people I count on. I've never made any money on this project, have only spent on it, and I can't afford to pay anyone that works with me -- I'm in debt from college and paying for a car and its insurance --- and everyone who starts working with me knows this. This has led me to meet some amazing people, some of whom I still work with right now. But the worst partnerships have always been with coders.
I'm a marketing person: I was an English major in college and I have been in theater since I was young, and I'm pretty athletic. I think well and can make pretty good decisions. I am not a coder, not at all, and I've tried. I'm dispassionate about it personally and respect anyone that can, and loves to, code. I've done everything else for this business of mine other than code, and, I've always tried for a coding partnership. I hustled and went to various schools, meetups, etc. created various scouting systems to find other people, and have really put in work. I went through a total of 4 coding partnerships, 1 ended with a person trying to steal the site, another ending with someone trying to steal the business, the last two (which came as a package deal) ended when one of their mothers died (the only bad part about that was that his mother died, I loved that guy. He gave me hope, and worked hella hard. It really sucked when his mother died, we couldn't even help him in anyway...).
We (the people that still work with me and I) have never had any work actually finished for our site, and, we've marketed A LOT, to a lot of people who no longer believe that our idea is ever going to happen. Honestly, Samantha (one of the few people I have left on this project, and, my right hand) and I are only sticking with this idea because we think it can really help people in a lot of amazing ways. However, we're at a standstill without coding, and we have a really bad taste in our mouths with regards to coding. We work with actors (for marketing) as well as coders, and the difference between the two communities is stark -- one is hungry and the other doesn't seem to care at all. Why are coders like this? Do coders really only care about money? Is the market for coders that small? Even while the rest of us are hustling without money for ideals, are coders that obsessed with money? Or is it something else? Is it something I don't understand? I feel as though the business idea is "disruptive" and can be really helpful to the world -- are no coders interested in doing this and letting the money come when it does (we have a sound revenue model)? I don't want to be bitter about something I don't understand, it's just I've been optimistic about this situation for years and I'm about to give up on the idea if it doesn't pick up soon. I could really use a coders perspective on this, and, their help if interested. I just wanted to get input from the community that inspired me, that I loved and that taught me so many things, before I make some really tough decisions.
To be honest, I've played this game on and off, never really taking a complete break but really putting it on the background, and really, only for one reason (beyond various life circumstances)-- the business that smash encouraged me to create.
As I played and began caring about this community, I realized that, ultimately, this community would never make any money if it continued the way it did. And I wanted to play this game for life, I wanted it to be my profession. And I wanted to make that possible for as many of my fellow smashers as I could. I realized that the maximum a smasher could feasibly earn if she/he was the best would be $25k a year -- I live in New York, a part time secretary makes more than that. It just wasn't going to cut it. I thought about this community, and, I looked at all of it's parts and I realized that there was only one thing from keeping it profitable. It had 4 important things already -- 1) Knowledge and instruction regarding how to play and improve yourself, people were even teaching each other. 2) It had passionate people willing to reinvent the metagame and help the game progress and grow beyond staleness. 3) It had a growing community, probably due to the amazing brilliance of the metagame and it's technical precision 4) It was decently marketed with its awesome combo videos, its community jargon, and its decent tournaments. So it had Knowledge, Doing, Networking, and Marketing, it was just missing a way to actually make money: it didn't have enough sponsors, it wasn't featured as a big thing on G4, it wasn't recognized, and the community wasn't doing it's best to make it recognized or make money.
After thinking about this idea for a while it came to me that these 5 concepts applied to pretty much every idea of success (even if the idea doesn't make money, you still have to be able to afford committing to the idea: smash needs gas money and tourney money if you wanna go to tournies). I realized that I could make this idea into a pseudo-game, a framework in which people could strive for success regardless of the goal, personal or professional. I thought that I could improve the idea by creating large sums of money as prizes (accrued from ad revenue) and also I could create a sixth idea for success to help make the world a better place: Sustainability and reputation-- making sure you take care of the world and aim to improve it with all of your actions, making sure you take care of all those you affect. I wanted to make this something for the global community, and, I've worked on this idea for a very long time. I've worked on it with various people throughout various times, but, with a couple of amazing exceptions, I always feel as though I'm getting screwed by the people I count on. I've never made any money on this project, have only spent on it, and I can't afford to pay anyone that works with me -- I'm in debt from college and paying for a car and its insurance --- and everyone who starts working with me knows this. This has led me to meet some amazing people, some of whom I still work with right now. But the worst partnerships have always been with coders.
I'm a marketing person: I was an English major in college and I have been in theater since I was young, and I'm pretty athletic. I think well and can make pretty good decisions. I am not a coder, not at all, and I've tried. I'm dispassionate about it personally and respect anyone that can, and loves to, code. I've done everything else for this business of mine other than code, and, I've always tried for a coding partnership. I hustled and went to various schools, meetups, etc. created various scouting systems to find other people, and have really put in work. I went through a total of 4 coding partnerships, 1 ended with a person trying to steal the site, another ending with someone trying to steal the business, the last two (which came as a package deal) ended when one of their mothers died (the only bad part about that was that his mother died, I loved that guy. He gave me hope, and worked hella hard. It really sucked when his mother died, we couldn't even help him in anyway...).
We (the people that still work with me and I) have never had any work actually finished for our site, and, we've marketed A LOT, to a lot of people who no longer believe that our idea is ever going to happen. Honestly, Samantha (one of the few people I have left on this project, and, my right hand) and I are only sticking with this idea because we think it can really help people in a lot of amazing ways. However, we're at a standstill without coding, and we have a really bad taste in our mouths with regards to coding. We work with actors (for marketing) as well as coders, and the difference between the two communities is stark -- one is hungry and the other doesn't seem to care at all. Why are coders like this? Do coders really only care about money? Is the market for coders that small? Even while the rest of us are hustling without money for ideals, are coders that obsessed with money? Or is it something else? Is it something I don't understand? I feel as though the business idea is "disruptive" and can be really helpful to the world -- are no coders interested in doing this and letting the money come when it does (we have a sound revenue model)? I don't want to be bitter about something I don't understand, it's just I've been optimistic about this situation for years and I'm about to give up on the idea if it doesn't pick up soon. I could really use a coders perspective on this, and, their help if interested. I just wanted to get input from the community that inspired me, that I loved and that taught me so many things, before I make some really tough decisions.
