Calling the post a "mid mortem" is catchy and it caught my attention.<p>But it's really more accurate to call it the less appealing "mid vita"?<p>I have to say though that my first reaction to "mid mortem" was "failure and 250k seems contradictory, what's going on here?"
Awesome game. Cannot wait I get my hand on a box and play with my 6yo nephew.<p>Question for OP: the game introduces kids to the imperative paradigm. As somebody who's been exposed to Logo at the age of 6, I can tell I had an awesome time moving the turtle around.
But: do you, Dan, think that one can build an equally compelling game based on the functional paradigm <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming</a> , where you have no "side effects" and all you can do is create and compose functions?<p>Stated otherwise: Turing Machines seems just fine to play with. Any idea on how to make Lambda Calculus just as sexy for kids?
Previous discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6398018" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6398018</a><p>My comment there...<p>This seemed very familiar, then when I saw phrases in the Kickstarter like "You are the computer and they get to order you around", the lightbulb went on: <a href="http://drtechniko.com/2012/04/09/how-to-train-your-robot/" rel="nofollow">http://drtechniko.com/2012/04/09/how-to-train-your-robot/</a><p>...it's a very similar game, for the same age group, except you order around people in a room instead of turtles on a board. (Not knocking Robot Turtles. There's room for both)
This post is extremely helpful and the game looks awesome, I wonder if the tactile experience of an actual board game may be more of an effective teaching aid for young children. It will be interesting to see how kids take to it when it is released.<p>My buddies and I have a project in the same space and are considering Kickstarting too.<p>We are building a platform game that teaches programming through gameplay by incorporating a terminal-like language we created called codePop.<p>If your interested check it out at www.betathegame.com
> Contrary to what many people think, people don’t find new projects through Kickstarter<p>This is a major failing of KS and one that I simply cannot understand why they don't fix. Project discovery is horrible.<p>I am mostly interested in technology projects. One look at the projects I've supported makes this very obvious. Yet, for some unbelievable reasons I keep getting these "what's new on Kickstarter" emails promoting art projects. Sorry, I enjoy art but I have nearly zero interest in most arts projects on KS (I did back one a long time ago).<p>This also means that I completely miss out on some projects unless I read about them elsewhere or laboriously browse through KS to try and decipher what's new. The second part is another failing.<p>The website is not designed for easy discovery. I couldn't care less about their staff picks. They don't have enough people to cover the range of tastes and interests out there. What I want to see are tools to list projects based on various sorted criteria of my own choosing. "Popular this week" is also horrible.<p>For example, I want to visit the site today and list technology projects in chronological order with the newest project at the top of the list. Add a layer to that and allow me to, perhaps, filter by keyword or some other criteria. Let me discover what's new on my own.<p>Then, once I've created a search and sort criteria, let me subscribe to email updates based on that criteria. eBay does this pretty well and, therefore, promotes discovery without members having to actively spend hours browsing the site every n days in order not to miss out on bargains.<p>There's also a missing layer when it comes to helping campaigns succeed. I've seen campaign that failed but raised a fair amount of money. Because I never learned of the project I did not have an opportunity to support it. I would imagine this is the case for thousands of people who, like me, are too busy to remember to check KS every Monday (or whatever). Their lack of discovery tools damages project owners by not allowing them to reach the entire KS addressable market for their project.<p>Further to that, KS is also failing at connecting the dots. If someone is consistently supporting tech gizmos for photography it is likely that they'll appreciate a quick email when someone posts a new project in that domain. This would create instant traction for a lot of projects that are never discovered until it is too late.<p>Anyhow, I enjoy Kickstarter but really can't understand why they don't seem interested in doing a better job. I know they started it more as a destination for art projects and that's what they try to promote. Well, like it or not, they make most of their money off other kinds of project --mostly technology from what I can see. Isn't it high time that they accept reality and make major site improvements in order to reflect the patterns their audience exhibits?<p>At some level there's a huge opportunity here to do this really well by helping project originators reach an audience as well as supporters discover that which they are interested in. Do this really well and people should flock to the solution. From an entrepreneurial standpoint nothing is harder than marketing and reaching an audience. KS is squandering the data they have and forcing project originators to almost start from zero for every project, despite the massive audience KS could reach with one email.
interesting. i have an idea for a game that appears to be roughly in the same spirit, though in my case the game is intended to be 'a puzzle game' that in a sense just happens to involve basic programming. there are non-trivial and interesting ways to get across various programming things... even very arcane programming things
when i was a kid i remember playing something called Logo .. i think on C64 and it was a turtle that received instructions i don't remember well .. im sure google has some more ..but im too lazy . champion
looks good, the thing i dread with higher sales is getting calculations wrong and ending up thousands in the hole, but i guess there are ways round that :)