The developer of Rise to Ruins is absolutely mad and has secured funding for their games

Stonk !

Important footnote :

(EDIT/Update: No you ridiculously awesome goofballs, I didn't yolo into $GME. :P)

That is an amazing story, actually. I also feel the same way about publishers. They're usually the ones who end up taking away from the original vision of the developers. Though sometimes they are a necessary evil, as some games just like to sit in perpetual 'Early Access' forever.

I read the original last night and was blown away! Very cool and man is that dude dedicated. If you don't own the game, I can't recommend enough. And, if you're one of those "hard core" gamers, there's no way you'll come out of a session or five with RtR and say that it was "too damn easy"

YOLOing all your family saving because you hate the industry so much doesn't seems like an amazing story in my opinion.

You didn't read the article, then.

Stock market isn't gambling or YOLOing - those who invest a lot of time and effort to learn it and stay on the pulse can make a lot of money with it.
Problem is, you really have to invest A LOT of time into doing that, which Doerr did by apparently sacrificing his health for a while until the goal was achieved.

Which is honestly a relatively normal story for people passionate about something and pouring their all into it.

It is a crazy story, and I think the article even missed out on one of the craziest bits. Not only did the developer give up on an avionics job at Lockheed Martin to make their own indie game, they did so after just a year of learning how to program in Java. And then they went onto study for a degree in a non-programming field concurrently to writing the game, so probably no learning software engineering principles there either.

It's basically a story of a series of massive all-in gambles that somehow all worked out. This man is an absolute mad lad and a credit to the industry.

It.s all fun and games but when you hurt your mental health and gravely endanger the your (or worse, your family's) financial security, it's really NOT something that should be praised and be proud of.

Lucking your way in life is not something that should be praised and advertised.
What happened there was a gamble, the money acquired is not really "deserved" as they are not a reward for something you've produced or offered.

The fact that they say fundraising is bad but yoloing and basically gambling is not is just making things worse and triggers me. At least with fundraising the money would have been the reward of your hard work.

Also advertising it in such a way that makes it cool/laudable/heroic is irresponsible and just promotes this kind of reckless behaviour that most often ends in serious losses or even bankruptcy.

PS: I've got nothing against responsible and productive investment (which I actually think it's really good thing). But this does not to seem to be that at all.

Dude chased a dream and caught it, what isn't to like about this story? Sounds like he took the current profit of the game and invested it wisely until it made him enough capital to fund future development. Where is the gambling here?


Last edited by slaapliedje on 16 Mar 2021 at 5:31 pm UTC

YOLOing all your family saving because you hate the industry so much doesn't seems like an amazing story in my opinion.

You didn't read the article, then.

Stock market isn't gambling or YOLOing - those who invest a lot of time and effort to learn it and stay on the pulse can make a lot of money with it.
Problem is, you really have to invest A LOT of time into doing that, which Doerr did by apparently sacrificing his health for a while until the goal was achieved.

Which is honestly a relatively normal story for people passionate about something and pouring their all into it.

Rather off-topic, but stock market IS gambling. https://theconversation.com/the-financial-sector-is-professional-gambling-in-action-93102

Dude chased a dream and caught it, what isn't to like about this story?

Because achieving a dream by any means isn't ethical, nor safe for those around you.

Saying everyone who study the stock market hard enough can turn 200k into 2.5M is survivor bias.

Seriously, you just said a 10x return in less than a year is normal story for anyone studying the stock market like Doerr did.

I did not say any of that and seriously encourage you to improve reading comprehension before putting words into other people's mouths.

What I did say is that people putting their health on the line for their passion is a normal story.
Or at least one heard relatively often.

Just like the now-famous guy on reddit who made millions with GME. He could have lost it all with GME going bankrupt.

THAT is indeed luck and no serious investor on the stock market would have invested into GME.
Those who do understand the stock market and the companies and fields they invest in are not just randomly gambling like in a lottery as you seem to think.
Of course there is always some luck involved in success on the stock market, but that is true for almost any business.
That's also why you diversify instead of just investing into a single company (which Doerr correctly did, even if he apparently kept within the same sector).


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 16 Mar 2021 at 9:14 pm UTC

If he bought doge coins a year ago, he would have 7 Mio now. And that would have been a gamble :)

Yeah so at the end you agree with me ? It was a risky move. A whole sector can crash because "reasons". Note that it did at the end of his investment. And apparently he didn't study enough to see it coming right? Just casually losing 500k (3M to 2.5M), no big deal.

To be fair... when you're going from 200k to 3m then to 2.5m... I seriously would still consider that a win, and not care about that extra 500k... It's like when Google loses a billion to a lawsuit. They're probably like 'meh, we'll earn it back in less than a year anyhow.'

Well I have 15k and I would be OK turning it into 187k. I hope he will leave some tips for the pleb

Sorry, I don't get it. Not using KickStarter or a Publisher is mad? He is indie, that's nothing special or am I missing something?

Sorry, I don't get it. Not using KickStarter or a Publisher is mad? He is indie, that's nothing special or am I missing something?

I think the thing is that he basically said "My grubstake to make this game isn't big enough, I'm going to dump my savings into the stock market and play it until I can parlay my winnings into something big enough to make the game with" and yeah, that's kind of mad. He pulled it off, so kind of awesome, but it's like a friend of mine who once patted a wild bear--she's still alive to tell the tale, but that doesn't mean she wasn't nuts to do it.

To be fair, it's not as mad right now as it would be under normal historical conditions, because the world's central banks currently seem to have a consensus that they are going to consistently dump so much money into the markets that there can never be another sustained bear market until they stop doing it. So while you can totally lose big on one stock if you mistime whatever pump-and-dump schemes are going on, you pretty much can't lose on the stock market overall. On the gripping hand, he was trying to make a lot of money fast--that still entails risk.