YCombinator form

Company name:

Farsides

Company url, if any:

http://www.farsides.com/

'''Please enter the Posterous url of a 1 minute video introducing yourselves. (Optional but strongly recommended. Instructions.)'''

 XXX TODO XXX  

'''YC usernames of all founders, including you, davidblanchard, separated by spaces. (That's usernames, not given names: "bksmith," not "Bob Smith." If the startup has 3 founders, there should be 3 tokens in this answer.)'''

davidblanchard antoviaque

'''YC usernames of all founders, including you, davidblanchard, who will live in the Bay Area January through March if we fund you. (Again, that's usernames, not given names.)'''

davidblanchard antoviaque

What is your company going to make?

Farsides is making casual online games with a strong multiplayer experience, using the open source model. Our first game will be a serious game about ecology. We take a subject deeply rooted in pop culture and allow players to show off their nature-preservation efforts to their friends.

We have currently two very early prototypes being worked on - they allow us to test different parts to refine the final game:


 * A mission system that allows to track actions made by the player on the Web. For example, a mission is about hacking the website of an oil company - the player goes for example to bp.com, and perform a "hack" action. If successful, he gets details about a scandal in which BP was involved, and progresses in the game.
 * The second prototype is not directly related to the ecology game, but will help us test the potential of stronger social interactions in Facebook games, that would be useful for us in the future. It is a card game on Facebook, inspired by board games; players would organize games and debrief in feeds and using the Facebook comments system. One of the goals for this prototype is to try to regain some the viral potential Facebook progressively took away from applications, through restrictions in invitations and story feeds.

If this application is a response to a YC RFS, which one?

No

'''For each founder, please list: YC username; name; age; year of graduation, school, degree and subject for each degree; email address; personal url, facebook id, twitter id; employer and title (if any). Put unfinished degrees in parens. List the main contact first. Separate founders with blank lines. Put an asterisk before the name of anyone not able to move to the Bay Area. '''

antoviaque; Xavier Antoviaque; 28;Autodidact - 1999 Scientific baccalaureat at Saint Charles, (2000 Physics engineer preparatory school at Saint Louis), (2002 Bachelor degree in Computer Science at EPITA/EAI);xavier@antoviaque.org; http://www.antoviaque.org/, FB: xavier.antoviaque, Twitter: antoviaque; Community Management Consultant (currently one main client: Kazago Online).

davidblanchard; David Blanchard; 36; 1997, Telecom ParisTech &amp; Université Paris IX Dauphine, Computer science and Economics; david@blanchard.name; FB: 1843424763, Twitter: david11102.

'''Please tell us in one or two sentences about something impressive other than this startup that each founder has built or achieved. '''

antoviaque : When one of the video game companies I used to work for filled for bankruptcy a few months after I left, I started an effort to make the community buy out the game, Ryzom, and make it open source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6198362.stm. At the end, more than 200K euros were pledged by players and it attracted investors, who ended up releasing the game as open source. The game is still alive today.

davidblanchard : Headed the first Ubisoft studio in India right after its acquisition - made the studio grow up to 160 people making sure the production skills of the team reached a level close to the ones of other Ubisoft studios - in a country that does not have yet a strong gaming industry.

Please tell us about the time you, antoviaque, most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.

Communities present very interesting "hacking" challenges - though you can still tweak a few things, they are much less predicable than computers. : ) One interesting example I had to work on was for an online journal, which had a lot of troubles with trolls and flames in their comments. They were thinking about implementing some kind of karma system to solve the issue - ie trying to find a technical solution to a social issue, which is usually a mistake.

Instead, I advised them to focus on the good comments, the ones they would like to see more - reply to them, pay a lot of attention to their authors, thank them, cite their names in articles, manually flag them in a different color... The result was really good - it provided the commenters with a reference on what types of comments are welcomed and encouraged, the authors of good comments felt less "alone", and at the end the glory the new status even attracted some of the old flamers, who changed the way they interacted in the comments.

'''Please tell us about an interesting project, preferably outside of class or work, that two or more of you created together. Include urls if possible.'''

It was not strictly outside of work, but we both worked on Ryzom, the game I was referring to earlier and which is now open source. When the buyout campaign started, David helped a lot, and was one of the very first people inside of the company to believe in it. http://www.ryzom.com/en/

'''How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet? Have any of the founders not met in person?'''

We've known each other for 6 years, and worked together for almost two years. We met at work: David was in production and I was in community management - we thus frequently had to build bridges between our respective worlds. The mix of honesty, intelligence and pleasure that has characterized our relationship since the beginning was an important factor in the decision to work together.

'''What's new about what you're doing? What substitutes do people resort to because what you plan to make doesn't exist yet?'''

1) Making social games richer by applying them to the "real" world. Facebook games already went one step forward in this direction, by implementing games in an existing social context - playing with people that you already know (at least a little). By going one step further, and immersing even more games into reality, we reach out to a largely untapped market. (On this, cf the presentation from Jesse Schell on the future of games, it gives a good glimpse of this evolution http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/dice-2010-design-outside-the-box-presentation/).

A lot of Facebook players didn't use to play before Facebook games; they will remain casual players with specific tastes, but they are progressively getting tired of the copycats. The declining numbers on the top games are not only due to FB restrictions on game notifications, they also represent a growing player "fatigue". The fact that the top gaining application are now games that bring something "new" is a good symptom of that effect.

2) Social game developpers currently don't yet know how to handle the high level experience and communities. This only affects the players that are strongly engaged and play long enough to reach the upper levels of the game, but this group is important for long term retention in online games, and they are those you tend to get the most lifetime revenue from - they are loyal, they play for a long time and spend a lot.

So what's new is 1) games that strongly relate to the world around us and thus delivers a richer, more adult social gaming experience, 2) built with a rare 10 years-long experience at producing and handling online worlds.

What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?

There is a largely untapped potential in leveraging the open source model in video game development. We have done a lot of community management, with very different types of communities, and it's very obvious that gaming communities are among the most vibrant and passionate of all. However, unlike in other industries, the "author complex" is very strong in the gaming industry, and passionnate players almost always hit a wall when they want to contribute to their favorite game. You always have: on one side the developers, and on the other side the players - no middle ground.

The open source model, allied with a high sense of transparency, removes those barriers to maximise players engagement and contributions. Nowadays, the successful online games are often the ones that are the closest to their community, building on top of the players expressed needs and desires - the open source model is profiled to make the most out of this approach. And we push the concept as far as we can - we even work on a decentralized model, communicating though mailing-lists and chat to make sure that the community can participate there too!

Cf http://opensource.com/business/10/9/facebook-generation-vs-fortune-500 for some of the differences of approach, too.

'''Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? Who do you fear most?'''

Our competitors are traditional game developers who are committed to online gaming like EA or Activision/Blizzard, and new social/casual online gaming actors such as Zynga, Gameforge, Dofus, etc. The ones who we fear most could be the ones who have the best understanding of the current industry trends (E-Republik is a good example here). Those who have a lot of marketing power, such as Zynga or EA, shouldn't be forgotten too, they could catch-up quickly - though their culture will make it hard for them to grasp the open source part.

How will you make money?

We use the freemium model, with microtransactions. We don't plan to do anything fancy here at first, so we'll use the current industry standard. One thing at a time. : )

If you've already started working on it, how long have you been working and how many lines of code (if applicable) have you written?

For the first prototype (the mission engine with the web as a playground), we have been working part time on it, going through short 1-2 weeks iterations to refine the concept game for the last 6 months (and we've been talking about this project for the last 6 years :)). About 15K lines of code so far.

For the second one (the Facebook card game to test the impact of stronger social interactions), we have been working on it for one month. It's small, so we expect the first playable version within a few weeks. About 3K lines of code so far.

'''If you have an online demo, what's the url? (Please don't password protect it; just use an obscure url.)'''

http://hackit.cx/ and http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=125587344155159  

'''How long will it take before you have a prototype? A beta? A version you can charge for?'''

In pure open-source style, even if the games aren't good enough to be played yet, we already have public prototypes - and even some crazy players on HackIt's one! Our objective is to reach the beta stage with some first metrics by the beginning of 2011, and a version that can show good metrics and generate revenues within a year from now. But these dates can change, we'll monitor our expenses to make the most of our first round, and only scale when we know that we have a good enough concept.

'''If you're already incorporated, when were you? Who are the shareholders and what percent does each own? If you've had funding, how much, at what valuation(s)?'''

We're not yet incorporated, we should be in a month from now. We have raised some love money for the first round that will take place when the company is incorporated. For this first round we'll raise around 50k€, we plan to use this money in order to build the first prototype - at a valuation of 500k€.

'''If you're not incorporated yet, please list the percent of the company you plan to give each founder, and anyone else you plan to give stock to. (This question is as much for you as us.)'''

For the incorporation, there will be 3 shareholders : David at 47,5%, Xavier at 47,5%, and an association that represents the community of players/contributors at 5%. It's important for us to involve the community not only on the development of the game but also on the development of the studio.

After the love money round in October, the new investors will have a little less than 10% of the stocks.

If we fund you, which of the founders will commit to working exclusively (no school, no other jobs) on this project for the next year?

Both of us.

'''For founders who can't, why not? What level of commitment are they willing to make?'''

Do any founders have other commitments between January and March 2011 inclusive?

No.

Do any founders have commitments in the future (e.g. finishing college, going to grad school), and if so what?

No.

'''Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC? '''

We are currently based in Paris, France. We are contemplating the possibility of relocating to Montreal, Québec in a few months from now, typically after YC. Montreal is very exciting place for creating video games.

'''Are any of the founders covered by noncompetes or intellectual property agreements that overlap with your project? Will any be working as employees or consultants for anyone else?'''

No.

'''Was any of your code written by someone who is not one of your founders? If so, how can you safely use it? (Open source is ok of course.)'''

Yes. Our decentralized and open-source model is built upon the ability to work with contractors over the Internet. So we have several contractors, for code (Vlad, Illya, Proppy) and artwork (Deborah). We have an extensive code review process: I presonally review every line of code that gets commited before it reaches the trunk (which is better than what you get in most videogame studios, actually...), and patches need to meet a series of strong requirements http://community.hackit.cx/wiki/Requirements_and_deliverables_for_patch_submission. And, of course, we have ownership of all produced assets. We also use some open source code (like Ajaxim or jQuery).

'''Are any of the following true? (a) You are the only founder. (b) You are a student who may return to school when the next term starts. (c) Half or more of your group can't move to the Bay Area. (d) One or more founders will keep their current jobs. (e) None of the founders are programmers.'''

(Answering yes doesn't disqualify you. It's just to remind us to check.)

No.

'''If you had any other ideas you considered applying with, feel free to list them. One may be something we've been waiting for. Often when we fund people it's to do something they list here and not in the main application.'''

A few, yes. : ) Two examples:


 * 1) Crowd-funding. There are already a few crowd-funding initiatives out there, but we believe this is something that needs to be better integrated to existing projects, and acquires extra potential with an open source project. When customers want a feature or a bugfix that the studio doesn't consider a priority, giving the players the ability to pledge an amount of money on the feature would allow them to "vote with their wallet". Especially with an open-source software - any developer can then try to implement the feature, even if the studio is busy with other things. Btw, this is actually something that we would like to implement for Farsides later on, once we have reached critical mass.
 * 2) Download server for friends. This has nothing to do with Farsides, but this is more linked to the dematerialization of content. To help my friends who are a bit lost with downloading torrents, I've put a torrentflux on my personal server (a server-side torrent client). I progressively realized that, even though the interface is crap, a lot of them have kept using it for a long time - it's easier to find stuff, it gets the files much more quickly than through their DSL connexion (which has limited upload), and they get to see what their friends are downloading. This could be scaled: put on a sexy Tivo-like interface, use social networks to let friends know what you're watching ("I'm watching XXX - download it now!") and offer to install it on any server for a fee to keep its use in the private sphere. The geek population will be more than happy to provide this kind of service to their friends - and we can even help them to get their users contribute financially to the install &amp; server monthly cost, through crowd-funding.

'''Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered. (The answer need not be related to your project.)'''

There is an amusing experiment, related in this blog post http://alpha-build.net/2010/08/23/how-chemicals-in-your-brain-make-you-a-jerk-on-the-internet/ and that shows the root cause for a lot of the Internet trolls &amp; jerks drama. In two similar experiments, subjects have to chose between a) doing nothing (which results in having 5 people killed) or b) making a voluntary action (which results in only 1 person being killed). When the action doesn't involve a direct interaction with the person being killed (such as actioning a lever), most people chose b). When the action involves a direct interaction with the person being killed (such as pushing it over a railway), most people chose a).

So it's not anonymity that makes us jerks over the Internet - but more the lack of more direct interactions. Journalists like to see this as "it's easier to be a PITA when you don't risk a punch in the face". But it goes deeper than this - and especially, the experiment gives a corrolary result: Improve the level of direct interaction between people, for example with extra-good community management and customer service, and you are more likely to generate constructive relationships with your customers.