Posted by terabytest 3 days ago
Even after all these years, that experience still feels a bit surreal to me. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who connected with the game, whether in small or significant ways, and for the stories shared along the way. Some people expressed how they were going through tough times and found some comfort, however small, in playing 2048.
At the start of last year, I wanted to breathe new life into the game as it was starting to show its age. I quit my job last October to work on 2048 full time and spent a year building this new version (the original took just 5 days!). I wanted to pay tribute to what made 2048 great while modernizing and polishing the experience.
The idea of adding powerups came when Prime Gaming and I connected to see if we could create a special version of 2048 for their members, with some exclusive extras. Some of those powerups made it into the main game, though there’s still a Classic[3] mode just like the original for those who prefer a more hardcore experience. The old site is also still online[4].
2048 is now my full-time focus, and I’m excited about the ways it can keep improving. I wanted to share this update with the community where it all began, both for a bit of nostalgia and to hear your thoughts and feedback!
Thank you all so much!
— Gabriele
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373566
[2]: https://medium.com/@gabrielecirulli/2048-success-and-me-7dc6...
I didn't notice anything different from how it was in my memory. That seems like a successful modernization :)
I didn't notice that there were power ups until reading your post.
While I understand that you’ve gotta make a living, ads are far more palatable if the user can consent to them.
And the way to make the user a part of the process is to offer a trade for the ad, rather than obtrusively running them.
“Would you like 500 gold to watch an ad?”
Yes? Ad for in-game currency that provides powerups? That’s a great deal and it’s win/win.
No? Okay, no ad, but no power up.
Statistically, you almost always get a yes, but the players are 100x happier than the slimey games that force ads in unscrupulous ways.
I think that is a worse pattern overall. It's essentially converting from the idea of watching ads to support the developer to watching ads as a pay to win mechanism. Pay to win mechanisms are always worse than any other alternative.
It was fun. Later I discovered 2048, and it was also fun, and felt like a bit of a different game to me.
The author's reaction to 2048 rubbed me the wrong way a bit. https://asherv.com/threes/threemails/
Thankfully fans of 2048 pushed back and most decided that it's a simple enough game that you can't really expect there not to be clones, or clones of clones. I like this one: https://mdjorge.github.io/doge2048/
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Edit: From the post about Threes:
> We do believe imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but ideally the imitation happens after we’ve had time to descend slowly from the peak -- not the moment we plant the flag.
Fair enough. Things moved too fast for that back then and they move even faster now. A coding AI could help create a ripoff.
But at the same time, this should really be a learning lesson to everyone- if your game or idea is simple enough to clone that someone can "rip it off" with a week of effort, you'd better damn well make sure your original excels in something that can't be cloned quite so quickly. Or not spend so much time working on it. Having only played 2048 and seeing how relatively polished and pleasing the presentation of it was for a so-called week of effort, I find it a bit baffling that it took the Threes team a year of work.
Threes is the much better game IMO - 2048 gets boring after a while. I still play threes after all this time and it’s still satisfying.