#I ranted and raved in a group chat on Discord

[rosecandyart]

TOMORROW

[whatimconsuming]

The story of Discord is the story of platform shifts. Jason Citron started his career in game development studios creating some of titles for Xbox and Play Station 2 (that’s how old he is 😂) that you probably never heard of 😬. Platform Shift: Mobile In the 2008, the “app store” was just announced and Jason thought this would be the perfect time to take the entrepreneurial plunge. His thesis was that with the launch of mobile gaming on the iPhone he would get “free distribution” if he manages to become a “launch title” (ie develop his game before the app store is live). After all, whenever a new console comes out, there is always new set of games that offer a new kind of experiences that are “native” to that console and new gaming behaviors are born….this was a once in a life opportunity. Jason raised some seed capital from the uncle of one of his roommates and was off to the races building Aurora feint. He pulled off being a launch title and Aurora feint was one of only 50 games that were available on the app store on the blessed day.

The Good News: it got rave reviews…partly because of the limited competition at the time, but also because Jason was just an extremely talented game developer. The Bad News: the business model didn’t really work. Aurora feint’s Business Model The Business model for the game was very similar to other stuff that Jason had worked on in the past. He gave the game away for free and build a premium version that had multiplayer dynamics (such as competing with friends on leaderboards...competing in ghost matches....etc)….this was a very common behaviour for PC….but what he didn’t realize at the time was that with new platforms…comes new expectations and subsequently new consumer behaviors. The $8 price tag (probably out of thin air) to access those social features didn’t really work. As time went by, and more games were build around the iPhone, and the price tag was anchored at $0.99 - $4.99. Jason and his 5 person company made a meager $30k in revenue from this game….a far cry from a “hit” game.

The pivot to OpenFeint One day, while discussing with the another founder, Citron realized that the iPhone did not have Xbox live in it, but their Aurora Feint 2 did have a similar feature. From my very shallow understanding Xbox live is just a platform that allows gamers to play multiplayer games, communicate with each and discover new games. In an act of desperation, Jason decided to spin out those social features and sell them to other developers, in an attempt to become equivalent the Xbox live for iPhone….the only problem was he didn’t really have any money to pay his engineers let alone hire new ones to build this in time…or anyone for that matter….to get Jason put up a landing page...photoshopped a couple of fake screenshots ...the message was "xbox live for mobile." He convinced Techcrunch to cover “the launch” and took that mailing list to investors…sprinkled some “vision” on it and raised a bridge round. He used the money from that round to hire 10 new developers to actually build the product The $104m payout

Over the next two years Openfeint took over Jason’s life. As someone whose life revolved around gaming, I can’t even imagine how it must have felt like to build the entire infrastructure for social gaming on the iPhone. By 2010, Openfeint had more than 10 million users and was powering 30 of the top 100 games on the App Store. Next year the company was acquired by a Japanese company (named GREE…but thats not really important) for a whopping $104 million (for reference the company ever raised $3m). When Jason signed on the dotted line, it was under the expectation that he will now have the resources to build the Xbox live for mobile. But as with many acquisitions…the story took a sour turn after the deal closed… Rinse and repeat (for iPad) Jason took a 7 months hiatus after being booted out of his own company. Jason took the time-off playing video games….A LOT of video games. Around that time, in 2013 the iPad was in its first years of inception and slowly making it to the main stream. While everyone saw iPad as a tablet, Jason saw it as a new platform shift for gaming…specifically for playing team-based games. He hypothesized that the iPad would make these kind of multi-player games more accessible and that the only problem was that there wasn’t enough high quality games being produced. Ready for round 2…Jason started another company…this time named Hammer and Chisel. Hammer and Chisel was a game development house that focused exclusively on creating high-quality iPad games. The vision for Hammer and Chisel was to replicate the Openfeint model for iPad. Fates Forever

After a few hit-and-miss with launching different games (3 to be specific), Jason had Another ONE(idea) up his sleeve…this time for a game called Fates forever. In a true Sell-Build-Ship manner that we can come to expect from Jason, instead of putting in the hours to build a game and see it crumble in-front of his eyes, he, instead, chunked up the art ....and started posting it on reddit along with explaining how the “game worked”(there was no game at the time…just some art). He took feedback from and incorporated it into into the art and ultimately the game mechanics. Six months later, Fates Forever shipped to the app store, and yet again didn’t really live up to the expectations of Jason or the team. The pivot to Discord

Jason was going around in circles trying to figure out how he can “fix” Fates Forever. In a conversation with Stanislav (Stan) Vishnevskiy (a developer at Hammer and Chisel then and cofounder of Discord later) Jason was complaining to Stan that the chat experience on Faints Forever sucked. He then went on a rant explaining how the ideal communication platform SHOULD work for developers. And so the OG idea of Discord was born. The idea was building Teamspeak meet skype. To take a step back Teamspeak was one of the more popular tools at the time used by gamers who played team vs team games. The problem with Teamspeak, at least from Stan’s prespective, was that to start a conversation on Teamspeak users had to download the app, pay for it and share their IP address (IP address is kind of like your mailing address) with other team members. Cutting through the noise Jason and Stan started building the first version of Discord as a side project within the company. First 20 customers The first 20 customers for Discord were friends, friends and friends. For the first 5 months, Jason and Stan were building Discord and hammering their gamer friends to use it. Their friends signed up but weren’t actually really using the product. Everytime they asked them why, they highlighted that they needed this feauture or that feature. Stan and Jason would go build it and come back to them…they got excited for a minute and then demanded more features. This loop kept going on and on and at some point the team had spent 3 weeks not shipping anything, they figured that maybe Discord just wasn’t as important as they had previously thought. First 200-300 customers Those 3 weeks where yet another reminder to Jason of how important distribution was. He figured that gaming communities were far and wide on the internet and that the product was at a point where it could be stress tested by more than just his unappreciative friends. So Jason and Stan got one of the friends to post in the Final Fantasy 14(a popular game at the name) subreddit. They reason they narrowed down to this one specific game was that there was a new expansion (i.e new features, content..etc) coming out which meant that was a lot of anticipation, speculation and excitement about the new release on reddit.

Their friend posted a simple link saying “"Hey...did anyone try this new voiceover IP app called discord [link to a voice chat].“ Jason and Stan immediately jumped onto the voice chat and started talking to anyone who showed up. The Redditors would go back, say "I just talked to the developers there, they're pretty cool," and send even more people to Discord. That kind of kicked the snowball off the top of the mountain.

Fun fact: Discord now claims this day (May 13, 2015) as their “launch day” First 1000 customers For the next 1000 customers, Jason and Stan focused all their product work on just 3 games, all of which had upcoming expansions (i.e new releases) in an attempt to make integrations with these games as seamless as possible. They then did the same Reddit routine, got a friend to post on the game’s subreddit asking if member had tried using Discord and accompanying that message a link to a voice chat where Jason and Stan were waiting to meet and greet and answer any questions anyone had. To double down on that strategy, Jason and Stand started doing some 1:1 promotion with “guilds” of these games. Guilds are “an organized group of video game players that regularly play together in one or more multiplayer games. Many guilds take part in gaming competitions, but some guilds are just small gaming squads consisting of friends. “

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Will your pension be there when you need it?

Members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and supporters rally outside the Capitol in Washington. Millions, including these protesters, are at risk of losing their retirement savings if the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation becomes insolvent. (Drew Angerer/Bloomberg)

Clearly, people are concerned about their pensions. Many are well-funded. But others, including multi-employer and state pensions, are having financial trouble. And some federal workers wonder about the government’s pension promises to them.

Karen Friedman is the executive vice president and policy director at the Pension Rights Center, and Joellen Leavelle is the group’s communications and outreach director. Last week, I invited them to answer readers’ questions about their pensions. Here are some questions they didn’t have time to get to from last week’s Color of Money live chat.

Broken pension promises Q: Pension plans that are cutting benefits are characterized as having broken promises to retirees. But promises were made on both sides when pensions were established — pensions promised to take good care of you in retirement, while you promised to live only five years in retirement. So aren’t those who are collecting for 20, 30 and 40 years breaking the promises established at inception, too? I don’t think there is a way to solve this problem without people being willing to work longer.

Friedman and Leavelle: The pension promise, whether in a private, state or federal pension plan, is that employees give up wages while working in exchange for a monthly pension for life that they can’t outlive. No retiree promises, as the questioner asserts, that they will “live only five years in retirement.” That is a mistaken notion. Actuaries, the math professionals who advise pension plans on how to fund pension benefits, were fully aware that life expectancies were rising. As a result, mortality tables are always factored into the design of a pension plan. The problems have come in part because some employers have not adequately funded these plans. There have been outside factors, like industry and economic changes (such as the Great Recession) that have affected pension plans’ funding status.

However, whatever the reasons for underfunding, it is absolutely unfair for retirees to be penalized and blamed for the downward fortunes of pension plans. Retirees did everything they were supposed to do and met their end of the bargain. They gave up wages while working in exchange for getting a pension that they were promised would provide them (and their spouses) with specific monthly income that could never be outlived. This is the original promise of ERISA, the federal private pension law, and also of state and federal plans.

Federal pensions Q: I know the federal government switched to the 401(k)-like Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) many years ago, but won’t future federal retirees receive smallish pensions based on years of service? If so, is this benefit at risk?

Friedman and Leavelle: As the result of legislation enacted by Congress in the 1980s, federal civilian employees work under different retirement systems, depending on when they started working for the federal government. Generally, those who started work before 1984 fall under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). Those hired after 1983 are generally covered by the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). Both systems provide retirees with a traditional pension annuity and the ability to participate in the 401(k)-like Thrift Savings Plan (TSP).

Employees participating in CSRS do not participate in Social Security but receive higher annuity benefits. They also can participate in TSP but do not receive matching contributions. Employees participating in FERS receive smaller annuity benefits, a government contribution and matches to their TSP contributions. For more information on each of these federal retirement systems, visit the website for the federal Office of Personnel Management at OPM.gov.

As far as your question about whether the pension benefit is at risk, we refer you to a chart in this Government Executive article stating that both the full CSRS benefit and the FERS basic benefit are backed by “the full faith and credit” of the U.S. government.

CSRS pension-cut concerns Q:As a retired federal employee, I have heard recent rumors about proposed cuts to the federal CSRS retirement payments. I realize there are fewer and fewer CSRS-eligible folks still working, so how likely is it that my monthly check would be cut? Or would it more likely be a matter of lowering cost-of-living increases in the future?

Friedman and Leavelle: There could be efforts to try to cut federal retirement benefits. But we haven’t heard any concrete proposals yet. And in all likelihood, such proposals would only apply to benefits accumulated in the future, not those already earned. The FERS, CSRS and TSP help provide federal employees, who have been public servants, with important retirement benefits, which should not be cut. The Pension Rights Center will work with government employees and retirees and their unions to prevent cuts.

Federal retiree and survivor pension recipient Q: One thing to think about is the benefits that come with a survivor’s pension. I am the retiree; my husband died before retirement age. The health benefits have been worth any amount for me and for our children, who are not yet 26. I receive a tiny survivor’s pension from my late husband’s employer via the PBGC — the result of a corporate raider’s actions in the 1990s. It isn’t just the money that matters for a pension. It’s the benefits, right?

Friedman and Leavelle: First, we’re glad that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation exists so that it can provide you and many others with benefits that you are entitled to.

We agree that pensions are just one part of the full retirement picture. You are very fortunate to be receiving health-care benefits along with your survivor’s pension. As you point out, these benefits can be very valuable.

Pension questions If you have a pension question, send it to the Pension Rights Center at webmaster@pensionrights.org. You can also visit the website for news about pensions or fact sheets.

Send your questions: Join Michelle Singletary at noon Thursday for a weekly financial chat. Retirement rants & raves This is your chance to rant and rave (or both) about any retirement issue. Tell me what you love about retirement or what bothers you the most? What did you wish you knew? If you’re a young adult, what scares you about retirement planning? Send your comments to colorofmoney@washpost.com. Please include your name, city and state.

Live chat this week Join me on Thursday, Feb. 23 at noon (ET) for a live discussion about the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule that President Trump has asked to be reviewed — again.

To participate in the discussion click this link.

If you want to read up, here are some of columns on the fiduciary rule: Should your financial adviser act in your best interest? You decide.

Is your adviser truly protecting your retirement?

It’s too late for Trump to stop this financial rule

Newsletter comments policy Please note that it is my personal policy to identify readers who respond to questions I ask in my newsletters. I find it encourages civil conversation. I want my newsletters to be a safe place to express your opinion. On sensitive matters or upon request, I’m happy to include a first name and last initial. But I prefer not to post anonymous comments. (I do make exceptions when I’m asking questions that might reveal sensitive information that may cause discord in a family or marriage.)

Have a question about your finances? Michelle Singletary has a weekly live chat every Thursday at noon, during which she discusses financial dilemmas with readers. You can also write to Michelle directly by sending an email to michelle.singletary@washpost.com. Personal responses may not be possible, and comments or questions may be used in a future column, with the writer’s name, unless otherwise requested. To read more Color of Money columns, go here.