[00:00:00] Sven Neumann: Sometimes you have to trust the community to find their own use for the things you're building. You know, a lot of games, like highly popular games are all about emergent behavior, about the things that the players decide to do rather than what the designers decided. Spoken like
[00:00:13] Aaron Kardell: a good product manager actually, uh, listen
[00:00:16] Sven Neumann: to your users.
[00:00:17] I understand the theory.
[00:00:24] Welcome to the Hey, Good Game podcast, where we chat with the creators of your favorite games that you secretly play in the cracks of your day. I'm Aaron
[00:00:34] Aaron Kardell: kardell, and I'm here with my co host, Joseph Rueter. Today, we're excited to speak with Sven Neumann, the creator of Sven's SudokuPad and the free web app used by Cracking the Cryptic.
[00:00:47] Sven, we're thrilled you're here. I'm glad to be here. How are you? Doing well. Uh, Sven, let's start out with, uh, what, what's your favorite game to
[00:00:55] Sven Neumann: play? It's a tough one because I have a very sort of game addictive [00:01:00] personality. So I've kind of banned myself from playing games because when I get started, I don't get anything else done.
[00:01:05] I disappear into games really, really bad. So I spend more time watching other people play games nowadays on YouTube. That's kind of, you know, I enjoy things like StarCraft II and, you know, certain, uh, streamers, I enjoy their styles, what kind of games they're playing. I don't really mind too much. Favorite game.
[00:01:22] I have a vice. I think of it as where I play a game of League of Legends every lunchtime, um, since I got introduced to it at a studio I worked at 13 years ago. Um, but it's not like, it's not a game that I, Like it's not something where I'm like into it very much. It's more like I know how long it'll take me and I know that I can stop after a session.
[00:01:43] So it's not the kind of game I would enjoy the most to play, which is part of the appeal of it for me.
[00:01:49] Aaron Kardell: Right on. And, uh, you know, tell us a little bit, you know, where are you from? And where did that love of games,
[00:01:55] Sven Neumann: uh, come from? Um, well, I'm, I'm originally from Germany. Um, I was born [00:02:00] in Munich, but we moved to Malta and 90, 94.
[00:02:04] Now it was, I was. Uh, 94. Yeah, I was about 14 years old at the time, and, um, I basically grew up in a pile of electronics. My dad was, uh, you know, he was a computer programmer when debugging involved in oscilloscope. And when, you know, I was five, he taught me how to solder and, you know, he built a computer for a house in the 80s that was running the keypad code and the camera in the kitchen and all sorts of things like that.
[00:02:27] So I kind of, I never had a choice about this sort of stuff. You know, when I was Six, I got a bicycle for Christmas and I was really mad because my brother got his first PC. So, um, my passion for programming started mostly because we always had PCs where my friends had Amigas and Commodores and gaming consoles and so on and so forth.
[00:02:48] And I never had any of that stuff. And, um, eventually the PCs I had weren't really good for gaming either. Didn't have sound, you know, just older machines and all this sort of thing. And I kind of had to spend my [00:03:00] time tinkering with them more than playing on them. And I think that's kind of what started me on a career of being very, very technical oriented, rather than on the playing side.
[00:03:09] So for me, the game is actually making the game more so than playing it. Usually I play a game and very quickly I Have ideas of how the game could be different or whatever. And then I'll just rebuild the game and make the changes. Like the first games I've made, we're all existing games that miss something that I wanted.
[00:03:23] And I rebuilt the game just to change that one thing. You know, it's like, Oh, you lose the weapon when you die. I don't like that. Let me rebuild the game and let me not lose the weapon, you know? So I could play the game the way I wanted it, you know, and that's kind of how it started. It was a bit, bit around about way.
[00:03:36] I think super
[00:03:37] Joseph Rueter: interesting. Is there some of that theme even today? And some of the work that you're doing
[00:03:42] Sven Neumann: pretty much. Yeah. I mean, the other, the other side of it was that I started at a time where I fell between two chairs. It was, it was like, I learned, like, I taught myself assembly programming and graphics program, like really low level stuff very early on.
[00:03:56] Like, Hey, how do I do a texture triangle, you know, purely on an [00:04:00] 8086 CPU, you know, Um, but it was at a time when 3d graphics card just started to appear, which I didn't have access to. So it felt like I was too late for the sort of retro style gaming or too early for it being retro, but too late to make those kind of games when 3d games started happening, like in the late 90s, you know, so it was weird where I felt like I was really passionate about it.
[00:04:21] But the things I was making were in the sort of things that were. that you could sell, you know, like it wasn't a time. It was past the time when kids made games and sold them to a magazine for 40, 000 bucks or whatever. And before the time where you could get a job doing that at a studio, right? Sure. So like 96, 97, 98, you know, like I went to university here and.
[00:04:40] They didn't even have a requirement for computer science in the computer science degree course, right? Because there was nobody who's done programming at school, right? Sure. So, so it was a little strange. Um, and then I just kind of tinkered and that was kind of the passion there.
[00:04:55] Aaron Kardell: And, uh, jumping forward quite a bit.
[00:04:58] So you, you spent a lot of time in the [00:05:00] game industry and, uh, in and around games, but. Was maybe a few years ago, was it, that you got the idea for SudokuPad?
[00:05:08] Sven Neumann: So SudokuPad was interesting. Um, I was, at the time, I was working for a game studio, um, doing sort of small casual games, but in JavaScript. So, you know, had the experience from there.
[00:05:18] And I was, been working with JavaScript for like 20 years. I mean, since, since the late 90s. Um, so that was always, Made it easy for me there. And I, I think I discovered CTC, the Crack and the Crypt, the YouTube channel, just like everybody else during when COVID started, you know, watching them. And I really enjoyed them, like really enjoyed them.
[00:05:34] That's what's right up my alley, you know? And they kept mentioning, Oh, you know, um, yeah, we're working on that. We're working on that improvement. We're working, working for that, waiting for that to happen, you know? And I kept thinking like. They've been saying that a lot, like that's not happening, like it's not happening the way they think it's going to happen.
[00:05:50] And I looked at the tool and I'm like, I could fix the things that are bugging them. You know, I could do that. Right. And basically I just got in touch with, uh, over, I tweeted at them and just said, Hey, you know, like I, [00:06:00] I could fix that thing. If you, you know, if you're keen on it, like if you ever, and they kind of, I don't remember if they kind of opened up to me right away, or if I just provided a prototype or something.
[00:06:09] But they basically said that the person who made the tool had disappeared, like that wasn't talking to them anymore and they didn't know what was happening. Right. And a few months had passed by that point between announcing things happening and them not happening. And I basically built the first prototype over like over the weekend.
[00:06:23] And at the time I still had a job, but it was all work from home at that point. And the company was winding down their engineering office here. Um, so we were kind of like, we weren't going back to the office anyways. And then I started, I think it was July. I started working on it and about three, four months, it got good enough that Cracking the Cryptid started using it.
[00:06:44] And then at that time I already knew that I was made redundant. I had a few more months basically on the payroll, but free to do as I pleased. And that's kind of when I finished it. And we started making plans to kind of make the commercial product as well. And yeah, I kind of did that. I built the, I initially, I replicated the existing [00:07:00] tool and then I added the things they needed and then I fixed the things and I improved the things and then started adding new things that the old tool didn't have anymore.
[00:07:07] And that's how that happened.
[00:07:09] Joseph Rueter: Another marvelous and wonderful thing to come from. Years at home.
[00:07:14] Sven Neumann: Yeah. And it's, it's one of those weird things where when you hear other people are, you know, the chance you don't take is the chance you never have or whatever. And you don't believe it. Right. But like, I'm not a networking guy.
[00:07:23] I'm not a out there talking to everybody. Lots of, I'm not that guy, you know, and like talking to them on Twitter was a complete shot into the blue for no particular reason, you know, and even they, they're not super savvy people. They're not, they're not game people. They're not computer people. And, you know, so they were just genuine, like, Oh, all right.
[00:07:41] That serves like that suits us that we can, Hey, we like that. You know, like, Oh, that's, this works nice. You know? And that was kind of, you know, we just kind of came together and. You know helped each other out there. That's fantastic. It
[00:07:53] Aaron Kardell: sounds like maybe you were Introduced to cracking the cryptic the same way I was I I think [00:08:00] prior to Some of these YouTube videos, you know, I was familiar with some Sudoku variants, but not sort of the More out there variants and, uh, you know, there was, uh, a video around that time, I think it was titled the Sudoku miracle that blew up, kind of went, went viral and, uh, the, the puzzle was by Mitchell Lee, but just the joy of the, the solver when he was, you know, solving that puzzle was pretty contagious, like I'm into Sudoku, but even if you're not, I think it's kind of contagious, but.
[00:08:32] Yeah. Was, was that, it sounds like that was similarly how you got introduced?
[00:08:36] Sven Neumann: Yeah, I mean, I think I started, started watching them before the Miracle one. I think actually, it might have been that one. Actually, I'm not entirely certain now, but just like a lot of YouTube personality, especially in the let's play scene in general, it's a lot about the personality and Simon definitely is an entertainer and he knows how to do what he's doing.
[00:08:53] And there's a reason why I stream to 0. 6 people on average, because I don't have that right. So, uh, it's a [00:09:00] talent, it's a skill, right? It's, it's, it's, uh, it's entertainment, just like an actor or a singer, you know? Yeah, well, he goes like, oh,
[00:09:06] Joseph Rueter: you've got to be joking, right? And he gets to the next section, he goes, you're kidding.
[00:09:11] And then it just moves on. So, yeah, I watched it. Wanting to play. I was like, wait a second, I want to feel those feels. Which is what games do for you,
[00:09:21] Sven Neumann: right? Yeah, it's interesting to compare the numbers on the videos versus the numbers on how many people arrive at the app to play the puzzles, right?
[00:09:29] Because obviously not everybody plays, so the numbers are always going to be smaller, you know? But it's interesting, even comparing it to things like logic masses, Germany, like the, the real core platforms for puzzling where, you know, a puzzle gets 15 plays and it's big. And then that same puzzle comes onto CTC and it gets 5, 000 plays or 10, 000 plays or 20, 000 plays, right?
[00:09:49] And it's, it's the power of that. Broader markets reach, you know, you know, reaching non core, you know, highbrow puzzling ex specialists kind of out there, you [00:10:00] know, you reached
[00:10:00] Aaron Kardell: out to the cracking the cryptic team and you, you offered to work on their game. And it, it seems like there's kind of like the web app for cracking the cryptic and then there's.
[00:10:11] Sven's SudokuPad, which is, uh, Well,
[00:10:15] Sven Neumann: so it's, it's a bit of a, like, it looks, it's a bit messy on the outside. On the inside, it's actually really simple because they don't have an app, right? They were using an app that somebody else has made, you know, Sam Kaplan lines at the time, and they're not programmers, you know, and they had, I don't know if that had already started at the time, but they have a studio studio Goya working on their paid apps in, um, No, in Seattle they are, right?
[00:10:37] But that's like a completely separate sort of setup they have. So the, the, the web app, the Sudoku, like it's when Sudoku, but there's only one app, right? And their domain is just a redirect. And in the future, I would love to kind of simplify all of this and just like, Hey, there's just a Sudoku bed and that's it.
[00:10:50] Right. There's a little, it got a bit messy and they kind of introduced me as their developer or whatever, but like we are not connected in that way at all. So really the deal we have [00:11:00] is that. They're kind of using the, the, the online app for free, just like any other streamer is there's other streamers doing it.
[00:11:05] And now there are some streamers that are hitting a hundred thousand subscribers, which is starting to get serious YouTube territory. Right. But what, what, what the real deal is basically we have, uh, we have, it's, it's basically a, uh, an advertising deal. You know, they promote my, my app on the show, you know, and they get a cut off of the sales.
[00:11:19] That's, that's really it. And that's the same deal they have with the Sudi Goya app, you know, it's just like the free app is what drives the traffic and. Really, the paid app is more like a, it's almost like a patron, right? It's like people paying for the paid app really support me building the free app because it's the same app.
[00:11:34] It's the same code, more or less. I mean, there's some special features in the paid app and the future. I want to kind of lean more into that kind of providing more value to that, but. In principle, they're basically the same code base. And in the meantime, I've also had a patron. I've always said, like, if the patron would support me 100%, I would open source the whole thing because it's the real value is the community.
[00:11:53] It's not, you know, I'm no sudoku. com. I'm not a commercial entity. That's trying, you know, like, you know, I, I don't create [00:12:00] puzzles, right? So Dogopad is not really a puzzle. It's kind of a word processor for puzzles, right? So I don't make any puzzles. I don't generate, I don't have any algorithms that generate puzzles.
[00:12:09] And when you buy the app, the puzzle that's in there are really just a. like a trial pack, like here's some puzzles to get you started. Right. But what you, what you use the part of the app for is to play puzzles that exist out there in other places and made by people who make puzzles. And now I've been in contact with a couple of them because that's really the thing is, is I want to work with them to make their puzzles more accessible through the app because discovery is a big problem, right?
[00:12:33] Like people buy my app and they're like, okay, I played the 10 puzzles. What, what now? And I'm like, well, if you're not active in the community, if you're not on the discord, if you're not watching the YouTube videos with the links. The app isn't really for you because that's where you get the good puzzles, the high quality stuff, you know, and there's, there's a, you know, in Sudoku Con now on or in the livestream and the preparation for it all, that's where I met a lot of these people.
[00:12:54] You know, there are people that are selling puzzles as PDFs on Etsy. There are people who have Patreons and monthly Patreon packs, and [00:13:00] there's people who have Substack blogs where they publish, you know, puzzles that you can subscribe to. You know, and like there's all sorts of people trying. To commercially make puzzles, like who aren't, you know, they're using SudokuPad, they're using other tools to make them.
[00:13:12] They don't have their own software, right? You know, the PDF is full of links to SudokuPad. It's like a very, right now it's weird because it feels like video gaming in the 90s. Like it's very pre online stores, pre proper setup, you know, and I feel I, you know, I have the knowledge and the ideas to really make this whole thing work.
[00:13:32] I don't have the business acumen, right? So I'm hoping now to work together with the people who are already selling their puzzles. They know how to run the business, you know, at a small scale and bring in the scale of SudokuPAD, you know, because they have a reach of dozens or hundreds of people on their Patreons.
[00:13:45] You know, I have currently about 25, 000 daily active players on the app, you know, unique players. And there's a relatively large amount of churn. That's why my sales have been surprisingly steady. Like normally games, they start, they sell in the first couple of months and then they [00:14:00] peter out, right?
[00:14:00] Because people have owned all the ones who want to play the game on the game. But because the viewership of Cracking the Cryptic. Turns over about 60%, I think, or 40, between 40 and 60 percent every month. So there's always a steady stream of new people discovering it. You know, some people get tired of it.
[00:14:16] They've done a few months of Sudoku and they've kind of had their fill, you know, but there's always new people discovering it and it has a really broad appeal. It's international. That's why it's kind of the number puzzle. That's why. The crossword stuff didn't work out for Cracking the Cryptic because it's very English focused, right?
[00:14:29] Yeah. And Sudoku has a very broad range of difficulty as well. You know, it has a lot of depth, but there's also a lot of casual fun to be had. Anybody who's got a site that just has generated classic Sudokus knows that there's people who come for their daily puzzles, you know, and that's all they ever need.
[00:14:45] They don't need the variant Sudokus or the two hour exploration of this complex, you know, cryptic environment that some setter created over three months of hard work, you know, it's. It's a very broad thing, um, and I think that's what appeals to me and what makes it interesting even [00:15:00] after working on it for three years straight, you know?
[00:15:02] Yeah. Instead
[00:15:03] Aaron Kardell: of like the classic game cartridges, you mentioned the, it's like the 90s, instead of the game cartridges, you need to know a guy with a link to the puzzle,
[00:15:12] Sven Neumann: right? Yeah, and it's bizarre to me that a lot of the commercial selling of puzzles happens as PDF downloads. PDFs for crying out loud. So it's a screenshot of a puzzle, the rules text and introduction and a SudokuPad link, right?
[00:15:25] I don't know if that's something, I mean, that's a bit technical, but for the longest time, most of the puzzle data is actually encoded in the link itself. So the links are really long. They're two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight kilobytes. I had a link 26 kilobytes once that doesn't work on certain browsers and things like that.
[00:15:40] So then they all run through tiny URL and every time tiny URL goes down. The whole puzzle community is like dead basically for a couple of like, and that happens more often than you might think, you know, and like, and there are a couple of efforts to kind of categorize puzzles, but like the biggest collection of puzzles right now of quality puzzles, probably my server logs, which is [00:16:00] bizarre.
[00:16:02] So that's definitely something I also want to address and work on. Um, because I'm, I, I would think it's a. It would be a huge shame if these puzzles would get lost just because Piney World disappears, you know, when, when GitHub recently, uh, shut down their link shortening services, puzzles were lost because people didn't have the links anymore, the original ones.
[00:16:21] And then suddenly their, their PDF from three years ago didn't work anymore because all those were using GitHub link shortening, you know, it's, it's a, it's a very weird low tech environment, you know? Yeah. I
[00:16:31] Joseph Rueter: was thinking when I came across all these crazy variants of my early addictions just to do a group.
[00:16:38] Like, you know, just play and play and play and play and play and play. And as I was thinking back on it, I don't remember deciding not to. And you're thinking like longer, longer term, I think the community will drive you to the next. Maybe the next weird thing to try and that it drives stickiness, right?
[00:16:59] Like you're [00:17:00] gonna stay with it. Do you see some of that happening?
[00:17:03] Sven Neumann: Yeah, I mean, for example, uh, like a year and a half ago or something, there's this guy chameleon in the community and he's, you know, a lot of people are very get goey and many are technical as well. And he basically wanted to try something.
[00:17:16] And he just wrote his own javascript. He wrote his own client to play this puzzle. Just he wrote the code for this specific puzzle and it was basically a sudoku with fog of war with the puzzle was covered and as you were placing digit it was uncovering the clues under the fog and he created one or two puzzles like that.
[00:17:33] With his own software, and like, I think it made it onto Kraken the Cryptic, and they bloody loved it, you know. And I talked to the guy and I said, you know, and at the time I'm like, okay, I cannot justify the, the work for one puzzle, right? But if there's like three or four, and it looks like more, you know, because sometimes you don't know.
[00:17:49] Sometimes maybe only one puzzle is possible with a particular set of rules. You don't really know sometimes, right? And I talked to the guy and he said, like, yeah, yeah, I'd love to see it. Like I would have done it in, in SudokuPad if, if it was [00:18:00] possible. Right. I just wanted to see this happen and I implemented it.
[00:18:03] And now it's one of the very, like almost the most popular category. And it's very beginner friendly because. It guides you where to have, where to look at. So you start the puzzle and there's only a few things you can see. And you know that those are what you need to get started. Right. And whatever you reveal next is the next thing you have to think about.
[00:18:20] So they can be quite hard, but they can also be easier to get into and to understand. And it was my first sort of. foray into more video gamey aspects of it, right? Where it's not just replicating what a pencil and a paper can do, but something that you can only do on a computer. And in the meantime, there's a bunch of things like I, like he, he made a couple of other things, like a Sokoban version, where you're literally having a controlling a character that's pushing the digits around and things like that, you know, or parking cars where the cars were attached to the rules.
[00:18:49] So you have to park the car in a place where the rules would make sense sort of thing, you know, And I definitely want to do a lot more like that. I want to do a lot more animated things because they're more broad appeal, right? You know, for, especially [00:19:00] for a younger generation who might like to see things move.
[00:19:02] Right. And I think there's a lot of mechanics that are currently being awkwardly incorporated into Sudoku, you know, like chess move mechanics and, and minesweeper style things where they say, Oh, you know, the number in the red circles is. How many minds are next to it and the minds are ones and nines, that sort of stuff, you know, but to have it actually be able to place a flag and things explode and, and things move and change.
[00:19:26] I definitely want to support more of that. So it's, it's everything I think of, there's 10 more things right after that. And it's like an infinite fan of possibilities and work to be done. So the hardest part is to decide which work I need to do next, that it has the most impact and the most value as a small, you know, I'm not a studio where it's like, okay, well, this team goes on that and this team works on that, you know, it's just me, right?
[00:19:46] So, so my list of things to do are never ending, you know, and I still haven't even built the feature that this app was launched for, like there was an idea for a feature that SudokuPad was supposed to be. that I haven't built yet, which was [00:20:00] scanning puzzles from a camera view, right? Like hold it up to a newspaper, scan the puzzle in and play that, you know?
[00:20:05] Oh, that's cool. Like I started with a prototype of that and that's what it was built for. And I decided the quality of what I could achieve wasn't high enough for what I was comfortable to sell for money. And I pulled the feature from the app because I said, you know, like if it's It's fine as a prototype if it's 80 percent or 90 percent functional, you know, but if you're paying for it and it just, you know, you have to kind of hold it and then, you know, and it takes longer than just typing in the numbers, then it's not good enough in my mind, you know?
[00:20:30] Sure. Yeah. It's definitely a feature I want to build one day. Nowadays, probably it's a lot easier with, you know, all the AI and camera processing and better JavaScript and all this stuff, but it's interesting sometimes the way things work out that what you set out to build. Turns out not to be the important part, you know?
[00:20:43] Yeah, totally. We've both experienced that. Yeah, sometimes you have to trust the community to find their own use for the things you're building, you know? A lot of games, like highly popular games, are all about emergent behavior, about the things that the players decide to do rather than what the designers decided.
[00:20:59] Aaron Kardell: Spoken like a [00:21:00] good product manager, actually, uh, listen to your users.
[00:21:03] Sven Neumann: I understand the theory.
[00:21:07] Aaron Kardell: I'm curious, Fenn, so you, you talked a little bit about the business aspect earlier, you know, you can buy SudokuPad on iOS, Android, or Steam, looks like at least in US dollars, a 2. 99 purchase. Curious, it seems like probably a lot of the usage though is really on the free web app, and like, have you Ever considered putting ads on there or
[00:21:31] Sven Neumann: I have thought about it and I'm sometimes like it's it's one of those things when you start like I'm not a big fan of ads and I've been in the advertising business long enough to know that it's like the reward is small, you know, it's like you've got to show a lot of ads to a lot of people and inconvenience them.
[00:21:46] For you to get pennies, right? At my previous studio, the numbers were in the billions of plays and then the ads make sense, right? I'm not in the billions numbers, but, but it's one of those things when you start and you're like, Oh, well, if I would have put ads on this month, I would have made five bucks, but that's not worth it to put that [00:22:00] in front of my, you know, but then you look back after three years and like, if I would have had ads on all this time, now that money would really be handy.
[00:22:06] Right? Like I could have bought the new computer I need or whatever. Right? So it's, it's one of those things I've been thinking about. I still don't like the idea. It's one of those things where. Like, I, I also want to tread carefully because I am positioning myself kind of deliberately as part of the community, not attached to the community, you know, there are other, you know, there's Sudoku.
[00:22:25] com, there's LogicWiz. com, there's like these other apps and so on, and they sponsor sometimes, but they're not part of the community and they're not interacting with the community and not reacting to things that happen in the community. And I also feel like that gives me a certain level of responsibility, right?
[00:22:37] I can't just turn things around on other people, you know? Now, one thing I want to try, and I've been in talks recently, is what if instead of advertising just through, you know, Google ads or whatever, what if I find some people who are selling puzzles through, you know, that are members of the community, benefit the community, but they also try to, you know, sell their puzzle packs on Etsy for two bucks or whatever, and advertise for them, right?
[00:22:59] Like make it [00:23:00] really truly contextual in the sense that their hand, you know, old school advertising handpicked makes sense helping back the community, you know, and these are all people that are known by the community, you know, and benefit from the broader reach because SudokuPet doesn't just reach within the hardcore Sudoku community, which is much smaller, right?
[00:23:16] It reaches, thanks to cracking the cryptic, it reaches out. A new community that aren't familiar with the Discord and with, you know, the Discord is smaller than the subscriber number of Cracking the Cryptic, you know, and thanks to that churn number, I also feel like there's, there's a lot of people that, that don't ever become deeply embedded in the community, right?
[00:23:34] And they would benefit from having more exposure. You know, right now, a lot of people might not even know other puzzles exist than the ones they play on Cracking the Cryptic, you know? Which is an absolute shame, and the setters themselves, the people creating the puzzles, they care about the puzzle they just made, and they care about the next puzzle they're making.
[00:23:48] They don't care about a puzzle they made two years ago. You know, but for somebody who solves puzzles who hasn't seen that one yet, it doesn't matter. That puzzle isn't worse because it's two years old. And that's the other thing I want to work towards, you know, an [00:24:00] archive and a place to discover, you know, hey, you like puzzles by this guy, or you like puzzles of this difficulty, or you like puzzles that this streamer streams, here are more of that, you know.
[00:24:08] YouTube for puzzles, that kind of thing. Right. Um, of course, I know these kind of platforms are not easy to build. So I've been very, very careful. Like I haven't, I haven't just tried it, you know, I haven't just, Hey, well, here's a download script for user registration or whatever. Here we go. No, like I'm, I take it very seriously as well from that perspective.
[00:24:23] So it's gotta be secure. It's gotta be like the first step will actually be talking to setters and making sure I treat their puzzles with respect. You know, they have full control of what happens to their puzzles. If they don't want to link to them, if they don't want them to be used in videos and so on so forth, this all has to be.
[00:24:37] It has to start from that perspective, you know, I can't just, you know, from an expert person might look, Oh, well, we'll just go in there with 10, 000 puzzles and we'll just make a website and then sell them, you know, like, but I couldn't do that, you know, um, so I'm in talks with the right people, I think now, and I have, thanks in part to this live stream, I've shown that I'm capable of building not just So it took pat itself, but quick turnaround [00:25:00] supporting technology.
[00:25:00] You know, we did, we did the, um, the live stream. We didn't because, because of the way we were streaming from different locations around the world, we didn't want people to have to stream two sets of videos, you know, their face cam and the puzzle or what's on their desktop. So I actually created a real time.
[00:25:15] Uh, multi user server where puzzle information and, you know, even cursor movement, things like that could get streamed to different locations. And I put that together in like two weeks, I think. And I definitely want to use that technology for other things and support other streamers, but also multiplayer puzzling and, and group puzzling and puzzle races and a school doing a puzzle together cooperatively, things like that, you know?
[00:25:36] So there's a lot of, you know, everything I do is like. Like I said before, you know, 10 more things that I can do, um, in the step afterwards. Um, and it's just a selection process about, like, what, what makes the most sense. And now also, you know, what makes business sense, right? It's like, you know, somebody wants better colors, but nobody's gonna pay for better colors, you know?
[00:25:56] So it's like, okay, but if I let you buy [00:26:00] puzzles in a puzzle shop, that would be better, wouldn't it? You know, it's like, so it's, yeah. I mean, you guys, I think you have Advertising driven, you know, traffic driven sites, you know, free, free, free to play basically. Right. So it's a, it's, it's a tough business as well because you need the quantity, you need the numbers, you know, and it's not just because you put an ad on and it's fire and forget, and you don't have to, I don't know, deal with steam or whatever.
[00:26:23] It doesn't necessarily make it easy to make money with it. You know, cause you need just a hundred times, a thousand times bigger numbers than me as well.
[00:26:29] Aaron Kardell: You're right. It's a scale game and it's a matter of, you know, it's, it's important to not. annoy the user too much, right? Like it's, it's gotta be, uh, something that doesn't negatively impact
[00:26:40] Sven Neumann: gameplay.
[00:26:41] When I put my own Patreon link on my puzzles, I had people complaining. So when you finish a puzzle right now, there's a little bit where it says, Hey, want to support me? Here's my YouTube link. Here's my Patreon link, you know? And in the spirit that I'm trying to keep up, I added a setting that they can disable that if they don't like it, let them switch it off.
[00:26:59] You know, I basically have [00:27:00] an inbuilt ad blocker in the app, right? Um, all the promo, not, not, not so much promotional stuff, even like, you know, I have a, I have a little. Little guy, like my face, basically, popping up over the puzzle when you start it. You can switch that off, you know? It doesn't earn me any money, so why not let you switch it off, you know?
[00:27:14] It annoys me a little that people feel like, especially for the free app, that they can't just say, hey, you know, your free app, you're asking me to look at your Patreon, like, oh, I don't like, you know? But at the same time, it's not worth arguing over, you know? And I also understand that, for example, somebody who's doing a YouTube video or something, Might not want to have a lot of colorful elements on the screen that a person can't interact with anyways, right?
[00:27:34] And I understand that, you know, them linking to my app in their description in their videos to their audience is much more valuable anyways, you know? So I also want to support them, you know, kind of quote unquote, a streamer mode, streamer tools, you know, to me, that just makes sense. You know, I
[00:27:48] Joseph Rueter: loved hearing about, uh, growing up in a pile of electronics.
[00:27:52] Right? Like you just didn't have a choice. It's so fun. Big visions of similar kinds of circuit boards and soldering that [00:28:00] my son is experiencing with 3D printers and whatnot. I think
[00:28:03] Sven Neumann: my first hardcover book I still remember was literally one about upkeep and maintenance of a computer, like how to dust it and how to clean electronic boards and stuff like that.
[00:28:13] It was hilarious. Oh, that's
[00:28:14] Joseph Rueter: awesome. I've been on Mac since, um, since I ever had a computer and my son's asking for a PC so that he can game. And I'm like, what, what are you going to do with that? I don't know how to help you with that. And he's like, Dad, I'll figure it out. And it's this moment where it's like, I should just give you the money and you should go deal with this.
[00:28:32] He's 10. That's really exciting. And you wind all the way to now I, I've worked with development groups around the world and I don't know how you stay focused with the beach and the beauty outside. Oh, but, uh, it seems like you absolutely can. And where do you think, where do you think SudokuPad goes?
[00:28:51] Where do you, well, where do you want it to go? And where do you think
[00:28:54] Sven Neumann: it's going? So the, I've been, I'll be honest, I've been, I've been kind of treading a [00:29:00] treadmill where I'm kind of struggling towards the things I need. I, I'm a serious sufferer of ADHD. So, unfortunately, I'm not always in charge of what I get to do.
[00:29:10] No matter what is important, no matter what I want to do. Sure. Sometimes I just don't get to do that thing, right? Yeah. And then the best I can hope for is that I'll do something different. That's still valuable and still useful. Sometimes a lot of things get done because I do them instead of the thing I need to do just to have done something.
[00:29:25] Um, so I'm, I'm not, I'm not doing super great working on my own and, you know, office jobs have been better in that sense because somebody else comes by and says like, Hey, can you do the thing? And I'm like, okay, somebody's waiting for it. No problem. Right now I'm like, do the thing, you know, and my iOS app hasn't been updated in almost two years.
[00:29:44] Despite the update being relatively simple and relatively important. Sure. And that's really bad because, you know, the paying customers say, Hey, the web app is better than, you know, because like there's puzzles now that the mobile app cannot run anymore. And like almost every day people are like, Hey, where are you playing?
[00:29:57] You know, is there a timeline, you know, and I want to do it. Um, the biggest [00:30:00] problem is. And there's like a technical detail, but something on iOS causes the app to lose its data on update. So I don't want to just update it because then people will lose their data for nothing. And then they'll lose it again the next time I update, right?
[00:30:13] So the next update has to fix that issue, which still will wipe their stuff. But only after that can I update. So I put this other thing that I need to do first. And that's kind of my kryptonite. And now I'm stuck like You know, anyway, so it's, it's, um, there's a struggle of kind of the things I need to do and should do versus the things I would love to do and I would like to do.
[00:30:33] And recently I had this sort of epiphany. I was watching all the new streams of City Skylines 2 and I was thinking like how sometimes the second version of a game is not A different game, but it's like the game they wanted to make and they didn't have time for, right? Or it's the game that they could have made if they had three more years on the first one.
[00:30:51] You know, it's, it's, they, they continue the technology that already works and then just keep working on it. And in a way it's often for developers to place [00:31:00] where they can kind of spread their wings a little and it started to sink in and I said, you know, maybe it's time to start thinking about us to talk about 2.
[00:31:07] 0, if not necessarily as a technical thing, but more as a planning thing to think about it in a way where I say, you know, I can't just keep incrementally stepping into the direction of doing the big thing. Sometimes you have to do a big thing to make a big thing to have to take a big step, right? And sometimes big steps aren't visible, you know, I need to do some, you know, I need to shed some technical debt, right?
[00:31:27] I need to rewrite how things work inside and that might take a few months without building new features and I can't just do that. So I was thinking like, hey, maybe I need to kickstart a pseudocoped 2. 0 to give me a runway of six months where I can actually kind of clean certain things up, build certain things and bring it into a place where I then finally can do all the things I've been wanting to do.
[00:31:49] But also it would help me to just plan that out, to talk to the community, to find out what people think, to find out what people value, you know, if they don't want to support that, then I know that that isn't [00:32:00] what I should be doing anyways, right? And I, you know, I have so many stretch goals, it would be perfect to say, Hey, you know, do you want this thing?
[00:32:06] For example, early on, I was working towards an editor for building puzzles. And the reason I hadn't built it faster was mostly because I said, you know, if I'm going to build an editor, it has to be the same level of user. usability as the app itself. It has to be easy to use. It has to be drag and drop. It has to work on mobile.
[00:32:23] It has to just work. You have to be able to sit down and just use it. Not the arcane messes that the existing tools are, which are, you know, open source tools that have been built over time that haven't been necessarily supported always. And they're complex because, you know, there is no incentive to, to make them usable.
[00:32:40] But in the meantime, that landscape has changed. There have been better tools. Other people have put in a lot of effort to create new tools. to build puzzles with that just export to SudokuPad. They don't even have their own players anymore, you know. So that's kind of gone down on the priority list. It's not like it used to be the most important thing like two years ago.
[00:32:57] And now I don't even feel the need to build it anymore. So [00:33:00] that's the thing. Like I, I feel like a Sudoku 2. 0 gives me the opportunity to, to talk to the community. And make the bigger plans of what should be, if given six months of time, you know, what should I build? And you know, like the biggest item on that list is a social platform is a place where you know, users can log in, have an account, have a history of the place where people can upload or set their puzzles, where they can see which puzzles are popular, where they can.
[00:33:27] You know, collect feedback from the players where they can and not just silly feedback, a thumbs up or thumbs down, but you know, my app currently collect like it generates a full time replay. You know, you can save a replay. You can replay the replay. And with that replay data, you can do a lot. You can find out which puzzles are hard.
[00:33:43] You can compare play styles like I can say. Which puzzles would be a similar difficulty for you, not just for, you know, not a arbitrary two out of five rating, which might not mean anything, you know. And I have enough knowledge that I understand, you know, sort of algorithmic rankings to say, hey, you know, I need a [00:34:00] hundred, five hundred, a thousand players.
[00:34:01] And then I can say this puzzle is good, bad, hard, easy, et cetera, without having to ask people, right? And I can say that if you say the puzzle is a three. Then it's more likely to be a one to this person and a four to this other person, you know? And if you like these three puzzles and somebody else likes these two, then I can figure out what is the third puzzle the other person will like, right?
[00:34:21] And I know that an algorithm can figure out which puzzles are similar to each other without looking at the puzzles at all, just by looking which people play them over what period of time, how they play them, do they start and stop a lot, do they play consistently? you know, the timing of the actions. Do they take breaks?
[00:34:35] Do they think, do they backtrack? Do they have to undo? Do they break the puzzle? You know? Yeah. So I think there's a lot of information there and it finally is reaching the critical mass. Uh, we recently, like I added a counter of puzzle solves, just very primitive. Like I have no account system. I have no database, right?
[00:34:51] It literally just increments a number when somebody solves a puzzle. I added that a couple of months ago and we just reached over 5 million puzzle solves, right? Yeah. [00:35:00] And it's, I don't know what that number means because we never had a number like that before. And I don't know how many people do not solve a puzzle, but people love that number, right?
[00:35:09] And it tells me I need to do more of like that. I need to find out what percentage of puzzles are being played and not solved, which might indicate quality or difficulty, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Like all this stuff. I'm, I'm a bit of a data nerd and I, I'm a bit of a data hoarder. You know, I want to keep all versions of a puzzle.
[00:35:25] I want to. You know, I want to let people fork a puzzle, you know, and do a variant on a puzzle, you know, I want to have games where people start with a puzzle, add a feature or remove a feature, pass it on to another person, you know, and have that be done automatic, not in a community where they talk to each other, but on a system where they press buttons and it just happens and they can play these things, you know, kind of like matchmaking, you know, if you go to, I don't know, if you log into League of Legends or whatever, and you play a game, um, You don't need to know those people, right?
[00:35:53] And right now, with Sudoku, it's very much you have to know the people. If you want to do a pair puzzle or a tridoku or [00:36:00] a, you know, whatever, like a, a chain of, of setting where, you know, everybody, multiple setters add a constraint each, things like that. You have to know the people and you have to communicate with them in a chat window somewhere, you know.
[00:36:11] But I want to automate all of that. I want to make that all part of the everyday experience of solvers and players, you know. And I think, I think that's sort of the next stage where all the things that, all the sort of implicit social contracts that people have evolved, all the memes in the community and things like that become explicit, become available to everybody, right?
[00:36:31] Yeah, I think, I think, I think of it like in terms of, for example, something like Twitch. You know, there was a lot of things people used to do back when it was just in TV, right? And nowadays we have bits and we have emoticons and we have subscriptions and hype trains and all this stuff. All of this was codifying things that the communities made, right?
[00:36:46] The communities did that thing anyways. And then they added that to the platform and now you feel like you're stuck with that platform because you can't do a hype train on YouTube streaming, right? That kind of thing, right? So,
[00:36:57] Joseph Rueter: yeah, it could be similar to early Twitter, [00:37:00] right? Like RT, all in caps, copy paste, right?
[00:37:03] You're like, what is that? Oh, that's a retweet before the retweet. Yeah, exactly.
[00:37:08] Sven Neumann: Exactly. I want to have a subscription to a channel of puzzles and the puzzles don't necessarily have to be made by that person. I want to be able to subscribe to the Cracking the Cryptic channel on SudokuPad. And it's the puzzles they solve on their videos.
[00:37:21] It's the puzzle they enjoy. It's the puzzle they put on their page or whatever, right? It's like, it's their channel, right? And it'd be all sorts of setters. But if I like a setter, I want to go to his channel and now get all the puzzles he's set. Sure. Or I want to go to all the puzzles that setter likes, his favorites, right?
[00:37:36] Like I want to. I want to hop from chain to chain to discover things, right?
[00:37:40] Joseph Rueter: Yeah, so it sounds like accounts, right? Not only, even for us, we don't have accounts. It's stored locally, and as people get their new phones, they lose their histories. And then that just generates Uh, contact us. Hey guys, what, like, why did I
[00:37:57] Sven Neumann: just lose my history?
[00:37:59] The crazy thing [00:38:00] was, my app was actually, because of, like, the mobile apps are just the web apps, right? Sure. And they're storing things in local storage. Yes. And local storage in a native mobile app is just a question mark, right? It's not documented. You don't know what happens, right? Sure. And for most, like, I would say 95 percent of people on Android, it works fine.
[00:38:18] They update, it works. They buy a new phone, all the data is suddenly there, you know. Steam, I think it always works. iOS, it wipes it. Yeah. Right? Now in Android, it sometimes wipes it, and I don't know why. So there's all this stuff. And people have been saying they would pay money for being able to transfer their puzzles, you know, and I want to be able to do that.
[00:38:37] And I've already thought of ways of doing it without accounts as well. But ultimately, eventually I'll need accounts, you know? Yeah. Well, that sounds awesome.
[00:38:43] Joseph Rueter: You were, you were thinking early on it'd be 2. 0 and maybe crowdfunded.
[00:38:49] Sven Neumann: Definitely. Well, the crowdfunding is, is more of a, it's like a barometer, right?
[00:38:53] Like what people want to, to happen. You know, I don't, I'm not a venture capitalist or anything like that. Right. So it's, it'll have to be supported [00:39:00] somehow, but it's more like, can I justify not putting out new features for three months? Is the community okay with that? And if the community says, we're going to pay you for three months of work.
[00:39:10] Then I know they're okay with it. If they say, we're not going to pay you for three months of work. And I'm like, well, then I can't do it. Right. Then I got to do the little things every month that are going to keep the sales up. And it's going to make, keep my patrons happy and things like that. Right. So it's, it's kind of, is that now the ultimate goal obviously is not just to help.
[00:39:27] the community play puzzles and to help me to make a living, but it's also to help people make a living that are making puzzles because they're the real like heroes, right? I'm not making puzzles, you know, I'm staying away from algorithmic puzzles. That's, that's something that's a big bit of a not staying away is the wrong word.
[00:39:42] Like I wouldn't mind having them there as sort of filler, but I'll never make the app. That's just that, right? Correct. So algorithmic puzzles is just computer generated puzzles. I don't mind them as a sort of intermission. If somebody says, Hey, I want to just keep playing. a bunch of silly puzzles to pass time while I'm waiting in line, you know, sure.
[00:39:57] But there's so many handmade puzzles that people can never play in a [00:40:00] lifetime anyway. So we don't actually need to, right? It's just we need to make those puzzles available. And what I want to be able to do is support the people making the puzzles. So a puzzle store of some kind would be the best way of doing it, I think.
[00:40:12] And I've been talking to some people now and I've been looking at how it currently happens. And like, I bought a puzzle this morning from Etsy and I think it was about 50 clicks. And like five emails and it took me about 10 minutes just to get a PDF with a couple of puzzles in it. Right. And it was ridiculous.
[00:40:28] And I'm figuring as much, I know from internet technology is that cutting down that friction alone would double their sales at least, you know, never mind finding additional customers, you know? So, you know, I'm thinking, Hey, how does audible do it? You know, audible, I pay every year and then I have my credits and then I get the books and the credits.
[00:40:45] They don't pay taxes on those, you know, they don't pay a bit to PayPal every time I use a credit, right? So puzzle credits probably, you know, some sort of in game quote unquote currency It's got a bad name in video gaming But like in this case, I think that's how it had to be because [00:41:00] puzzles are so small You cannot charge 20 bucks for a puzzle, you know, right?
[00:41:04] The amount has to be small and well and maybe
[00:41:07] Joseph Rueter: yeah You can charge 15, 20 bucks for a printed version that would only cost, you know, something less than that. So maybe there's a connection to supporting 2. 0 where you get some paper, you get a physical thing, you get a, an option to stick it on your bookshelf, you get right, like, Hey, this is coming.
[00:41:26] That could, uh, be run by some 3PL,
[00:41:30] Sven Neumann: right? Like, but then that's extra work. No,
[00:41:31] Joseph Rueter: I know. But we, we can find ways
[00:41:33] Sven Neumann: to automate this. That's the problem is always like, I know I can make more money by doing more work, right? The problem is the work I'm already doing is full time. So I need to figure out a way of making money with the work I'm already doing.
[00:41:44] Yeah. And the other part is like, right now there's a print style sheet, you know, um, you press control P and you get a printable version of the puzzle. Um, I'm also, I'm working with a, I was, there's a complete different line. It's like, I was approached a few months ago. by some professors from a university that were offering me to include [00:42:00] me in a National Science Foundation grant.
[00:42:02] There we go. In terms of second, of, of sort of, uh, what, what's the word? Basically out of the classroom education, right? So informal education, they call it. And I want to work with them together to basically create a version of the app, sort of a white label version of the app that supports. a reduced feature set to create sort of puzzles for a younger audience, you know, for classroom use.
[00:42:22] And as part of that, I want to create a version of the printable system for, you know, how do you print out 20 puzzles for a classroom or 10, 20 copies of 10 different puzzles for the classroom, you know? Yes. Um, on top of that, you know, my girlfriend is doing a master's degree where she did some research in Uganda and we spent a couple of weeks there at refugee camps.
[00:42:39] And I want to figure out a way of getting them puzzles, you know, so what can they do? So it's like, I want to do a lot of stuff that is outside of just the usual selling something in a store for money. You know, this is a really
[00:42:51] Joseph Rueter: normal thing for us. Like it's just because you want to do it doesn't mean you should just because you can do it doesn't mean Should [00:43:00] just because you can imagine it doesn't mean you should.
[00:43:04] And just because you should doesn't mean you have the time or the energy. Right. So I hear you, I hear, uh, you know, that kind of, um, nudge in that same direction, but there's all kinds of fun going on here and. Uh, what you're supporting is all those joyous moments, right? Like we were referring to in that miracle Sudoku, like, are you kidding me?
[00:43:28] And it seems. Like you have a number of those joyous moments yourself while, while building these things to the degree that we can be helpful in that process. We want to encourage you to, to think about 2. 0 and, and get after it. So Sven, this has been wonderful. Thank you for the time, the, uh, attention, the perspective that you shared with us.
[00:43:52] And, uh, if people want to find you online, I know that. When you go SudokuPad, you get pushed to the, uh, [00:44:00] installed versions. At least I do on my IP, uh, where, where would be best for people to
[00:44:06] Sven Neumann: find you? Yeah. The easiest place is SwenCodes. com. So SwenCodes. com is literally just my link tree kind of page. You know, it's just like, Hey, from there, I link to my Patreon, to my YouTube channel, my Twitch channel, things like that.
[00:44:17] The patrons have been absolutely amazing. Like I didn't, I never expected to get, I think it's 127 supporters right now. Like I said, if I could. Quadruple that number. I'd probably open source the whole thing and just be community supported if I could. Yeah. Um, so that's, that's been absolutely amazing. You know, somebody recently said this is the best app he would never use.
[00:44:35] Like he would, you know, he said 11 out of 10 would buy and not play again because he said, like, he knew that buying the app supports me creating the free web app where all the features are. So. I really appreciate that. Obviously, I still want to update those apps and I want to also, you know, improve them and eventually add features to them that the free web app doesn't have.
[00:44:51] But that's how people support me. And when you go there,
[00:44:53] Joseph Rueter: you get a sketch of you, two laptops and your pup. Tell us about your [00:45:00] pup. He's in the back there. Yeah, he's literally,
[00:45:02] Sven Neumann: is it a Frisbee champion that he, I was playing with that Frisbee with him earlier. Actually, he loves it. Um, yeah, he's lying behind me right now because I'm going to be, you know, the girlfriend is abroad for a couple of days, so I'm going to be taking care of him.
[00:45:13] And I hope he'll forgive me for the lack of his usual trip to the office and all that stuff. Um, yeah, and this sketch was actually done by the art director of my previous job as a sort of goodbye gift when I was leaving from there. And it was like, it's framed on my wall. It's a beautiful thing. It's like a fake YouTube video with like comments next to it, which were written by my colleagues from there.
[00:45:33] And I really loved it so much. I just wanted to have it as a sort of Um, identity for what, for the work I was doing now. Yes. Really enjoying it. And it kind of expresses what I, who I am quite well, I think. Yeah,
[00:45:43] Joseph Rueter: I love it. Well, you heard my pup alert me that there were humans outside on the recording earlier and, uh, she's laying at my feet at the moment.
[00:45:52] So, um, cheers, cheers to the four legged creatures that help us. Chase Joy.
[00:45:58] Sven Neumann: He's been called Toby the Sudoku [00:46:00] dog because of his ever present, uh, appearance on SudokuPad. That's awesome.
[00:46:06] Joseph Rueter: Maybe as 2. 0 Toby can come out and like push objects around and get just
[00:46:12] Sven Neumann: oh man and get in the way. An animated Toby on the board.
[00:46:15] That would be amazing. Dream come true. Yes,
[00:46:18] Joseph Rueter: dream come true. Okay, well you heard it here, uh, head to Sven Codes and he's got links all over the place and towards more joy in gaming. Have fun,
[00:46:31] Sven Neumann: guys. And for anybody who likes puzzles, if you go to youtube. com slash sven codes and go to the linked channels page, I'm basically linking all the different YouTube channels that use the SudokuPad right now, which is quite a few and they're all Brilliant puzzles, not just the cracking the cryptic ones, but there's lots of them out there.
[00:46:47] Ah, that's fantastic.[00:47:00]
