#6 - Play to Learn
This weekend, I started playing “Oxygen Not Included” a survival/base building game in which you lead a small colony of “duplicants” in their fight for survival on an unforgiving alien planet. Your duplicants have all sorts of needs: mental health, food, sleep, waste management, and of course, oxygen. Your role is to guide them to terraform the planet, research technologies, and build tools to ultimately help them thrive. It’s quite the challenge.
On my first attempt, my colony quickly deteriorated into squalor. Duplicants went hungry, had mental breakdowns, and suffered from low oxygen - all while stepping in their own excrement. I hadn’t learned the mechanics of the game. So I bid adieu to this inaugural colony, for which I had such high initial expectations, and started over.
Fast forward a couple more attempts (along with some pointers from my brother) and I finally have a colony that offers my inhabitants a livable home. Stress levels are low, food is sufficient, sanitation works, and I’m in the process of upgrading the decor!
So what’s this got to do with SpaceTime?
This week we began executing on the plan laid out in last week’s newsletter: the splitting of SpaceTime into two focused apps. In many ways, we’re taking a step back. It felt like saying goodbye to my first “Oxygen Not Included” colony.
But that goodbye comes with lessons that we’re applying on our next products: focus and differentiation. We grow increasingly excited about the path we’re charting. Look for next week’s newsletter where we’ll share more details!!
But this week is a simple celebration of a gamer’s mindset: play to learn 🧠, and then play to win 🏆.
Metrics
Weekly Active Users: 6
We’ve known for weeks that retention was our biggest challenge, and this has borne out in our WAU count.
Created records/day (a record is either a task, check-in, or event): 7
Created records have fallen, but not as much as WAUs.
Highlights
We made great progress on our new task management app this week! The mobile app is on track for release this month and the web accompaniment is shaping up as well. Here’s a sneak peek 🙈
Lowlights
We didn’t put too much energy into the current iteration of SpaceTime this week and that has resulted in falling metrics. Looking at those graphs is a little painful 📉, but only just a little.
Miscellaneous
📹 In addition to task management and location journals, we spent some time this week thinking about Zoom, and its alternative use cases. Here’s a Tweet thread where I found a Zoom based “blog club”:
Now that we no longer have corporate meetings to attend, it’s a bit funny that we’re craving our old enterprise video communications tool - but such is life 😂
If you haven’t tried SpaceTime yet, here’s a quick link to check us out on the App Store!