Comment by hombre_fatal
5 years ago
They didn’t make an appeal to authority but an appeal to commercial success, and they’re right on.
The fact that GTAO is so popular should make most HNers rethink what they know about the commercial necessity of optimization vs building a compelling product.
The loading times were not initially that long and then the slow CPU makes a big difference.
This really only goes to show how much you can get away with if you have an outstandingly popular product that has no direct competition. Chances are that your product is not that compelling, if it performs poorly, that will hurt adoption. It will never become outstandingly popular in the first place.