We built a multiplayer game last week (like Battleship) and would love feedback
sinkabuddy.comHere's what I -really- would like to see:
No login, just give me a url (http://sinkabuddy.com/f8jNsh1o) that I can IM to a coworker to start playing with. I don't want to have to require both of us to sign in with Facebook just to play a video game during scrum.
I think the general theme that we understood from the early feedback is facebook connect isn't really the preferred option. Our stats show the same. We saw 7% of visitors in the last couple days actually click facebook connect. Although the experience in the end is better since it's easier to connect with friends I think it's up to us to show a real use case as to why a user should connect.
The link/guest type signup is something we'll probably do quickly, invite via email or url.
Why do you need my real name, facebook profile picture, gender, networks, facebook user id, list of facebook friends, and birthday for me to play this game?
I guess the logic is to make it easy to connect with a list of friends and be able to play against 'real' people. I do think it makes sense to allow simple registration or anonymous type play, we'll probably add that as we get time.
does the birthday make it more awkward? We thought about removing that permission..
birthday seems unnecessary, but otherwise remember that the HN crowd will complain about FB login far more than the general population would.
Maybe you want to give credits/points/stars as a birthday present(or something like that). But that should be something the user chooses to opt-in.
Why not create implicit temporary accounts (tied to some token in a cookie) that will automatically be make permanent when the user registers with email or Facebook? People can play the game and not lose their game history when they register.
Just give me a unique url I can send my friends. You can provide a link for me to send post it to Facebook without my having to log in.
As someone else pointed out, the HN crowd cares more about our privacy than the public at large. Respecting people's privacy isn't about how many people care about it.
Log in with Facebook? No thanks.
Also, the graphic design is pretty bad.
In addition to the above, A help or introduction to new or changed game mechanics would be useful.
Def agree here, we need help/how to play sections
It's always better to do an interactive tutorial the first time someone plays. You can count on very very few people ever voluntarily clicking a help section and reading what lies within and on similarly few people actually reading any amount of text you show the first time they play presented more than a couple sentences at a time.
As soon as it required a FB login, I closed the browser.
Stop forcing social logins, especially ones tied to networks where there's a high degree of likelihood you'll post random shit "as me" that I most likely don't want to be posted.
This diagram might explain our reaction a bit better: http://i.imgur.com/oXtWdH2.png
You should let players save starting configurations so games can get going faster once a matchup is made. I'm now waiting for my buddy to set up. Alternatively don't start looking for players to match me with until I have finished set up. Either way I really really want to start playing and I really really don't want to wait for the other player to get ready.
EDIT: Aaaand when I refresh the page it seems like everything is gone.
EDIT 2: There should be a way to return to my list of games from the game screen.
EDIT 3: I notice there is a way - you click the top bar - but it should explicit, you have the space to include a back button on the side anyway. I also am unclear on how to remove the position of a ship I've already placed, and the error messages need to be polished a little. "You have placed too many lage_ship ships" isn't super user friendly.
Ok I think that was a known one, it's still saved in the backend just not reflecting.
Saving config would be good, i'll throw that on the list of things for this weekend :). Thanks for the feedback
On the not showing up after refresh, 2 more quick notes. First, after I've completed setup games in my game list still show up as action:setup. It should say something like waiting for opponent. Second, when I select a game where I have completed setup, even though the game confirms I am waiting on my opponent I can't see any of my ships. So a refresh AND exiting+reentering a game wipe my view of my ships.
They'll be more once I actually get a game going!
Where are you folks located? Interesting time to post :)
SF Bay area, extremely odd time :)
Waddya know. Me too.
What about those of us without Facebook? :(
So far it seems as if facebook connect is a huge fail, even from the early analytics, it seems like a guest option or a way to register w/o facebook is key. I think we'll be adding that as quick as possible! :)
Depending on your demographic of players this may be a mistake. HN will complain a lot about Facebook login but take words with friends as an example - you can play the tutorial without logging in and then it's FB login to play for real. Period. Why? Because a major driver of growth for them is Facebook. They've optimized their flow so that the average player invites other players, they used OpenGraph to post a lot when players take in-game actions, basically Facebook allows them to grow their userbase by having each user spread the game to more users.
The fact that so many games have Facebook only login is a sign that when done right, with a demographic of players that accept it (almost all, the SF Bay Area is way more anti facebook-login and sharing than most of the rest of the world), the players you lose by having only Facebook login are made up for by the viral spreading you get from Facebook users.
The caveat of course being that you have to design, from the ground up, for the game to spread through Facebook. If you don't, it's not worth it. But if you don't, you need some other strategy to make the game spread, and there are very very few unfortunately.
Yeah I assumed the HN crowd would be more affected by the facebook connect restriction. I think there's definitely pro's and con's with facebook connect, email reg, and guest play. I do think there's some aspects of playing real people that's more appealing.
Finding the right demographic would be great, I think at this point we're still trying to figure out what to do with the game play to make it fun, clean up bugs, tutorials etc.
We're also working on the android version, mobile we think will be a huge driver for this game (in our mind).
Really do appreciate the feedback, and we'd love to hear more from you
Neat - any plans for iOS? BTW nobody I've challenged has responded, would be awesome if with your admin superpowers you started a 'random' game with me. I'm Jeremy Rossmann, fb username jvross.
Depending on your demographic of players this may be a mistake.
How could having the option of registering sans Facebook be a mistake? In what way could broadening your target audience be a poor choice?
Hinging your cart entirely like that (becoming a sharecropper that is completely dependent on the goodwill and cooperation of a much bigger partner) is seldom a responsible business strategy.
Adding email registration can be a mistake in situations when users who would have signed up through Facebook now sign up through email instead. Depending on what % of your growth is driven by virality vs organic discovery and how viral your fb users vs email users are (could be a 10X difference or more) you can be better off losing say 50% of players but having the remaining 50% sign in through Facebook than having 80% sign in through email and 20% through Facebook. It really depends on your numbers.
I have a gut-level reaction to this reasoning, which is that I believe that when you provide less value to your users you will likely get fewer users no matter how well you've justified the opposite case to yourself.
But I also have some specific reasoning that leads me to believe it's not a poor choice to provide another way to sign in. Signing in with facebook is extremely easy compared to normal signup paths. What this means is that most people who trust you with facebook will still sign in via facebook. And I don't think there's much of an argument that people who don't trust you with facebook will be signing in with facebook if it's the only option.
You can always allow them to link with facebook later, after they know what the game is, and after you've explained to them why linking will be valuable to them.
The correct answer doesn't exist. There's a methodology you can follow to find an answer for every product, and it will vary case-by-case and sometimes over the lifetime over the product. Your gut reaction will be right many times but wrong sometimes as well. It's entirely possible to run the numbers and figure out what the right decision is right now for this game.
> that I believe that when you provide less value to your users
You're assuming that more options always increases value, but this is not the case. See Apple and, let's say, the Samsung Jitterbug for counter-examples.
Yeah, forcing users to make a decision or navigate a cluttered UI are both ways in which options decrease value. So adding options can suck if people aren't going to exercise them (which is what I see with a lot of options that get added to software -- only a very tiny percentage of users ever tweak them.)
However the claim I was debating was that a second sign-in method would be bad because people would exercise it. The argument was basically that it's bad because it's increasing value for users in a way that decreases value for you. And I don't think adding a second sign-in method to a page that currently only has one button really causes a difficult or confusing decision or creates a cluttered UI.
I suppose I still do see your point, though, since I personally wouldn't go much beyond that -- "sign in with facebook or twitter or google or browserid or github or create an account or or or" sounds like a miserable experience.
>In what way could broadening your target audience be a poor choice?
Presumably, because there exists a population of people who will log in via FB if that's the only option, but will log in using another option instead if it's available.
Depending on the size of this population and the added value of having plays log in via FB instead of another method, it might outweigh the benefit of capturing those players who will never log in via FB but may play if another log in method is available.
why? because i can. http://oi34.tinypic.com/2w20whk.jpg
Weird, I know we didn't put any restrictions on the web front end to do that but the backend should reject the setup. I'll have to look through and figure out why it's not rejecting it.. thanks for pointing it out though!
I have the same issue.
You shouldn't have to install Facebook to play any game. So you lost me 5 seconds in.
How do you install Facebook? :)
I've head a similar game idea brewing for a long time: massively-multiplayer Battleship! Think Words with Friends meets Eve Online. :)
Would be nice to have a messaging system or at least a way to prompt the other person. Never know when they've stepped away.
Love the initiative, don't have a FB account though. Is it reasonable to ask to be able to log in with my GitHub account?
Since I don't have access to the game, could someone explain the part of the game design that goes beyond the concepts of the classic Battleship game?
Ideally it should be any of the major web sign on methods (fb, google, twitter, linked-in) Github would be cool though. Maybe if we get some time we'll hack that together.
Why should I need to sign in at all? Why not give the option to play as a guest?
I guess we were so caught up with the 'social' aspect of facebook we didn't realize guest play would be good.
We didn't even add the play against a random opponent until today =\..
Forget about Facebook, it takes weeks before someone responds to game request and response is usually "Deny request and block app" in best cases and "Unfriend" in others.
I'm sure you're excited to get it out, and you've put a lot of work into this game, but I would consider pulling it for now, and polishing things up a bit more first. First impressions are big. I would also look at Bombermine for inspiration. Just one guy on the internet's opinion.