

Ask HN: Review my startup - Social gaming framework for Android, iPhone - metachris

We are building a social gaming framework for smartphone developers (Android and iOS, but also Flash and more), which solves many common problems of developing multiplayer games: networking, matchmaking, user authentication and attribute storage, security and scalability. The social services include cross-platform friendships and feeds, presence status and invitations as well as support for external services such as Facebook (authentication and the Graph API), Twitter, etc.<p>The server infrastructure is hosted at Amazon EC2 which greatly simplifies the dynamic scaling of the network. Gameserver instances are created via a web-interface and provide detailled statistics about the games, the players and the connections (including a real-time display of active users). Our plan is to charge based on the used resources, trying to make a very good offer for indie devs in particular.<p>Recently we've started private beta phase with the Android implementation, and will soon support more platforms. The first developers have deployed games on the Android market using the framework; everything works great and we are as excited as the devs are! It feels like a great moment to tell the HN community about the project - and to ask for feedback in particular.<p>Thanks!<p>http://www.flockengine.com
======
dirtyaura
Interesting.

At one point, we were planning to open source our gaming framework and build
business around server-side functionality. However, after various discussions,
I finally abandoned that plan and we are focusing to use it internally.

First, in games particular, considerable amount of work is spent on the client
side. Unless you are super-successful to encounter serious scalability issues,
all the hard problems are on the client-side.

Although gaming companies do not currently have that much back-end guys, they
still have quite capable coders in general, who can learn back-end stuff quite
easily. Thus, you really need to provide significant value to them (us).
Looking through your APIs, you currently have solved some basic authentication
stuff. That's okay as a start but definitely not enough to attract skilled
teams.

Second, game business is very hit-driven, thus you are likely to serve the
less-profitable long tail developers. The best offering for them is not to
provide server-side technology per se, but bring more buyers/players for their
games. Thus, approach that e.g. OpenFeint has taken seem to serve those guys
better, they basically are offering the stuff that you offer + the existing
community.

But best luck! I suggest that you talk to experienced game studios. Find out
what are the biggest pain points and try to provide solutions to those.

 _EDIT_ : Note, I didn't want to sound discouraging, although reading it now,
it definitely came out like that. I think there's definitely opportunities in
this space, I just wanted quickly to highlight some key issues. Note also that
it will be a very competitive space, because successful mobile multiplayer
game companies can also try to enter the space with their proven propriety
solutions. That's part of our long term plan, i.e. we first try to create
succesful mobile multiplayer games, and then consider platform-provider option
again.

~~~
metachris
Thanks for your feedback! I agree that using such a framework internally and
focusing on developing games is definitely an interesting option.

OpenFeint looks pretty similar but has a primary focus on highscore and
leaderboards, which is a free feature of theirs. I couldn't find out how much
they charge for their turn-based multiplayer feature though. We are trying to
make a good offer for small developers; for the first developers it looks like
< $10 per month with around 150,000 connections.

For Android there are also a couple of highscore/leaderboard services such as
ScoreLoop and ScoreNinja. We plan to provide interfaces to both and more.

Apple's GameCenter (see WWDC Session 404) will be a big "competitor" on the
iOS arena, but they probably won't expand to Android or other platforms. We
are starting off on Android and see where it goes from here. Flash is an
interesting option too.

 _> Looking through your APIs, you currently have solved some basic
authentication stuff. That's okay as a start but definitely not enough to
attract skilled teams._

Yeah, I agree. Right now we have a MVP, and many ideas.

 _> But best luck! I suggest that you talk to experienced game studios. Find
out what are the biggest pain points and try to provide solutions to those._

Thanks, and I agree this is the best approach right now.

------
d0m
I don't know about the idea, but I can give you some feedback on the main
page.

First, "Flock is an easy-to-use social gaming network for Android and Iphone".
I have no idea what that means. Is it a tool I download to chat with my
buddies in game on iPhone? Is it something that will help me as a developper
to create and publish game? Is it a kind of steam for iPhone and android?

I think the main page as too much "features" and not enough of "wtf is
flock?".

Like, "Integrated encryption with SSL/TLS and AES-256".. I really don't care
about the encryption you use if I'm not to use your service because I don't
know what it is.

If you absolutely want to tak about security, say it in a: Flock is a secure
and reliable way to blah blah.

Keep it simple!

~~~
metachris
Thanks, highly appreciated! I've updated the main image hoping it better
conveys what the framework is about.

Before: "Flock is an easy-to-use social gaming network for Android and iPhone"

Now: "Flock is the easiest way to connect users on Android and iPhone to
multiplayer games."

That's really the core functionality right now. The social part is rather
peripheral.

------
drewcrawford
I'm an iOS developer who does a few games a year.

1) I'm betting on Apple's Game Center. It will be popular with developers. You
need penetration--how will you compete with Apple on numbers?

2) The other reason I'm doing GC integration is that people who don't have my
game can get invites from friends who do for multiplayer matches. This is huge
for discoverability. You can't do that. Again, how are you going to compete?

~~~
metachris
It's probably impossible to compete with Apple GC - essentially they are
building the same thing for iOS. There are other options though. The client
implementation is not that complicated and could be ported to various
platforms: J2ME, Flash, HTML5, etc.

We think developers might appreciate a "GameCenter Light" which is easy to
integrate, cheap and does does the basic things right.

Discoverability is another interesting topic, and of course GC will be huge
for that. I think that again it would be possible to start a light version,
which offers additional exposure for developers and their games. There are
many ideas that could be implemented in that direction.

~~~
drewcrawford
You're making the same mistake I made with my startup.

From my comment you know: 1) I'm on HN, so I'm automatically sympathetic 2)
I'm smack dab in the middle of your target market

That should have caused you to swing into sales mode. You're telling me what
"we think [hypothetical] developers might appreciate." Hypothetical developers
will never pay you any money. I might, if you can convince me not to write the
GC integration code next week (Not a joke, I am actually gearing up to test a
new game with it this month).

What would I do with a GC lite? In my experience (and from talking to the
apple engineers at wwdc), GC looks really easy to integrate. It's also free.
If your play is to do less than GC, how will you compete with free?

There are some things that GC is doing wrong. Maybe you can improve on these.
But you haven't touched on anything that specifically irks me about GC yet. So
I have no reason to buy in.

------
fictorial
Awesome, I have been working on something similar for a long time. I used to
greet news of similar services with dread, but as HN has taught me, having
competition is a good sign that you are thinking of something less than
completely hairbrained.

I do have a different angle than Flock, and I am far down the path to
launching. But, my daughter just arrived at 31 weeks and my time is now
happily gone.

So, good luck to you (and to myself! Heh).

Edit: the teaser site is <http://PlayRelay.io>

------
cmelbye
You're aware of the established social web browser named Flock, right?

~~~
metachris
yes. currently "Flock" is a working title; we looked for a name that
developers can relate to while programming with the API (eg. to use
"Flock.connect()"). Do you think that name would be too confusing for users
because of the similarity?

we probably will change to a better name sometime soon. suggestions are
appreciated :)

~~~
cmelbye
Well, it might be confusing, yes, but the Flock browser might not be happy
about you using the name (especially considering the similarity between the
browser and your project).

------
metachris
Clickable: <http://www.flockengine.com>

------
arpit
Interesting, though I wonder if apple could potentially block something like
this to favor their own platform like they do for analytics and the Appsfire
fiasco

~~~
metachris
Good point and one we are also thinking about.

I can't imagine a reason for Apple to reject such a framework, since it is
really only basic socket connections with a bit of additional logic. They
can't take sockets away from developers.

~~~
ericflo
Sure they could--provided you aren't using them in a way they approve of.

------
zaph0d
Awesome idea! Wish you all the best.

------
l4u
got a 404 when downloading flock-sdk-android.zip

~~~
metachris
Thanks -- one link to the sdk was broken which is fixed now!

We recently switched from PHP to web.py and this was hopefully the last
orphaned link.

