

Show HN: We're siblings in high school taking on SongPop, thoughts on our V1? - NTJPaulCarole
http://www.mgw.us/name-that-jam/1

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michaelkscott
Cool stuff but how is "in high school" in any way relevant?

Is it a new trend on HN for young folks to include their age (or some kind of
clue) along with what they've shipped?

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jvrossb
People tend to post about the constraints involved in building their product
e.g. boostrapped single founder, weekend project, used xyz new framework,
etc...

What do you think of the game? :)

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smokeyj
Which constraint is being a HS student? It's like saying "Hey guys, I have no
bills or kids!". My only problem is if these projects start filling up the
front page based on merit besides the project itself.

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vineel
It often means no formal education and less experience.

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DesaiAshu
MakeGamesWithUs co-founder here. Awesome to see the positive feedback for the
young devs of our games! We've been encouraging our developers to show off
their work to the HN community, in part because the community has been
incredibly warm in supporting them, and we thank them for it!

As we've all experienced, most of the work we do through school / college goes
mostly unnoticed outside of the classroom setting, and we really feel getting
feedback from a community like HN will encourage the developers to continue to
make awesome products, as well as inspire others who are also around their
age.

It's often tough for young developers to get excited about what they're
building when most people their age and focused on school/sports/girls, and we
hope these kinds of posts will show young devs that they aren't alone.

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brianchu
I think there's real potential to take on SongPop. SongPop's interface needs
work, and SongPop doesn't really feel as responsive as a native app, since it
kind of isn't - it's Flash compiled to native with Adobe AIR.

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NTJPaulCarole
we had a great experience using xcode with MakeGamesWith.Us rather than non
objective-c languages that SongPop used! They are great people to work with
and we've learned so much!

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chrislloyd
It's really fun but… I feel old.

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NTJPaulCarole
don't feel old! we have all sorts of songs from the 60's up until today to
take into account all ranges of users.

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bryanh
I don't think that helped...

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steve8918
How did you get the license to use all those songs?

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NTJPaulCarole
long story short, we used iTunes as our source of music.

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jackhlaw
Errr... "5. Song previews can only be used to promote the track. They cannot
be used for entertainment independent of that purpose, or as the main focus of
an App or web experience." source:
[http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/blog/song-p...](http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/blog/song-
previews.html)

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tomasien
Make Games With Us is accomplishing their goals much more effectively than I
would have thought possible. They're doing God's work.

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NTJPaulCarole
thank you! it took a lot of hard work, but it definitely paid off.

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pixelcort
The app seems to be making posts to Facebook without me specifically approving
each post one at a time.

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NTJPaulCarole
yes, it's due to open graph integration. when you download the game, you have
the choice to display that sort of information

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taigeair
cool app!

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NTJPaulCarole
thanks for the comment and please tell your friends to download it!

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taigeair
You're welcome. However, I do have some thoughts.

1\. It's not easy to play because it's not multiple choice. Typing is way too
hard on iphone. 2\. It's hard to continue playing. You need to wait for your
opponent and can only play one turn. Maybe try getting the player into the
next round automatically with live players or more songs per round. 3\. It's
not as addictive and sticky as songpop of weak engagement loops.

Good first try but I think you might need to change the game a bit. Good luck!

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taigeair
Also you're trying to send the most obscure songs to your opponent?

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NTJPaulCarole
thanks for your advice...we'll definitely take it into account as we begin to
prototype v2.

regarding song choice...we provide both most popular songs and other songs
from the same artist that are perhaps less popular. that way, the users can be
introduced to new music that they may not have heard before!

