

Heyzap (YC W09) Brings Social Discovery And Check-In For Games To The iPhone - immad
http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/03/heyzap-brings-social-discovery-and-check-in-for-games-to-the-iphone/

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sawyer
I'm skeptical that a market consisting of products which range in price from
free to one dollar requires sophisticated discovery systems. Most mobile games
(and virtually all web games) are free to try - there's no need for social
proof.

This is the reason casual game reviewing has never been anywhere near as
valuable as in the traditional market. People just don't need to read a review
about a free game before trying it, they can just sink 5 minutes in and see
how it is.

The other aspect of this product is also underwhelming; the check-ins. You're
essentially trying to gamify... well, games. A good game will have more than
enough intrinsic rewards that layering these extrinsic ones on top will add
little value in my opinion.

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immad
Hi sawyer,

Social discovery is not just about social proof but also about getting signal
from noise. With 70k games and growing knowing what games your friends are
playing is a great way of decided what games to try out. Price cost of games
may be low but no one has time to try them all out.

Check-ins are more of a broadcast mechanism rather than a gamifying one. Some
users check-in for badges but a lot do it for broadcasting to the community.
We are going to be providing more value to check-ins by also recommending
games from them. Did you get a chance to try it out?

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sawyer
Not yet; however I appreciate the reply!

You're right, no one has time to try every game released; however don't you
feel that the generic store rankings already do a pretty good job filtering
out the noise? I'm not saying your product will have no value, just that for
me personally I can't see it being a huge improvement over the existing
filtering mechanism (genre specific app store ranking).

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what
If you rely on genre specific ranking won't you only end up exploring genres
that you recognize and are already familiar with? What if it could expose you
to games that you actually enjoy but are in genres that you wouldn't have
considered exploring.

