

We built a multiplayer game last week (like Battleship) and would love feedback - furqanrydhan
http://www.sinkabuddy.com

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columbo
Here'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.

~~~
furqanrydhan
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.

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andreyf
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?

~~~
furqanrydhan
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..

~~~
jvrossb
birthday seems unnecessary, but otherwise remember that the HN crowd will
complain about FB login far more than the general population would.

~~~
taytus
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.

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paulwithap
Log in with Facebook? No thanks.

Also, the graphic design is pretty bad.

~~~
tachion
In addition to the above, A help or introduction to new or changed game
mechanics would be useful.

~~~
furqanrydhan
Def agree here, we need help/how to play sections

~~~
jvrossb
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.

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meritt
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>

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jvrossb
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.

~~~
furqanrydhan
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

~~~
jvrossb
They'll be more once I actually get a game going!

Where are you folks located? Interesting time to post :)

~~~
furqanrydhan
SF Bay area, extremely odd time :)

~~~
jvrossb
Waddya know. Me too.

------
shocks
What about those of us without Facebook? :(

~~~
furqanrydhan
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! :)

~~~
jvrossb
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.

~~~
corresation
_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.

~~~
jvrossb
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.

~~~
furyofantares
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.

~~~
steveklabnik
> 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.

~~~
furyofantares
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.

------
xyfer
why? because i can. <http://oi34.tinypic.com/2w20whk.jpg>

~~~
furqanrydhan
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!

~~~
rehashed
I have the same issue.

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locusm
You shouldn't have to install Facebook to play any game. So you lost me 5
seconds in.

~~~
iso8859-1
How do you install Facebook? :)

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cpeterso
I've head a similar game idea brewing for a long time: massively-multiplayer
Battleship! Think Words with Friends meets Eve Online. :)

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rralian
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.

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Toshio
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?

~~~
furqanrydhan
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.

~~~
paulwithap
Why should I need to sign in at all? Why not give the option to play as a
guest?

~~~
furqanrydhan
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 =\\..

~~~
lavametender
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.

