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0 pointsjvrossb12y ago0 comments

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.

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furqanrydhan12y ago

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

jvrossbOP12y ago

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.

corresation12y ago

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.

jvrossbOP12y ago

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.

furyofantares12y ago

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.

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lenazegher12y ago

>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.

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0 pointsjvrossb12y ago0 comments

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furqanrydhan12y ago

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

jvrossbOP12y ago

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.

corresation12y ago

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.

jvrossbOP12y ago

furyofantares12y ago

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.

2 more replies

lenazegher12y ago

>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.

1 more reply

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