Review My App: An iPhone game about "Knowledge and Enlightenment" (Upcoming) | Hacker News Reader

Review My App: An iPhone game about "Knowledge and Enlightenment" (Upcoming)

threewiki.com

31 pointsivanzhao20 comments

Hi HN,

This is my upcoming game/app. It's based on an existing Wiki game, and modified to reinforced the cognitive process of "learning through connections". So far, I have personally learned a lot while developing this game (e.g. "pines" are "coniferous trees", and "coniferous trees" lives in "northern hemisphere".).

It would be nice to have some early feedback and suggestions. The app should be out in couple weeks. By then I will put out some free copies for fellow Hacker Newers.

Thanks,

Ivan

Looks fun, and nice job on the site design. Clean and effective. I'm looking forward to trying the app.

Little nit, are you sure this 'available on the iphone app store' modified button is legit? I seem to recall having to sign/checkbox to use it, besides, isn't 'available' supposed to mean something's available.

ah good call. I am going to change it now.

thanks for noticing it.

Looks cool. Will await its release with interest.

There's no privacy information on your preview page. While I personally have faith that most people posting here on HN asking for feedback would not sell my email address to Russian gangsters, it might be an idea to address such issues explicitly.

Very cool. Possibility of an android port? I'd be happy to help if required

The "vote for the price you think is fair" thing is brilliant. I'm assuming that you're using this data to inform the decision on the actual price.

I think though, that having a limited set of choices will influence the votes. People will pick the middle one. You should have a fill-in box.

I see this problem all the time with people trying to implement the "wisdom of the crowds" or market concepts. It is important that people make their decision in isolation of other people's opinion. Otherwise social pressure and other factors distorts the outcome.

Yeah, this is that "anchoring effect." If you tell someone that you think a pair of jeans costs $400 and ask them to guess a price, chances are they'll quote one around $400 even when the actual price is something like $40.

I love going on explorative journeys through Wikipedia, so the app really appeals to me. Definitely a task I wish I did more often. I'd throw down a dollar or two for an app like this, but my platform of choice is Android.

Excellent concept. I know I've personally lost many, many hours following random links on Wikipedia. If this app can suck in the user in the same way, I'll be hooked.

Any reason you decided to do this as an iOS App instead of a as a Web App?

Need to earn some cash to bootstrap for my startup (vittyo.com). iOS is much easier to make some food money in my opinion.

Behind the scene, the logistics is actually mostly server-based, using Cocoa just for the eye candies. So it is really easy to convert it into a web app or onto Android.

Seems perfect for a web app. Your viewing a page about frued, google/amazon puts some links up for psychology books. Heck you modify the wiki article such that if the person has books written or authored about them or the subject you could Amazon link it easy. Seems more profitable..

Yeano. Because a 6% affiliate revenue from Amazon will not provide an eCPM of > $6. Really. Better of with iAds.

I'm not sure if you know, but a similar game exists already: http://thewikigame.com/

Try to take this fact as validation of your concept. TheWikiGame's interface is a bit clunky. So if you do it better, more power to you.

It's hard to tell how you think your game is going to work... it's not obvious to me how "enlightenment" motivates players, but you never know. I rather like TheWikiGame's beat-the-clock dramatic tension, and that one plays against others. TheWikiGame can be addictive especially if you play it with other friends in the room suggesting strategies.

Thanks for the link. I found it as a good way to learn, and to remember what you just learned. So I think it could be more like an app, instead of a game.

Congratulations! Nicely done.

I actually built a very similar system about two years ago, when I was screwing around with the Wikipedia dataset as a playground for some graph theory experiments, but it never occurred to me to make it into an iPhone app. Brilliant move.

If you're looking to make an "advanced" version, I coded a variation where each page was weighted by the number of in-bound links from other pages, and the goal was to minimize the weighted path. I found that led to some interesting lateral thinking to find more obscure connections between topics.

That's something I'd definitely be interested in. Just make sure that the connections are well-related and that I'll end up walking away with a set of nicely integrated facts. I said I'd pay $0.99 for it because it'd be a nice addition to my Reference folder and also because I can't stand iPhone app ads -- they're obtrusive and there's not much screen real estate to spare.

That's where the social curating aspect of the game kicks in. Good, educational connections stays on top (on weekly basis), bad ones got flushed away. It's much like Hacker News in a sense.

Yes: the social aspects, as well as a little bit of competition (perhaps contests/judging of answers/maybe even prizes) will be the selling points. Building the community will be your biggest post-launch task (and starting it pre-launch is definitely a good step).

Your website is funky in my Mobile Safari on my iPhone. It's wider than the screen and the pinch-to-scale isn't letting me fix that.

Looking forward to your game.

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