Review my startup: free services for casual game developers | Hacker News Reader

Review my startup: free services for casual game developers

mogade.com

22 pointslatch19 comments

I'm not a game developer, but even if I was one, I don't think I'd be able to tell right away what your service is offering me. Tell me within a sentence or two exactly what I'm getting if I use your service, not just that your product has great features. Screenshots on the landing page would help.

I agree. Really think about the copy on the homepage. I didn't read the second paragraph because the first didn't say anything.

"Mogade gives your game achievements and leader-boards in 10 lines of code." One sentence with a bunch of screenshots of games using it. If you don't have anybody using it yet, make an Acme Widgets game to show people.

I am a casual game developer, and I second mshafrir's statement. The only verbage that gives any hint what is this service offers is the somewhat vague: "Before you know it you'll have the best leaderboards, achievements and social hooks available."

In my opinion, this should be your opening line, and everything that follows should expand on it, and what sets you apart from your competition (i.e. ScoreLoop, OpenFeint, GameCenter, etc). I looked around the links, but couldn't find additional info. Maybe an about, faq, or info page might do the trick?

Additionally, I can't tell if you specialize in mobile gaming, desktop or other. I think this needs to be more clear.

Scoreloop, OpenFeint, GameCenter are already quite established and comprehensive frameworks. It will be hard to catch up with any of them unless you offer something unique or unless you can identify and address some of the pain points developers might have with what they are already using.

It seems like it's a "late to the game" situation. However, the space is hot, so if you're clever you might put some pressure on those guys.

A little background:

I've assembled a team of devs, we've started developing our game ( http://traingame.tumblr.com/ - yes, shameless..), and we're currently favoring Scoreloop.

Convince me: Why should we choose Mogade instead?

I appreciate the constructive feedback. I agree it isn't going to be a walk in the part. This was one of those launch-early type things, so I can't honestly come up with a compelling argument (unless you're dying for WP7 support...).

I think if you want something simple/straighforward, or you are particularly keen on the open source nature of the drivers (which has its pros and cons) we offer a solid solution.

At the very least, I'd ask that you look us up again for your next game and see what's changed :)

Perhaps a graphical representation of how things work?

Fill the front page with images of the leader boards and all the other services you offer being taken care of on your servers.

Show a picture of the ONE LINE OF CODE they add to their game.

Show everyone smiling at the end.

Make the text really really big.

Have arrows connecting it all like a flow chart, so I know where to start reading.

Have the flow chart end with the "SIGN UP HERE" call to action button.

(at least that's my "gut reaction" recommendation based on what I hope for and what I like on signup pages.)

please make sure that it's roughly one line of code :)

Thanks. Quickly tried to improve it with a shorter and better description, along with a short FAQ. A small start, but totally need some screenshots to get that picture is worth more than words thing going.

All the website really says is "Here's a solution, just install our code in your game. It's easy!"

If the problem is just that I don't have third-party code in my game then I guess you got me. Otherwise I'd probably need to know what problem is being solved and how.

From reading your API page, it looks like you're building something sorta like Xbox Live (and now Open Feint and Gamecenter). Managed leader boards, achievements, ,maybe buddy lists and invites, etc. Is that correct?

For what it's worth, I took just one look at the front page and it told me pretty well what the product is. But then, I've spent years working in this exact field, so it might be a case of a blurb aimed at those in the know.

He changed the page in the interim. It now is more descriptive.

My startup has a slightly similar pitch to developers (shameless plug: http://www.famigogames.com/developer). Well, we DID have a similar pitch at one point. After many customer development discussions, we've iterated on our pitch greatly and I think you should too.

Keep in mind to whom you're marketing here: developers. The average casual developer doesn't need a ton of help when it comes to adding neat new features to their games. After all, they're developers; they can build those features themselves and probably enjoy it thoroughly.

Where they do need help is in marketing and sales, and they need more help than you realize. (Speak to several casual developers and you'll quickly realize that it's both very hard and quite expensive to compete with the major players.) For us, that meant changing our messaging from "Features! Yippee!" to "We bring you a huge new base of customers via these features, and here are metrics and stories to back that claim up!" Features for the sake of features as the value prop, when the developer is probably already losing money, didn't work well for us.

If you can adequately explain how integration leads to dollars, then your developer base will skyrocket. This part of the story is missing from your site, imho.

Oh, and one more point. If you can prove that integration leads to dollars, you can drop the free angle. Developers are quite happy to share the wealth if your secret sauce leads to sales.

Its missing from more than our website :) Launch early and try. Great advice though and delivered in a non-crushing manner, much appreciated. Food for thought!

Happy to help! It definitely looks compelling, and you're well positioned to do some great things here. Best of luck, and keep us updated.

On your site on that cell phone pic on the right you're not closing the img tag which is making the rest of the page a hyperlink:

.....position:absolute; right:100px; top:340px; width:270px"</a>

How will you make money?

If it's free for developers to use, and you don't force them to run ads, or sell/use the user data (which I don't see mentioned anywhere on the site, so I presume you don't), how do you plan to at least cover your expenses?

Also: in your TOS, you say "we reserve the right to modify or terminate mogade.com service for any reason, without notice at any time". If you want people to rely on your service, this won't fly. If I'm making, say, Android game, and rely on your service to provide leaderboard, I have to have confidence in you. At least to the point that you'll notify me well (in months) in advance, so I can switch to another provider or roll my own, update my game, push the update to my users and hope most of them updated. So, I wouldn't use something like this without at least basic SLA.

As codypo commented - if your service adds value, don't be afraid to charge for it. That solves both of the issues I mentioned :)

Definitely needs some kind of case study. Right now it's a bunch of marketing speak. Prove to me that you know what you're doing and that it's actually worked before -- and that you're not going to steal my email address and sell it to those damn Nigerians.

I don't think free is the way to go - I provide a bunch of services for game developers and that stuff really adds up if you get traction - I have almost 4 gigabytes just of leaderboard data with xxx,xxx new submissions a day and a whole lot of requests to show scores.

"Manage your game online and integrate our open source libraries in your code, its that easy."

That should be "It's". No comma and an apostrophe.

I have to agree with the other commenters that this needs a better landing page. I had no idea what the site does.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com