How would you like a "Gamers Seeking Gamers" system to work?

[Morrus]

You may have heard rumours that EN World would be moving to a brand new codebase (vBulletin 4) soon, with a new design and new features.

The centerpiece of this new design will be a brand new Gamers Seeking Gamers section. I'd like EN World to boast the best gaming-dedicated software for finding and joining games in your area or meeting like-minded gamers in search of a game, all run off the EN World member database.

I'm talking to a couple of different coders at the moment, and we're at the stage where we need to put together some documentation and specs before the first line of code is written. Our main issue is a lack of specific conceptualization; we know in general what we want to accomplish, but we don't know exactly what would make it useful to you.

So, how would you like to see such a system designed? Would you like it to work off a map, off your zip/postal code (although this will reduce its use to those geographical areas we can easily get such data for), off your hometown? What sort of search criteria would you want to be able to use?

 

[Jan van Leyden]

However you implement the system please make sure that us unfortunates living neither in the US nor UK can use it as well. If you decide on a postal code system, e.g., make sure that it either is flexible enough for any postal code system in the world or offer an alternative approach (perhaps via Google Maps) as well.

Another feature I'd love to see is a notifier. If anyone in my defined area offers or seeks a position, I'd like to receive a message. If you unsuccessfully check the offers every week for two months in a row, you tend to forget about the service.

One more point: what about a switch/parameter/keyword to search for online games as well, like those run with MapTools. For such games, the time zone is the important parameter.

Looking forward to the new implementation

 

[samursus]

Just a quick endorsement for a LFG function. My current group AND my brothers group (half way across the country) have both been made possible by the fluke of having people posting on the Wizards.com site for our relatively small cities.

So, some sort of Postal Code database would be great! But you would definitely need support for international users. I see a lot of other Canadians on here as well as those from the UK, Brazil, Germany, etc.

If thats to much, then having country headings seems to work well.

 

[Scribble]

Instead of zipcode can you just use lat/long coordinates? (If I'm not mistaken thats how the distance finders work in the first place even if they use zips right? They just switch to the lat/long coordinates to do the calculations?)

If you make this thing, also make an app for droid and iphone.

What about a feedback system... I know it might be controversial, but sometimes you wan to know a little bit about what others have to say about someone before you invite them to your house...

I don't know a lot about the current system, but does it have a way to say recommend someone to someone else?

Do you have an email thing that lets people know when someone joins that matches what they're looking for?

Any thoughts on putting a store finder on there? Kind of like the one on the WoTC site, but with options for all the 3pp stuff as well.

(I would love for someone to create an app for my droid that lets me put in the usual store finder stuff, and then uses the GPS on my phone to show me the closest ones/a map to their location etc...)

 

[Echohawk]

Would you like it to work off a map, off your zip/postal code (although this will reduce its use to those geographical areas we can easily get such data for), off your hometown? What sort of search criteria would you want to be able to use?

With the prevalence of GPS functionality on phones and other devices, I think that longitude and latitude would be the best way to pinpoint locations. Then you don't have messy fiddling with postcode databases -- which is a real issue for many countries -- and it is also dead easy to calculate distances between gamers, for a "find all gamers within 50 kilometers" search.

 

[darjr]

Do a google map thing like nearbygamers.com

 

[Nellisir]

Map would be preferable, I think. Also notifier. Maybe with zip code as an option.

 

[smetzger]

International, notifications,
specify online or in-person, if in-person force the user to enter a location
allow for someone to enter multiple locations (I work an hour away from where I live, so possibility exists for me to get involved in a game at either location).

allow for multiple game systems, number of people looking for.

Ultimately the success depends on the number of people using it

 

[wedgeski]

I would keep the highest location resolution at postal or zip code. This obfuscates the location just enough to avoid privacy concerns, IMO.

I think the ideal process for me as a DM would be:
- Sign up to ENW (obviously I have already done that!)
- Create a "DM" identity somewhere on the site; all DM's have their own home page, showing their currently open game(s), some blurb about their playstyle/history/ etc. Having a DM identity opens up all sorts of possibilies for campaign journals and wiki's, or even a "rep" score from people who've played in your game.
- Add games to my DM identity
- Mark games as open (1 or more slots) or closed (no open slots)
- Games should have attributes including: location (if not electronic), system, descriptive blurb, number of players, number of open slots, average length of game, frequency of game (weekly etc.), and so-on.
- Interested players should be able to PM me
- Ideally any game you add to your DM profile would have its own forum
- Once a person has been "accepted" into a game, I'd like to be able to administer them as a player; so, give them read- or write-access to the wiki, campaign journal, forum etc.

As a player it would be:
- Sign up to ENW
- Search for games by location (radius of my post-code or zip code), system, frequency, basically any attribute.
- Browsable results either on-site or via a nice Google Maps scatter graph.
- One-click PM to the DM.

I'm sure you'll have opinions on which of these things would be subscriber only.

 

[maddman75]

Cross-posting from that board with all the hooligans.


If you really want to steal functionality, look at Meetup.com. They've done wonders for our town since I started a group. It gives us a place to talk, to schedule local games, and to arrange meetups in a public place before you start telling folks what your address is. I think ownership is an important part of it as well. Maybe something were if you're a gamer in Syracuse NY you can start the ENWorld Syracuse group or whatever, and other Gamers Seeking Gamers can see it and join in. Helps narrow things down by geography which is really one of the central problems with finding gamers.

I know you've got groups now and someone could theoretically do this, but having it integrated could make it so much more useful. If I'm in the next town over and I look for groups in New York, I can see there's a group in Syracuse. When I join if I enter my zip code it will tell me 'hey, there's an ENWorld Game Group in your city!'.

The Meetup structure has led to more gaming than we know what to do with, and our meetups have gone from a single game to an entire weekend.