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

[Pseudonym]

Morrus,

So you see this open to everyone, or linked to CS accounts?

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

...automatically transport everyone to the same game table when a group is found.

Get all that working, and I think you'll have yourself a winner.

If you get that aspect working you'll likely find a number of government officials wanting to talk to you.

 

[NewJeffCT]

It MUST be sortable by location. But, larger states also need to have something for different regions of their states and/or metro areas (NYC metro area could include northern NJ and SW Conn.) Just have it like a post in a forum here, where the person can put key info in the subject line (CT-Hartford area, DM seeks gamers for D&D campaign...) and then fill in important info within the post itself.

 

[Woas]

It should be like Facebook... but for RPGs.

 

[Merkuri]

In my opinion, this system must give a way to search by distance. I believe the best way to do this is for the system to ultimately compare latitude and longitude of each user, but that lat and long doesn't need to be inputted by the user, and it doesn't need to be super accurate. I don't really care if somebody is 15 miles away from me or 17, especially since I know the distance is "as the crow flies" and my car's mileage will probably show something different should I try to drive from one point to the other.

Ideally people would be able to enter in their location as fine or as coarse as they like. If the user inputs a broad area (like, the state of Texas) then that user's lat and long should be somewhere in the center of Texas. It's not very accurate, but the user should probably expect this if they're inputting such a broad area. However, if they were to input Dallas, TX then their distances will be much more accurate. If they inputted their full address it would be the most accurate, but I'm not sure how fine you want to let people specify their location. I would think you'd actually want to discourage this sort of thing if the system isn't secure.

As far as how this would be implemented, I don't know. There may already be services out there you can use that'll take a location in the form of text (like "Dallas, TX, USA") and return a lat and long.

Other features I'd love:

* Specify whether I'm looking to DM or play (or both)
* Specify what types of games I like to play, and maybe even a ranking of each (so if you like some games more than others you can show that)

* Search by distance and
* Being able to create a "game" and post vacancies, and say information about that game

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

Well, user profiles will be made a major part of the new site,a nd we 85,000 of those. At the moment, your EN World profile exists, and can hold as much info as we want it to, but they are very background. The new site will utitilize user profiles much, much more. So much of this stuff is simply ensuring the user profile has all the information you want on it - plus integrating with your blog, pictures, and other EN World activities.

The core issue then, is the "matching" functionality. We can make a profile as detailed as we want, and it can include swathes of information on your games and so forth - that's just data; our task here is a searching/browsing interface which leads you to the profiles you need.

Geography is clearly the MOST important aspect here, and is the primary filter for narrowing down the member database to those which could be relevant to you.

So our options so far seem to be:

1) Postal/Zip Code. Problematic part here is obtaining the data for different places.

2) Keywords. Search by country, state/county/province, town. Then perhaps a "distance from" that location.

3) Lat/long. Oviously the most accurate way to do it, but I'm not clear on how that works. Do people need to know their latitude and longitude for this to work? Because I certainly don't know mine! It sounds like that would be a barrier to entry; people could find out that info, but will they bother? Is there some easy way to determine lat/long (assuming you don't have a GPS device)?

Well, WoW recently rolled out their new Looking For Dungeon tool and it's completely revitalized the game for me. I think it should be a model for a gamers-seeking-gamers thing here.

Ideally, it should...

...let people specify their preferred roles (e.g. DM, player, rules lawyer, drama queen).
...automatically group people together to ensure an appropriate mix for each group.
...allow people to specify the game they want to play, but provide incentives for being flexible.
...not limit the search to our local dimension but to other parallel dimensions as well.
...automatically transport everyone to the same game table when a group is found.

Get all that working, and I think you'll have yourself a winner.

 

[Merkuri]

In my opinion, this system must give a way to search by distance. I find systems that make me search by a keyword of some sort are extremely unhelpful. I live in an area that's fairly close to two big cities (Providence and Boston) but ideally I'd like to find players much closer than either of those, so a system that makes me search by city name is either too small of a range (if I use my own town name) or too large (if I use either Boston or Providence). And if I search by state, once again I get too large of a range (I don't want to have to drive all the way across Massachusetts for a game) and I'm close enough to Rhode Island that if my search only includes MA I might miss a significant portion of gamers who are much closer than the MA-only results.

I believe the best way to do this is for the system to ultimately compare latitude and longitude of each user, but that lat and long doesn't need to be inputted by the user, and it doesn't need to be super accurate. I don't really care if somebody is 15 miles away from me or 17, especially since I know the distance is "as the crow flies" and my car's mileage will probably show something different should I try to drive from one point to the other.

Ideally people would be able to enter in their location as fine or as coarse as they like. If the user inputs a broad area (like, the state of Texas) then that user's lat and long should be somewhere in the center of Texas. It's not very accurate, but the user should probably expect this if they're inputting such a broad area. However, if they were to input Dallas, TX then their distances will be much more accurate. If they inputted their full address it would be the most accurate, but I'm not sure how fine you want to let people specify their location. I would think you'd actually want to discourage this sort of thing if the system isn't secure.

As far as how this would be implemented, I don't know. There may already be services out there you can use that'll take a location in the form of text (like "Dallas, TX, USA") and return a lat and long.

Other features I'd love:

* Specify whether I'm looking to DM or play (or both)
* Specify what types of games I like to play, and maybe even a ranking of each (so if you like some games more than others you can show that)
* Search by distance and by gaming system (for example, search for D&D 4e players within 30 miles)
* Not absolutely necessary, but it would be great if the list of gaming system had groups or a hierarchy or sorts so you could, for example, search for "D&D" and would get 4e, 3e, 3.5e, etc
* Be able to create a "game" and post vacancies, and give information about that game
* Be able to send bulk PMs/emails to users in the area that meet certain criteria (like players in a 10-mile radius who play D&D 4e) - would be opt-in by users, and ideally if you had opted to receive such messages you could still block individual users from messaging you if somebody is abusing the system or you just plain ol' don't like their games

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.

I'd like this sort of thing. I'm not sure time zone would be the best way to search for gamers because sometimes if I have a game I'm playing at night and somebody across the globe is available in the morning then they can both play in the same game just fine (and this actually happens in my case, since I live on the east coast of the US and I play a game every Monday night with a player in Japan).

An online game search system would probably work best a user looking for a game you could post up your available times for gaming (which would be stored in UTC/GMT time), your preferred online client (MapTool, OpenRPG, etc), and your game system info, while a user with an existing game that has vacancies could post up a listing for that game with similar information (when they play, what client they use, what game system they use).

 

[Morrus]

Gathering the above information, here's my trial spec. Still subject to revision of course, so comments are welcome.

Overview

The GsG system searches MEMBER PROFILES, SOCIAL GROUPS and CALENDAR EVENTS according to user-defined geographical, time-based, and profile-based criteria and outputs a list of matching results to the user.

An unregistered user can see the system and browse users but cannot use its search function or access the contact details of a user.




Entering Details

1. Registered users may enter their geographic location in their profile (in a manner to be determined). They may also select notification options, and enter details about their gaming preferences. [Note - we already store much of this data in the user profile, although it could use review/tweaking].
2. Registered users may also create Groups using the Groups functionality and assign a location to that group.
3. Registered users may also create Calendar Events using the Calendar functionality and assign a date range and location for that event.

GsG Section

1. When entering the GsG system, if no location has yet been set by the user, at the top the user's IP address is used to display their location automatically, with a prominent inviting link to search for members, events, and groups in that area, and a link to change location. If the user has set his location in his profile, the user sees that location instead.
2. The intro page automatically shows relevant profiles, events, and groups. The user may click on any of these, or use the search options to perform a custom search.
3. Below this is a Google Map thing centered on the member's location with icons indicating nearby members, events, and groups.

Searching

1. When searching for members, events, and groups, the user has an option to search for results within 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 miles of them. The user may search for members, groups, or events (or all of them, or two of them - checkboxes). The user may filter the search with criteria matching those in user profile fields, and has a flexible range of AND/OR choices to tailor his search.
2. The search result lists users and groups which meet those criteria. Each result is a link to a member profile or to a group, and some of the profile information. Each result contains an icon to PM the user.

Email Notifications

1. The user's notification options (set in his profile) allow him to be notified by email if new members or groups meet his search criteria if he is an EN World subscriber.

Below is how I'd imagine the "intro" page to look. Obviously, this is just the first page - there would be a page for detailed searches, a page for results, etc.

 

[Festivus]

So I fully understand the notification as proposed... only subscribers can recieve notifications if someone is seeking a game in your area, but the people posting that they are looking for a game do not need to be subscribers, right? Otherwise you might be severely limiting your search base.

I, for example, am sadly not a current subscriber (purely economic reasons for me at the moment), but would gladly subscribe for a short term if I was in need of players (or better yet, get the game store where we host our monthly meetup to sign up for a subscription so we can bring more people to our monthly meetup.)

 

[wedgeski]

So I fully understand the notification as proposed... only subscribers can recieve notifications if someone is seeking a game in your area, but the people posting that they are looking for a game do not need to be subscribers, right? Otherwise you might be severely limiting your search base.

It looks like Morrus is limiting full use to *registered* users, not subscribers. So, as long as you have a profile on ENW, you should be golden.

 

[Asmor]

So I fully understand the notification as proposed... only subscribers can recieve notifications if someone is seeking a game in your area, but the people posting that they are looking for a game do not need to be subscribers, right? Otherwise you might be severely limiting your search base.

I, for example, am sadly not a current subscriber (purely economic reasons for me at the moment), but would gladly subscribe for a short term if I was in need of players (or better yet, get the game store where we host our monthly meetup to sign up for a subscription so we can bring more people to our monthly meetup.)

It looks like Morrus is limiting full use to *registered* users, not subscribers. So, as long as you have a profile on ENW, you should be golden.

I had the same concern and was about to post something about, but then reread it and realized my (presumed) mistake.