HACKER Q&A
📣 shubhankar02

Enhancing Social Interactions in Games and Apps


In the realm of game and app development, creating compelling social experiences is key to user engagement and retention. Features like real-time chat, friend requests, and personalized recommendations are essential, yet they pose significant challenges in terms of technical complexity and resource demands.

I'm exploring the development of a platform aimed at simplifying the integration of these social features, enabling developers to focus more on their core product rather than backend complexities. Before proceeding, I want to ensure that my solution addresses a genuine need in the developer community.

I'm seeking your feedback:

1.Current Challenges: Have you encountered difficulties in implementing social features (e.g., friend requests, chat systems, recommendation algorithms) within your games or apps? If so, what specific aspects have been the most challenging?

2.Existing Solutions: Are current products in the market, such as PlayFab, Photon, or others, meeting your needs for social feature integration? If not, what gaps or limitations have you identified that prevent them from being the ideal solution for your projects?

3.Unmet Needs: What are the critical problems or needs that you believe are not adequately addressed by existing platforms and services? Are there specific features or capabilities you wish were available but haven't found in current offerings?

Your insights will be incredibly valuable in helping me understand the current landscape and ensuring that my solution effectively meets the needs of developers looking to enrich their games and apps with social functionalities.

  👤 nonrandomstring Accepted Answer ✓
There are two very significant obstacles to attempting to integrate social interaction within computer applications now.

Firstly, the currency for humans, in what are otherwise blind interactions, is sharing. People want to share things; links, memes, pictures, music...

But the entire corporate ecosystem is now positioned against this. Whether it's the copyright lobby, or the morlaisers, the network owners, or the 'plantation owners' of giant walled gardens who protect their chattel...

And once you get drawn into that you'll be drowned by problems of moderation, policing, and filtering. Or you'll have a system of ill repute, abused and spammed.

The other big problem now is authenticity and identity. What even is identity? How can that function in a world of AI bots and impersonation?

To be fair, these problems have been around since IRC, but are much worse now. No solutions solve these two fundamental problems to give a "compelling experience". So you cannot simply "bolt-on" social.