YC
MMOs in the Instagram Era: Highrise (S18) - YC Gaming Tech Talks 2020
@ Y Combinator
12/07/20
Takeaways
J
Jimmy
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
Highrise has over 5 million downloads and generates over a million dollars in monthly revenue.
J
Jimmy
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
In designing Highrise, we focused on creating an experience that feels like both an app and a game, which is crucial for user engagement.
J
Jimmy
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
Highrise is a social-first MMO where players create avatars, build apartments, and engage in user-generated worlds and challenges.
J
Jimmy
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
Our design philosophy, called 'social first', prioritizes community features and social interactions before integrating game mechanics.
J
Jimmy
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
Unlike traditional game design, which often adds social features as an afterthought, we start with community elements like guilds and profiles, then incorporate gameplay.
J
Jimmy
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
The social-first approach addresses the challenge of retaining player attention by fostering friendships within the game, which keeps players engaged long-term.
J
Jimmy
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
To maintain user engagement, Highrise must feel like a social app, similar to Snapchat or Instagram, to prevent users from leaving after gameplay.
J
Jimmy
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
We learned from early experiences that players would leave Highrise for other platforms once they exhausted the game's content, highlighting the need for a strong social component.
J
Jimmy
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
To enhance user experience, we leverage the native UI capabilities of iOS and Android, ensuring a seamless interaction.
YC
Y Combinator Cast
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
Unity cannot compete with Apple's 40 years of experience in perfecting fonts and UI animations.
YC
Y Combinator Cast
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
Our architecture is a blend of 50% app and 50% game, utilizing Swift and Kotlin for Android, and C++ for the game engine.
YC
Y Combinator Cast
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
The Swift component creates a silky smooth native feel, while the C++ component manages the game engine, avatars, and business logic, shared between iOS and Android.
YC
Y Combinator Cast
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
We have a microservices architecture that allows us to swap components in and out easily, using Objective-C++ on iOS and JNI on Android for bridging.
YC
Y Combinator Cast
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
Our goal is to offload heavy lifting into the core to facilitate cross-platform development, which we've successfully achieved.
YC
Y Combinator Cast
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
This architecture enables us to create various games and products by swapping out elements of Highrise, like introducing a hero collector game or an adventure fishing game.
YC
Y Combinator Cast
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
Highrise is a social-first game, built on an architecture that combines a smooth user experience with the capabilities of a real game engine.
YC
Y Combinator Cast
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
Pocket Worlds is looking to enhance this architecture by developing more social-first experiences and games.
YC
Y Combinator Cast
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
We are a fully remote company, having operated remotely for four years, and we recently closed a Series A funding round to expand our team and develop more games.
YC
Y Combinator Cast
12/07/20
@ Y Combinator
If you're interested in joining us to build amazing games, please reach out to me directly or visit our website at pocketworlds.com.