Comments on: Designing products for single and multiplayer modes

By: Eight Tips for Using Game Mechanics to Design Social Software | Gauravonomics Blog For Marketers, Entrepreneurs and Activists

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 12:19:20 +0000

[...] points and feedback and social or human-generated points and feedback, which reminded me of Chris Dixon‘s (@cdixon) post on single-player and multi-player modes in [...]

By: Ken

Ken — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:55:17 +0000

A great new product that functions well in single-player & multi-player is Hunny Do. It's an iPhone app and web service that allows you to share lists to collaborate. My wife and I use it in a multi-player way to track errands, chores, shopping, birthday gifts/reminders, etc. Anything she adds to one of our shared lists is synchronized to my phone. And it has location functionality like Foursquare, so I can input how much we spend as we shop, dine, etc. We can track all the places we've been and how much we spent.

In single-player mode, I have lists that I don't share with anyone, mostly for personal stuff I need to track. But I do share another list with a co-worker for a project we're working together on.

By: Chris Clark

Chris Clark — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 10:56:43 +0000

What about ebay, craigslist or etsy? Marketplaces routinely run into the problem of a 'required network.'

By: Joe Lazarus

Joe Lazarus — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 20:14:01 +0000

Yep, Foursquare and all the location services are great examples of apps that could use more single player features. I don't have much use for Foursquare since few of my friends use it yet. I'd be willing to share a lot more of my location data with a service like that, though, if there was an easy way to automatically track my location throughout the day, search my history, see a heat map of where I spend my time, get recommendations on related places to visit, and whatnot.

By: dlifson

dlifson — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 00:41:55 +0000

My friend Josh Porter (@bokardo, now co-founder of Performable) wrote about this in 2006 - http://bokardo.com/archives/the-delicious-lesson/

I'm a huge supporter of this kind of thinking.

By: Roko

Roko — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 00:03:22 +0000

Well said. Your product should definitely be useful to one user without the need to interact with others. Otherwise you must get significant traction, which is the hard to achieve. For example people always share great dating site ideas, but not a single person can really tell you how they will get the right amount of men/women to make it work.

Also it is important to build products that do not change user behaviors. Groupon as an example works with your email. If you must require users to come to your website, you had better have a great reason.

By: chris dixon

chris dixon — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 00:02:18 +0000

True- good point.

By: Dave Blanchard

Dave Blanchard — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 23:49:44 +0000

Skype has massive single user value – cheap, one way international calling to landlines. That's why I first signed up, moving me off of AIM. Now I'm a huge skype to skype video junkie.

By: Harry DeMott

Harry DeMott — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 23:11:10 +0000

Funny your partner should mention Foursquare as a single player mode app. I checked into a restaurant with my kids this morning for breakfast and on the way home thought that while I could care less if anybody knew I was there (I'm not going out and meeting up with friends etc…) it was a good reminder of where I had been and when – and then started thinking of all the other opportunities Foursquare has ahead of it for this sort of single player mode functionality. Imagine you are out shopping and see a great shirt – why can't you check in at the store and write a note with the name of the shirt – along with a picture of it – or even better check in with the brand of the shirt at the store – and have information waiting for you when you get back home about the brand, the shirt, the store, whatever you want.

Actually, I do think Facebook works as a single player mode service. It is a fantastic digital scrapbook and while it is perhaps the ultimate network company – it is pretty functional as a repository for your digital life. (I'm now going to share this comment through Facebook)

By: Hasan Veldstra

Hasan Veldstra — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:56:34 +0000

I don't know about history of fax machines or Skype. Facebook had a predecessor of sorts, a HotOrNot-like thing for Harvard students which made Mark Zuckerberg famous on campus, which resulted in a rush of people checking out Thefacebook right after it launched, overcoming the chicken-and-egg problem overnight.

By: chris dixon

chris dixon — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:28:04 +0000

what about skype? the first fax machine? facebook?

By: Hasan Veldstra

Hasan Veldstra — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:24:38 +0000

Joshua Schachter (creator of Delicious) has said that your webapp *has* to be useful even when you are the only user for it to ever have a chance to have millions of users.

By: Tweets that mention Designing products for single and multiplayer modes cdixon.org – chris dixon's blog -- Topsy.com

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 17:50:21 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by chris dixon and Anton Litvinenko, AK2= A.KarriemA.K. AK2= A.KarriemA.K said: RT @cdixon: Designing products for single-player and multiplayer modes http://bit.ly/arcxDu [...]