Let the robot choose a game for us!

Match Bot

Duration

3 weeks

The Scenario

Lea is a full-time web developer that loves video games. After a full day at work, all that she wants is to have a casual online playing session with her friends on PC. In the evening, Lea connects to her favourite Discord server and joins her friends Jonas, Omar and Barb in a general voice channel.

The big question is, what game will they play?

At first, they thought about playing Battlefield but Barb does not own this game. Also, Barb hates shooters. The second option is Civilization, but this time Omar is the one who does not own it. So they decide to open their steam accounts and manually look for their games in common. They all own Red Dead Redemption! Great! But don't get excited yet, this game file size is 40Gb! Lea does not have time to download this tonight, she has to go to bed soon.

The Problem

Picking up an online multiplayer game to casually play with friends on PC could be a complex task.

PC gamers own a lot of games, they accumulate these big quantities of games throughout time, or buying during sales, or getting them as freebies offered weekly/monthly by several different store platforms.

Games are usually distributed between several platforms that are not connected. For example, Steam, Epic Games, Ubisoft Store, EA Store, Amazon Prime, Xbox, etc.

They don't know what games they have in common. Store platforms usually offer a “games in common” feature to users, but when your games are scattered over lots of different platforms those features are not that useful.

People have their own requirements. Some gamers don't like a specific genre or do not own a powerful PC to download a heavy game.

It takes too much time to pick a game.

Challenge

How do we make casually picking a game to play online with friends less demanding and time-consuming?

Knowing the community

I began the research process by gathering some quantitative data through a survey shared on online gaming communities (mostly Facebook). The goal of this survey was to identify:

• Basic demographics (age, gender, etc)

• Most used platforms to play, buy games, talk with friends while playing

• Playing hours and who do they play with

• Buying decisions, Media consumption

Additionally, I interviewed some casual gamers and also observed them in their game decision process on Discord. Using this method I was able to identify:

• Group Interaction and decision process

• Pain points

I have decided to address PC Gamers and Discord. According to the research, PC and Discord are the most popular platforms in the communities surveyed (image above). PC is also the scenario where pain points tend to show up more often since it deals with several stores and type of players.

After gathering all survey and interview's data, I compiled it in an affinity diagram to understand the big picture.

In addition to that, during observation sessions, I was able to trace how gamers behave in a Discord voice channel when they are deciding what games to play. Below is a diagram representing the process:

Who are the gamers?

You must remember Lea, our main character from the beginning of this case study. Lea, her friends, and their story were born from the data collected during the interviews. To test some scenarios and facilitate the upcoming ideation process, I created a group of 4 individuals who would get together on a Tuesday evening to casually play some games.

These personas represent very typical behaviours and profiles that are often present in casual gaming sessions between friends. Lea, the busy full-time worker who is tired and just want to relax. Jonas, the friend who likes to organize these sessions and make sure that everyone is having fun. Carlos, the guy with the weak gaming PC. And Barb, the hardcore player who is very picky about what she plays.

After defining these key characters, I tested some scenarios to understand behaviours and find opportunities.

By analyzing those scenarios and the research data, it was clear to me that the process of choosing a game to play was a very painful and time-consuming process. Even people who enjoy the choosing process - like Jonas - at some point face some issues related to accommodating the group's requirements and taste.

Time to go to the drawing board

With my best friends pen and paper, it was time to think about some solutions and save some gamers lives.

After lots of wireframing and user flows sketching, some ideas were converted into paper prototypes and were tested with some gamers to gather reactions and opinions. Three ideas stood out as being simple and useful to most of the participants. These three ideas were:

Match Bot. A straightforward tool that allows users to add their friends into a pool and with one tap have a common game automatically picked by a bot. Rules (filters) can be added to guide the bot's decision. Users can also add the option for voting from a small selection of games.

Party Creator. Allows users - like Jonas - to create and schedules their own game party. Users can use this tool to select a group of friends, pick a game from a "games in common" list, and create an invitation for a game session on a specific day and time.

Checking Tool. Users display their own game libraries that can be checked by their friends. Games in common can be checked manually or using a filtering and search system. The tool would also provide a comparison between two or more friends.

Assuming that integration is possible. All the ideas above are assuming - based on quick research - that the app back-end code is capable of integrating with the most popular PC gaming and store platform (for example, Steam or Epic Games) to retrieve owned game lists via API. These integrations would be set up by the user during the onboarding process when they open the tool for the first time. If retrieving the list of owned games manually is not possible, users would also be able to manually create their own game library.

And the winner is

During the testings using paper prototypes, Match Bot was perceived as the most simple, intuitive and fun tool to solve the problem. Reducing a very long decision process to 15 seconds.

The automated nature of the Match Bot tool got really good reactions from users during testings. People also commented that the surprise factor of having a machine picking up a game for you to play was a very fun factor.

Although the other two ideas were usable, they were not received by the users the same way as the Match Bot. The Party Creator concept was perceived as a very specific function, not every user would like to create an event when playing casually with friends. And the Checking Tool was not as fun to use, even though it was doing the job.

Match Bot - A one-tap solution

The tool concept is very simple: Add your friends into a pool, tap the match button, the bot will auto-pick a game in common. Done!

The diagram below demonstrates how it is to use the tool, assuming that the user have already done the onboarding and set-up process.

Having the match functionality right on the home screen was crucial to make the process intuitive and fast. The main visual element of the home screen is a large Plus Button at the centre. I used the size, positioning, and colour of this object to state that this is the first step of the process.

First, you add your friends to the pool by tapping the plus button. Second, You tap the “Match Us” button, which is initially disabled until the first step is taken. Third, the bot will auto-pick a game in common by searching your and your friends' game library.

So let's pick a game for Lea and her friends to play this evening. The image below show the process of creating a match.

What if I don't like shooters? - Setting Rules

If you are like our persona Barb and do not like playing shooters, that's ok! Users can set up rules for specific matches so they got their friends’ requirements covered.

I Still want to be able to choose - Voting

On the Set Rules screen, by turning ON the voting feature, the match creator and their friends will be able to vote on what game they want to play. If voting is ON, the Match Bot will pick 4 games in common and prompt a voting screen where users will have to vote for their favourite one. After all users vote, the result will be revealed.

Friends in the pool will be invited to vote. When tapping the “Match Us!” button with the voting feature turned ON, the Match Bot will send to users in the pool an invite (notification or link) to participate in voting. If accepted, the voting screen will be prompted.

Manually checking games in common

The Friends tab and the Games tab on the navigation menu at the bottom of the home screen are a way to manually check your friend's game library and your own. If the user is looking for games in common with a specific friend, but it is not interested in using the bot to pick a game, he/she/they can go to the Friends tab and access their friend's game library from there.

The same thing can be done in the Games tab. If the user wants to know what Friends also own a specific game in his/her/their library, the user can go to the Games tab and check this information from there. The image below shows both cases.

Outcomes

Gamers do not waste their time anymore in endless discussions and searching for games to play together. During the prototype testing, gamers commented that the experience was straightforward, useful, and the tool was very fun to play with. The expectation and surprise element at the end of the auto-pick process made users very excited.