Online Community Management Thread: that time that I put a Friends List in my browser game
So on my game you can buy a Monthly Memento for a tenner, which is a thing that does something special, different every month. Lately I've been preparing for a server move and that's involved going through lots of old code and being reminded of past mistakes, so lately the Monthly Mementos have been themed around having the player character ascend a set of stairs into the Problem Attic and pull out a randomly-chosen dusty old relic from the past.
I thought you might enjoy this descriptive text in which I talk about that one time we thought adding a Friends List was a grrrrreat idea.
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You spend a few minutes finding a flat bit of ground and unfolding and extending the legs and in general bollocking about trying not to get your fingers pinched by anything, until you have what's basically a tiny portable shelter made out of an old wooden door. But you know that's not where this ends, oh no; you twist the knob and dodge the ladder that rushes facehungrily downwards as you open the door. An observer would see you ascend the ladder and disappear into thin air; you see, in the non-space past the door, the dusty attic where Improbable Island keeps its old junk. You furtle around for a few minutes and emerge with...
A List of Friends
Oh haha, man, that was a feature. Back in the six months in which it looked like every game was destined to have a defined social graph, our eyes turned into dollar signs as we gibbered "I'll bloody 'ave some o' that!" and we fermented up our very own Friends List feature, which would let you know when your friends were online.
The problem was, people generally know who their friends are. There wasn't really any need to write software that collects names into a list and stamp each one with the word FRIEND; in fact, when you think about it, that's pretty fucking weird, isn't it? Normally you'd see a person, think "Oh it's my friend Jimmy Crumbles" and that's enough, you don't need to record that data anywhere, getting software involved doesn't really make much sense in most contexts. Plus, being friends with someone isn't necessarily a binary, there can be a whole bunch of wibbly squibbly soft nebulous stuff in between "Yes we're friends" and "No we're not friends." There's acquaintances, and people you work with, and people you see often and chat with but don't know their names, and people you enjoy in small doses, and all sorts of not-friends-but-not-not-friends in your life, including the vast category of "People with whom I enjoy playing this specific internet game."
Of course we didn't think too much about this, we were just adding social features because everybody else was doing it and making loads of money in the process, so we spent like three weeks writing a really nice Friends List feature and stuck it online and then took it offline again not even 12 hours later.
For a brief, glowing moment, Improbable Island had all the social weirdness of facebook, without the context in which one might be accustomed to facebook's various weirdnesses; the nebulous "Is this person my friend?" question wasn't allowed to have its answer evolve gradually and normally over time, it became a binary, yes or no, are you my friend or aren't you, you must answer right now and if I think you're my friend and you don't then what happens to us then, and what even is a friend in this context anyway, does anybody know and do any of us agree, and this is a browser game for Christ's sake people are going to treat their Friend Count the same way they'd treat any other stat. Why is that one lady going around Friending literally everyone on the whole site? Why is that one guy refusing every Friend Request? What's the story with those two people who were roleplaying with each other every day, surely they were friends, right? And now they're suddenly the bitterest of enemies? Is being my Improbable Friend the equivalent of maintaining prolonged eye contact? Does it mean that we nod at each other in the pub, or does it mean that you're going to come to my house and stay on my sofa for three weeks? Does this mean we're married now? Why is the guy who I did a brief scene with two years ago now acting like he's just bought us a tandem bicycle and matching waistcoats? Should this feel like I'm sitting down on the bench next to the lady I've RP'd with every night for the past week and rubbing up against her like a cat going "How are you today, fffrrrrrieennnd?"
The worst and most ironic part of this whole weird "Making a list of your friends" Thing is that even though nobody agrees on what adding someone to your friends list means, everybody knows that something baaaaaad is going on when you remove someone from it.
Did you ever spend throw something in the bin so hard that the bin fell over and the Thing rolled out and then you had to go over to the bin and set it upright and chuck the Thing in it again but then you change your mind and pick up the whole bin with the Thing inside and stuff it into one of those big thick black contractor bags and knot it shut and throw it out into the cold black night? Yeah. That.