I want to build a multiplayer game contains prisoners and cops like ...
...the Escapist. The prisoners have to try to escape from the prison, the cops try to prevent it. The prisoners can collaborate and escape together, but they can be betrayed for some rewards. The cops have some technologies like camera, can be checked,...
Confidence
Engagement
Net use signal
Net buy signal
Idea type: Run Away
Multiple attempts have failed with clear negative feedback. Continuing down this path would likely waste your time and resources when better opportunities exist elsewhere.
Should You Build It?
Don't build it.
Your are here
The idea of a multiplayer prison escape game with cops and prisoners falls into a category where similar attempts have generally not resonated well with users. With 4 similar products identified, we have a medium level of confidence in this assessment, but it also signals potential competition. These similar products received high engagement, with an average of 14 comments, suggesting that while people are talking about these games, it's crucial to understand the nature of the feedback. The key is to carefully analyze the comments and criticisms to understand why these games did not gain traction and identify potential pitfalls to avoid.
Recommendations
- Delve deeply into the negative comments from similar games like the online 2D MMO written in Rust and JavaScript. Users criticized the control scheme, difficulty and glitches. Understanding why these games were perceived negatively will inform your design choices and help you avoid repeating the same mistakes.
- Explore alternative, related problems that your skills could solve. Perhaps there's a niche within the broader gaming market that's underserved. For example, instead of a direct 'cops and robbers' scenario, could you focus on the social dynamics and betrayal aspects in a different setting, like a survival game or a social deduction game?
- If you've already started building the game, assess whether the underlying technology could be repurposed for a different, more viable project. Maybe the networking architecture or the AI system could be adapted for a different genre or application.
- Speak directly with at least three people who have tried similar games, and ask them about their unmet needs and pain points. Understanding their experiences firsthand will provide valuable insights that you won't find in online reviews or market research. Ask them specifically about what would make them enjoy such a game.
- Based on your research, identify a new game idea that addresses the shortcomings of previous attempts. This might involve a significant pivot or a completely new concept, but it's crucial to learn from past failures and avoid repeating them.
- Before committing to development, create a detailed prototype focusing on core mechanics and conduct thorough playtesting with your target audience. Focus specifically on mitigating the technical and control issues reported by users of similar games.
Questions
- Given the criticisms of similar games, particularly regarding control schemes and difficulty, how will you ensure that your game offers a more intuitive and enjoyable user experience?
- Considering the potential for bots to ruin the experience, as mentioned in the feedback for similar products, what specific measures will you implement to prevent botting and maintain fair gameplay?
- How can you differentiate your game from existing 'cops and robbers' games and create a unique selling proposition that attracts players and keeps them engaged long-term, addressing the issue of unoriginality that plagued similar games?
Your are here
The idea of a multiplayer prison escape game with cops and prisoners falls into a category where similar attempts have generally not resonated well with users. With 4 similar products identified, we have a medium level of confidence in this assessment, but it also signals potential competition. These similar products received high engagement, with an average of 14 comments, suggesting that while people are talking about these games, it's crucial to understand the nature of the feedback. The key is to carefully analyze the comments and criticisms to understand why these games did not gain traction and identify potential pitfalls to avoid.
Recommendations
- Delve deeply into the negative comments from similar games like the online 2D MMO written in Rust and JavaScript. Users criticized the control scheme, difficulty and glitches. Understanding why these games were perceived negatively will inform your design choices and help you avoid repeating the same mistakes.
- Explore alternative, related problems that your skills could solve. Perhaps there's a niche within the broader gaming market that's underserved. For example, instead of a direct 'cops and robbers' scenario, could you focus on the social dynamics and betrayal aspects in a different setting, like a survival game or a social deduction game?
- If you've already started building the game, assess whether the underlying technology could be repurposed for a different, more viable project. Maybe the networking architecture or the AI system could be adapted for a different genre or application.
- Speak directly with at least three people who have tried similar games, and ask them about their unmet needs and pain points. Understanding their experiences firsthand will provide valuable insights that you won't find in online reviews or market research. Ask them specifically about what would make them enjoy such a game.
- Based on your research, identify a new game idea that addresses the shortcomings of previous attempts. This might involve a significant pivot or a completely new concept, but it's crucial to learn from past failures and avoid repeating them.
- Before committing to development, create a detailed prototype focusing on core mechanics and conduct thorough playtesting with your target audience. Focus specifically on mitigating the technical and control issues reported by users of similar games.
Questions
- Given the criticisms of similar games, particularly regarding control schemes and difficulty, how will you ensure that your game offers a more intuitive and enjoyable user experience?
- Considering the potential for bots to ruin the experience, as mentioned in the feedback for similar products, what specific measures will you implement to prevent botting and maintain fair gameplay?
- How can you differentiate your game from existing 'cops and robbers' games and create a unique selling proposition that attracts players and keeps them engaged long-term, addressing the issue of unoriginality that plagued similar games?
- Confidence: Medium
- Number of similar products: 4
- Engagement: High
- Average number of comments: 14
- Net use signal: -7.5%
- Positive use signal: 0.9%
- Negative use signal: 8.4%
- Net buy signal: -3.8%
- Positive buy signal: 0.0%
- Negative buy signal: 3.8%
Help
This chart summarizes all the similar products we found for your idea in a single plot.
The x-axis represents the overall feedback each product received. This is calculated from the net use and buy signals that were expressed in the comments. The maximum is +1, which means all comments (across all similar products) were positive, expressed a willingness to use & buy said product. The minimum is -1 and it means the exact opposite.
The y-axis captures the strength of the signal, i.e. how many people commented and how does this rank against other products in this category. The maximum is +1, which means these products were the most liked, upvoted and talked about launches recently. The minimum is 0, meaning zero engagement or feedback was received.
The sizes of the product dots are determined by the relevance to your idea, where 10 is the maximum.
Your idea is the big blueish dot, which should lie somewhere in the polygon defined by these products. It can be off-center because we use custom weighting to summarize these metrics.
The x-axis represents the overall feedback each product received. This is calculated from the net use and buy signals that were expressed in the comments. The maximum is +1, which means all comments (across all similar products) were positive, expressed a willingness to use & buy said product. The minimum is -1 and it means the exact opposite.
The y-axis captures the strength of the signal, i.e. how many people commented and how does this rank against other products in this category. The maximum is +1, which means these products were the most liked, upvoted and talked about launches recently. The minimum is 0, meaning zero engagement or feedback was received.
The sizes of the product dots are determined by the relevance to your idea, where 10 is the maximum.
Your idea is the big blueish dot, which should lie somewhere in the polygon defined by these products. It can be off-center because we use custom weighting to summarize these metrics.
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Online Tournament for the Prisoner's Dilemma (programming challenge)
I've created an interesting (at least to me) game that I think others might enjoy. It's based on the Prisoner's Dilemma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma). Specifically, my inspiration is Axelrod's tournament/experiment (https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/project...) from the 1980s.In summary, you create a strategy that's exposed via HTTP. Multiple times a day, my game server matches your strategy with someone else's, and the two strategies play a variation of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. The server tracks scores and displays them on a leaderboard. All decisions from every matchup are available for public viewing.I believe there are some interesting optimizations that will lead to an engaging challenge. Specifically, your strategy is aware of its opponent's ID from the start of the matchup, and all the opponent data is available publicly.Right now, it's running in "beta" mode so that I can incorporate any feedback (which I'd love to have!). If you have ideas on how to improve this to make it more challenging/fun/etc., please let me know.
1
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An online 2D MMO game, written in Rust and JavaScript
I made a game (https://polyfight.io/) which revolves around a player (a tank) leveling up and upgrading by killing shapes and other tanks (partially inspired by https://diep.io). It has a bunch of features, a vast number of tanks, an inbuilt chatting system, clans to make teams with your friends, a colour scheme maker, controllable sandboxes which can be public or private, a last man standing gamemode, and an inbuilt 1v1 system with its own ELO rankings and a global leaderboard. The game has a few players right now, and I'd hope to spread the joy players have with this game to people here, as well as any critiques people have about the game. Exploits/gray hat hacking is warmly welcomed, as I strive to make sure my game is secure and hard to script/bot in.
Users appreciate the technical achievement of porting ioquake3 to wasm, WebGL, and WebRTC, with added gamepad and touch controls. They suggest using WebRTC or WebTransport for better networking, with some preferring TCP for MMORPGs and others suggesting a mix of UDP and TCP. There are reports of bugs causing instant death and teleportation issues, and some users struggle with the controls. The game is compared to agar.io and diep.io, with some calling it a clone. Suggestions include client-side prediction to reduce lag, an X button to close the info box, and random usernames for guests. There are also requests for offline access and concerns about bots ruining the experience.
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171
64
-12.5%
-6.2%
64
171
1.6%