Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Tick Tock And Joining Games In Progress

Here at Jawaker, we work to solve the issues of our players. Game play is of paramount importance to us. The number of games that are filling up with players and starting in on the increase, but our users have told us that there are players that cannot commit to complete a full game and are therefore leaving before the end of the game. This is frustrating for many players. We have also had feedback from people who admittedly state that they cannot commit to a full game, and would like to play for a little while only. Some of these users would not mind continuing a game in progress. So we decided to deploy a solution that would cater to all players.

First of all, we introduced a timer during which a player must act. If players don't act within the specified time, a card is played automatically on their behalf. This has the effect of speeding up the game play. If a user decides to leave the game, or if a card is played automatically on their behalf too many times, then that user is kicked out of the game and a computer takes over. The player's seat becomes empty so that he (or any other player) can continue the game and take over from the computer.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Play While You Wait

Today we deployed Solitaire on Jawaker as our first single player game. We are still focused on providing users with the more entertaining and engaging multiplayer card games, but we don't like to leave them waiting until the games start. We therefore added Solitaire as a game for users to play on the side.

You will notice that while playing Solitaire, the box on the right (where you would normally chat) will now get updated with information about the current games and allow you to directly join the game from within the Solitaire game. Your Solitaire game will, of course, be saved for you to go back to and complete at a later time if you wish.