We have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how and when to implement user comforts and functionality. The idea for the site was always to create a user system that we would want to use. We looked at the other sites that were out there and found that logging into most of them felt pointless. Being a user on many sites carried nothing with it – no reason, no advantage, nothing to incentivize the time it took to sign up. With the exception of a few successful communities, there just wasn’t any reason to try and be a part of a community. So we started thinking about how to make logging in matter.

Reputation Systems

The first answer was to give users agency – give them something to do. We wanted to start as simple as possible though, so we thought we’d create a reputation system. A little mechanic that rewarded users for commenting and discussing with one another seemed like the simplest thing we could do to show users that what they said mattered. So we wanted users to be able to comment, upvote, downvote, and see each other’s respective scores. The coolest way to do this, to us at least, was to represent it like experience.

Make the point system an experience system, and in the beginning maybe it’s just a score, but down the road we can implement levels to attain, benchmarks, achievements, and even stuff accounts could unlock. That was all stuff that got us really excited. That was a user system that seemed a lot more like something gamers would want to be a part of.

The only problem was that was a lot more complex than the tools we had in the beginning. It turns out to do all of that requires understanding of various databases and how they communicate with the frontend of a website. The system wasn’t overly complicated, but you still had to have someone who knew how to build it out. We didn’t have that. Definitely not in the beginning, but even as we started to grow. It turns out knowing how to build a page and cool features isn’t the same as building out a database.

Long story short, it has taken us much longer than we thought to get the ball rolling on this. Part of the problem was that the more we thought about something, the more we realized we needed to plan for it. Even simple questions – how do you make a profile feel unique? – led us to lots of discussions, trials and errors, and problems.

Avatar Libraries

Avatars are probably the simplest way to let users give their profile an identity. Initially, we created a rudimentary system to allow users to load their own pictures and put a profile. Pretty quickly we realized how onerous it could be giving the thumbs up to every submitted icon picture though.

It’s a pretty common practice, but we realized that if we did that, we’d need to have some way of monitoring explicit or hateful images. So then we had to have that discussion and figure out a way around it. Ultimately, we thought giving users a small library of images to choose from was the best answer. Sure, in the beginning there would be a small number of avatars, and it would make everyone feel rather similar, but it was a starting place. The World of Warcraft forums started in the exact same way, and so too did the League of Legends accounts. It would also allow us to control the tone and type of avatars, customizing them for certain situations or events. In the beginning, it will only be a handful, but the idea is to start small and grow big. It would be even cooler to do events and offer achievements that would unlock other avatars.

Roles and User Abilities

As the leveling system and the avatars started to become more fleshed out, we also realized we wanted users to be more of a part of EKGaming – this is the Electronic Kingdom of Gaming  after all. The next idea was to allow users to choose a role. That would be really cool, we thought. It could be something simple like being a commenter or a reviewer, but we could also integrate the theme of the site. Users create an account, and then they fit a role within the kingdom, something like Healer or Wizard or Knight. The idea was that this would give them access to exclusive avatars and maybe even to unique things they could do within the site, stuff other roles couldn’t do.

Again, our capabilities limited our possibilities. We still want to do that, and we still have some really awesome ideas for how to do it. For now though, we are focusing on getting the Experience system in and working perfectly and finding an artist to work with to create the avatars we are envisioning.

Finding the Talent

It’s a slow process of finding the right people for the job. We still do a lot of contracted out work, so finding the person that fits perfectly with what we want and we know we can trust to do it right make it take frustratingly long.

Still, the user system IS being built out. In the beginning it will just be a simple profile, an Experience system, and a catalogue of avatars. As we grow, roles will become a larger factor, Experience will be tracked to represent user levels and abilities, achievements will be unlocked, and we even want to put in other interactive elements to interact with each other and the site.

The users are the cornerstone of EKGaming’s future, so we are taking it very seriously. It will be an ever-evolving process, but if we do it right, it will also be one of the coolest things on the site, one that we will personally use alongside everyone else.

Until next time,
KingTon