How Mobile Games Beat TikTok

Hey everyone, I'm John Coogan and today I want to talk about a really cool new app I've been beta testing. It's called PlayBite, and it's an interesting blend between a social networking site and a video game. The product is still in early development, but the team is running the most effective beta test that I've ever seen, so I wanted to share what I thought that they were doing well in the hopes that other companies would follow in their footsteps. The company was founded by a friend of mine, Kyle Russell, who was working for Andreessen Horowitz while I was working on Soylent. So we got to know each other through board meetings and Twitter conversations, and I've been hoping that he was going to launch his own thing for a while now. He had described what he was building a couple times publicly, but it wasn't until he invited me to join the beta that it really clicked for me. Here's how the app works upon logging in, you are presented with a pretty standard feed, similar to Instagram or TikTok, but instead of static content like pictures and videos, everything in the feed is a game. When you click on the Play button, the the game starts and you try and steer your character toward some sort of goal. Each game is simple, usually taking only a few seconds to finish, but what makes them really interesting is that they are all community created. Instead of developing a fictional world with plot lines and character designs, the PlayBite team has released a highly flexible sandbox game engine that allows anyone to make one of these games in just a few clicks. The game creation process is really easy to pick up and run with. There are just a few different types of objects that you can place around the level, things like where the player starts, where the end goal is, along with hazards and collectibles. Here's a level that I built in about five minutes using screenshots of YouTube icons. Where it gets really interesting is in the tags field. Each object in the level can be customized with tags that let you change the collision behavior on screen appearance, movement patterns, and physics like gravity. The implementation is simple enough that you don't really need to read anything to get started, but it's deep enough that you can still create fairly complex interactions and tell a bit of a story within the game that you create. The first bite that I saw that really got this point across was called Amazon Delivery Training. The game seems simple enough. Your character is an Amazon package and the goal appears to be at the top of the stairs. But when you move your character to the top of the stairs, you die and you have to start the level over. It's only after you deliver the package to the bottom of the stairs that you win. Clearly, whoever made this is frustrated with their recent deliveries and and the game conveys that message in a really clever way. PlayBite is in an interesting position currently. Sandbox games that focus on user created content have a rich history. SimCity was one of the first to find success in this genre in 1989 and since then the category has grown significantly. Second Life launched its online virtual world in 2003 and is still active today with nearly 1 million active users. And while a million users is pretty good, Minecraft has over 100 million users and was sold to Microsoft for $2.5 billion. It's also become the best selling video game of all time with over 200 million copies sold. And as if that wasn't impressive enough for the sandbox category, Roblox, another sandbox game with even more customization Options, recently passed 164 million monthly active users, with over half of all children aged under 16 in the United States playing the game. Roblox is now on the cusp of IPOing and should be worth over $8 billion when it does. Crazy. The scale of these sandbox games is truly incredible and I think this type of scale is really only achievable with a sandbox approach. The cost of producing new content on an ongoing basis is extremely high and you'll never be able to satisfy every niche community with a user driven approach. You never have to split your player base with a controversial design decision since the player is always in charge of their own design. And that's what's interesting about the PlayBite beta. Even though the number of games is a bit limited at the moment, they are laser focused on building great tools to let anyone create fun and engaging experiences. Undoubtedly the best content will come from the community, not the PlayBite team directly. But attracting creators to a new platform can be extremely challenging. It's a classic chicken and egg problem. No one will use the app if it's devoid of content. But PlayBite's beta program is solving this problem in a really intelligent way. They set up a waitlist form on their landing page where they collect emails, then they slowly onboard people to the app in waves. Simultaneously, the team is creating games on the platform using the creation tools that they are actively developing. This not only helps them understand the user experience, but also populates the app so that when beta testers arrive, it's not a ghost town Getting a few people to try your new app in beta is nothing new, but the Playbite team has taken it a step further by setting up a Discord server where where all the beta testers can chat about their experience and give feedback directly to the developers. They have channels for feature requests, bug reports, and a feed of all the new levels that get published. This direct communication is critical when you're iterating on your minimum viable product and working towards product market fit. At many startups, early adopter feedback gets relegated to a monthly survey or occasional user interviews that create a much longer feedback cycle. I think every early stage startup should be using a tool like Discord to help facilitate direct customer interaction during a beta testing period. But that's not the only thing. I think Playbite has done really well. They also clearly understand the importance of keeping beta testers engaged. I can't tell you how many apps I've tried once only to never open the app again. It's natural for some beta testers to drop out after their first experience, but the team is fighting this by sending concise email updates with info about what's changed in the app when they push a big update. The first time I tried the app I played a few games but I didn't create anything and I never came back. But once I got the email about the latest release, I tried the app again and then I found some new content that I liked even more, which led me to create my own byte. Running a successful beta test requires finding a balance between letting your testers drop out if they genuinely aren't interested in your product and annoying everyone with endless updates asking them to try the same version once again if you haven't made any significant changes. The Playbite team is doing a great job of not being annoying while still encouraging testers to try each iteration and give feedback. The last thing I love about the Playbite beta test is how clearly you can see that the core game creation mechanic is their main priority. Just since I've been testing, they've already added a bunch of really significant features to make the games better, but they still don't have a password reset button. I love this. Many entrepreneurs don't want to launch until they have a shiny brand with a beautiful landing page and have checked all the boxes that a product manager at Facebook would check for a big tech product launch. This is a disastrous approach and we all just witnessed what happens when this is taken to an extreme with Quibi. Instead of building Quibi Iteratively by first launching a single show with a small audience and then collecting feedback, they raised nearly $2 billion before launching and ran headfirst into a bunch of obvious problems when they finally got into consumers hands. So I have two main takeaways from this first, if you like games at all, you should definitely sign up to be part of the beta program@playbite IO. And second, if you're an entrepreneur working on an early stage product, you should copy as much of the Playbite beta program as you can. I think it's a great pattern for product development, and I genuinely believe that building products in this way will lead to a greater chance of success. But let me know what you think. Are there any particularly great beta programs that you've been a part of? Leave me a comment so I can check them out, and if you enjoyed the video, please consider subscribing to the channel. Thanks for watching.