Game Owners "Rewards" functionality

[Digital]

Originally suggested by @SingSong

Offer a way to allow Game Owners to offer rewards in their games for actions user may take on these forums, such as writing a review or posting on their game's page.

Even more so, allow a Game Owner to run a contest or competition from the forum, and offer rewards within their game.

 

This is to continue discussion from the larger thread.

[Hare]

Love this idea, and am definitely up for it!

[Digital]

So I think what I can do it provide to upon a successful review being posted, or a comment on a game thread, basically call a page on the game's website with information about it, containing:

• username here of the reviewer/poster
• email address of that user (possibly, it would require us revisiting our privacy policy)
• date and time of the post
• url of the post
• points to award (as set by game owner)

What would the game owner have to do:

The page that I would automatically call would have to use the above information to identify the user in their game, and decide what to award the user. Any abuse tracking will have to be handled by the game owners, we moderate such stuff here. If a post is removed or deleted, the game will get a request with a negative point number.

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@Hare @judda @SingSong Thoughts?

[SingSong]

9 hours ago, Digital said:

So I think what I can do it provide to upon a successful review being posted, or a comment on a game thread, basically call a page on the game's website with information about it, containing:

I think I get what you're saying, but would you mind rewording that, please?

 

9 hours ago, Digital said:

The page that I would automatically call would have to use the above information to identify the user in their game, and decide what to award the user.

What it sounds like you're getting at is that this system would be automated in some way? I'm a little curious about how that would work entirely. Do you plan to award users points here or even link those points to the actual game site in some way? When I envisioned this, I figured it would all be done manually (i.e. a member needs to make 5 posts in the game's preview thread for 10 points, game owner checks that member has actually made 5 posts when they say they have, and if that is true, member is able to buy the exclusive human avatar apparel in the game owner's shop for the 10 points earned, and the game owner adds it to the member's account on the game site).

[Digital]

It can be done manually without any need from me, and that would be fine. I was looking at a system that allowed the game owner or game staff to not necessarily have to count or manage points. Or even figure out what user here is the user on their site.

[Hare]

If it's possible to do this without the email, that would be great! Just to avoid having to update privacy policies. If the user here can type in theiir username or ID, that should be enough, right? They could give the points to someone else, but that doesn't seem like a big deal. 

[SingSong]

Oh, I don't mind if it's a manual system or automatic. If it could be automatic, I think that would be pretty neat (assuming the game owner wanted it that way, so as long as there are both options).

[Digital]

Of course! If you don't provide an URL to the script on your side for the forums to notify then you'd have to go about it manually. The automatic part is designed to make things more automatic and easier as well as Potok totally provide the player posting the review or comment some instant reward vs waiting on a game owner. It really is up to the game owner.

[Callum]

An automatic system screams loopholes for abuse of glitches, but if the system was written well enough then it is a fantastic idea (although I personally am not sure how easy a cross-site integration would be). A manual system screams neglect is imminent and that especially for larger sites, this is going to be a right headache.

Pros and Cons to both systems I think - but overall I love the concept and would love to see it running efficiently in the future

[Digital]

13 hours ago, Callum said:

 

An automatic system screams loopholes for abuse of glitches, but if the system was written well enough then it is a fantastic idea

 

I would agree, however with the moderation tools on the forums, easily managed still since we can still set moderation rules if something appears abusive. The site owners can choose to turn it on and off as needed also if they feel their users are abusing it.

[Digital]

To refresh this and bring it forward since it is the next focus, here are my notes for the first release of this:

• Games can be added by members.
• Games can be commented and reviewed.
• Images can be uploaded to games.

Once the base is up we can explore (and get more feedback) on the more advanced features we discussed in here like:

• Offering a way to notify games if their players review or comment on the game page here.
• Offering Adoptable integration.
  • A side thought would be to allow game owners to offer a special adoptable for reviewing their game. Could be good to generate buzz.

For promotion, reviews and comments push your game to the top of the sidebar blocks (when this live), which will be featured on the majority of the sites pages and be a great form of advertising that is essentially free.

As always, comment and give me feedback. I would love feedback from game owners in particular.

[Sparren]

8 hours ago, Digital said:

To refresh this and bring it forward since it is the next focus, here are my notes for the first release of this:

• Games can be added by members.
• Games can be commented and reviewed.
• Images can be uploaded to games.

Once the base is up we can explore (and get more feedback) on the more advanced features we discussed in here like:

• Offering a way to notify games if their players review or comment on the game page here.
• Offering Adoptable integration.
  • A side thought would be to allow game owners to offer a special adoptable for reviewing their game. Could be good to generate buzz.

For promotion, reviews and comments push your game to the top of the sidebar blocks (when this live), which will be featured on the majority of the sites pages and be a great form of advertising that is essentially free.

As always, comment and give me feedback. I would love feedback from game owners in particular.

Sounds great.

If I ever get my projects off the ground I like the sound of the adoptable integration feature you're thinking about. If game owners did offer special adopts here in exchange for reviews there would need to be some kind of quality guidelines enforced though (and the owners themselves can't do it because that might punish or silence negative critiques).

If people were to become wrapped up enough in building their collections here I could easily see some really short, inaccurate, or phoned in reviews being posted just for the sake of the reward. Possibly even reviews of games they've never played.

Edited April 4, 2017 by Sparren

[crotanite]

Think this is a great idea! Was thinking about a good way to implement it as well (been working on security features for my site so this was a good thing to try and figure out as well):

1. Game Owner agrees to allow this functionality.
2. Somewhere on a user's profile they request to connect to the Game Owner's game.
3. They enter their user id / username / email address and hit request access.
4. An api request is sent to the Game Owner's game.
5. A unique token is generated, this is then hashed and saved in the Game Owner's game database alongside the user id / username / email address.
6. The token is sent back to the forums unhashed.

Now the forums have a unique token for the user (which should be secure?) and can do whatever they please!

I believe this should be a pretty secure way to go about it, though if anyone thinks differently please share! I'm always happy to be corrected when it comes to security.

[Digital]

7 hours ago, crotanite said:

Think this is a great idea! Was thinking about a good way to implement it as well (been working on security features for my site so this was a good thing to try and figure out as well):

1. Game Owner agrees to allow this functionality.
2. Somewhere on a user's profile they request to connect to the Game Owner's game.
3. They enter their user id / username / email address and hit request access.
4. An api request is sent to the Game Owner's game.
5. A unique token is generated, this is then hashed and saved in the Game Owner's game database alongside the user id / username / email address.
6. The token is sent back to the forums unhashed.

Now the forums have a unique token for the user (which should be secure?) and can do whatever they please!

I believe this should be a pretty secure way to go about it, though if anyone thinks differently please share! I'm always happy to be corrected when it comes to security.

Although I would agree your method makes a lot of sense and is standard in terms of modern security (essentially you are talking about OAuth), I am concerned about the impact on getting existing games to implement it. I would be worried about collecting such personal information about a game players account on this site as well.

The large issue is most of the existing games in existence and live are older codebases, and very few owners are avid coders, or seeking to add on to their codebases outside of game specific features. This limits us to a certain degree in just how much we can expect of them. As mentioned above, the idea was to send over a POST request (this would be server to server, so not ajax, thus invisible to any user) that would send over key information for the game owners to try and match on their end. It would be up the to the game owners to decide how that worked. This way they would handle it much like any form submit request (easy to implement).

We would probably at time of comment or review just have a field asking for the "IGN", or In-game Name of the user, which we would send in the request to the game owners game. This way our Game Owners can keep it simple and look up and do whatever they needed on their side.

 

Again, as always I am open to thoughts on this.

[Digital]

Just now, Matthew said:

I would like to integrate this with my in-development game, if possible. I'm happy for either a POST (JSON format, ideally) to an endpoint I control (that would be the easiest one to integrate with) although I am also happy to develop out a small OAuth integration too.

Awesome, as soon as it is up, I will shoot you details!

[crotanite]

1 hour ago, Digital said:

Although I would agree your method makes a lot of sense and is standard in terms of modern security (essentially you are talking about OAuth), I am concerned about the impact on getting existing games to implement it. I would be worried about collecting such personal information about a game players account on this site as well.

The large issue is most of the existing games in existence and live are older codebases, and very few owners are avid coders, or seeking to add on to their codebases outside of game specific features. This limits us to a certain degree in just how much we can expect of them. As mentioned above, the idea was to send over a POST request (this would be server to server, so not ajax, thus invisible to any user) that would send over key information for the game owners to try and match on their end. It would be up the to the game owners to decide how that worked. This way they would handle it much like any form submit request (easy to implement).

We would probably at time of comment or review just have a field asking for the "IGN", or In-game Name of the user, which we would send in the request to the game owners game. This way our Game Owners can keep it simple and look up and do whatever they needed on their side.

 

Again, as always I am open to thoughts on this.

But I guess the only data you'd be sending would be the token (to confirm the request is correct and for which user) and then the data. As long as what data is being sent over to the Game Owner is clear and understood there should be no problem. Data could be the number of points, the event with an array of participants etc. I don't see there being any problem with such a thing as long as everything is understood on both ends.

And from a programming stand point, something like this would not be difficult to develop. If it gets up and running I would also be interested in integrating it in my in-development game.

[Digital]

3 minutes ago, crotanite said:

And from a programming stand point, something like this would not be difficult to develop. If it gets up and running I would also be interested in integrating it in my in-development game.

My goal will be to try and make implementation extremely easy. When it goes live I will also ping you!