- HiRISE is a social-first MMO game app with over 5 million downloads and generating over a million in monthly revenue.
- The game is designed with a social-first philosophy, prioritizing social features over traditional game design.
- The architecture of HiRISE combines native UI capabilities of iOS and Android with a C++ game engine, allowing for a seamless integration of components.
- The focus on social features aims to retain long-term attention from players by creating a vibrant community.
- The architecture enables the creation of different games and products by swapping out the mini and metagame of HiRISE.
- Pocket Worlds, the company behind HiRISE, is a remote team that recently closed a Series A funding round and is looking to expand its team.

Highrise (S18) gives a tech talk on their gaming startup, business opportunities and open roles.

Watch all the talks and create a profile on YC's Work at a Startup to connect with founders and find your next role:

https://www.workatastartup.com/events/gaming-tech-talks-2020

I'm the co-founder and CTO of Pocket Worlds.

We're HiRISE, and we built HiRISE, the app, which is available on iOS and Android.

And I think to date it has over 5 million downloads and we're grossing over a million a month in revenue.

So today I'm going to walk you guys through the process of designing and building an MMO game in this era of mobile apps and social networks.

I'll talk about the architectural design decisions that we made that enables HiRISE to feel simultaneously like an app and also a game and why that's really important.

I'll also talk about our vision as Pocket Worlds and how we plan to leverage the HiRISE architecture to create more exciting social-first games, experiences, and worlds.

So for those that are not familiar, HiRISE is a social-first design MMO.

So players come in, they design an avatar, they build an apartment, They go into this fully user-generated world to visit other people's faces and take part in challenges.

The unique part of HiRISE and the HiRISE experience compared to the multitude of games you see in the App Store is our design philosophy that we call social first.

So with traditional game design, you often have a game designer that would come up with a game, a mini game concept, and then would build out a metagame loop, and finally sprinkle in some social features like plans, inbox, marketplace, as almost an afterthought.

Under the social first philosophy, what we do is we start with the messenger, a newsfeed for a community, guilds, profiles, an economy, and a vibrant world, and then we add in the game.

In the case of HiRise, that game is a straightforward fashion contest where you design outfits and compete with other players.

The core part of why Social First works is that it solves the critical piece that's missing in most all mobile games today, which is the issue of long-term attention.

A player joins HiRise for the design game, but they really ultimately stay for the friends they meet in our world.

But as you can see kind of from the screenshots on the left, our heavy focus on social features really require a UI that feels like an app, very much like Snapchat or Instagram.

Otherwise, users will come in, play the game, make their friends, and then really move to those other platforms once they're done and kind of gotten everything they can out of the game.

And that's precisely what we saw in the early days of PyRise.

So to achieve that user experience, we really realized that we must leverage the UI capabilities native to iOS and Android and could not rely on anything that game engines like Unity can offer.

There's just really no way that Unity could compete with Apple's 40 years of experience perfecting fonts and UI animations.

So the architecture that we came up with actually mirrors our product's position of being 50% app and 50% game.

It is 50% Swift and Kotlin on the Android side, and 50% C++.

The Swift component handles all UI to create the silky smooth native feel.

And the C++ component handles the game engine, the world, the avatars, business logic, and is shared as a submodule between iOS and Android.

The components are seamlessly integrated via a system of bridges that are separated by feature, which creates a nice little microservices architecture that we can swap components in and out of.

The bridging between the components is achieved using Objective C++ on the iOS side and JNI on Android.

And the secondary objective here is, of course, to offload as much of the heavy lifting as possible into the core to help with cross-platform development, which we were able to achieve.

So I think what's more interesting is that this architecture really enables us to create different games and products that offer different experiences by swapping out the mini and the metagame of HiRise with something else.

So maybe I'm thinking like a hero collector where you're walking around in our virtual world collecting monsters to do battle with, with the exact same avatar world messenger guild system as HiRise.

We're an adventure fishing game, but the possibilities are really endless as we're not only offering the game as the core attraction, but rather the social experience as a whole.

So in the interest of time, I'm not going to dig too deep into the nitty gritty details of our implementation, but I would like to summarize what we talked about today, which is Hi-Rez is a social first game that is 50% app and 50% game.

It is built on an architecture that leverages the silky smooth UX of native UI and the power of a real game engine.

And we at Pocket Worlds is looking to take this architecture to the next level by building more experiences and games that are social first by design.

So I'll wrap things up by talking a little bit about our company.

We are entirely remote and we have been remote for 4 years, so we are ahead of the curve and we're doing very well.

We just closed a Series A to build out more games and worlds and we're looking to grow our entire team with lots of open positions.

So if you're interested in building amazing games and crafting worlds with us, please email me directly at jay at highg.rs or check out our website at pocket worlds dot com.


Speaker 0: Hi, everybody. I'm Jimmy. I'm the co-founder and CTO of Pocket Worlds. We're HiRISE, and we built HiRISE, the app, which is available on iOS and Android. And I think to date it has over 5 million downloads and we're grossing over a million a month in revenue.

So today I'm going to walk you guys through the process of designing and building an MMO game in this era of mobile apps and social networks. I'll talk about the architectural design decisions that we made that enables HiRISE to feel simultaneously like an app and also a game and why that's really important. I'll also talk about our vision as Pocket Worlds and how we plan to leverage the HiRISE architecture to create more exciting social-first games, experiences, and worlds. So for those that are not familiar, HiRISE is a social-first design MMO. So players come in, they design an avatar, they build an apartment, They go into this fully user-generated world to visit other people's faces and take part in challenges.

The unique part of HiRISE and the HiRISE experience compared to the multitude of games you see in the App Store is our design philosophy that we call social first. So with traditional game design, you often have a game designer that would come up with a game, a mini game concept, and then would build out a metagame loop, and finally sprinkle in some social features like plans, inbox, marketplace, as almost an afterthought. Under the social first philosophy, what we do is we start with the messenger, a newsfeed for a community, guilds, profiles, an economy, and a vibrant world, and then we add in the game. In the case of HiRise, that game is a straightforward fashion contest where you design outfits and compete with other players. The core part of why Social First works is that it solves the critical piece that's missing in most all mobile games today, which is the issue of long-term attention.

A player joins HiRise for the design game, but they really ultimately stay for the friends they meet in our world. But as you can see kind of from the screenshots on the left, our heavy focus on social features really require a UI that feels like an app, very much like Snapchat or Instagram. Otherwise, users will come in, play the game, make their friends, and then really move to those other platforms once they're done and kind of gotten everything they can out of the game. And that's precisely what we saw in the early days of PyRise. So to achieve that user experience, we really realized that we must leverage the UI capabilities native to iOS and Android and could not rely on anything that game engines like Unity can offer.

There's just really no way that Unity could compete with Apple's 40 years of experience perfecting fonts and UI animations. So the architecture that we came up with actually mirrors our product's position of being 50% app and 50% game. It is 50% Swift and Kotlin on the Android side, and 50% C++. The Swift component handles all UI to create the silky smooth native feel. And the C++ component handles the game engine, the world, the avatars, business logic, and is shared as a submodule between iOS and Android.

The components are seamlessly integrated via a system of bridges that are separated by feature, which creates a nice little microservices architecture that we can swap components in and out of. The bridging between the components is achieved using Objective C++ on the iOS side and JNI on Android. And the secondary objective here is, of course, to offload as much of the heavy lifting as possible into the core to help with cross-platform development, which we were able to achieve. So I think what's more interesting is that this architecture really enables us to create different games and products that offer different experiences by swapping out the mini and the metagame of HiRise with something else. So maybe I'm thinking like a hero collector where you're walking around in our virtual world collecting monsters to do battle with, with the exact same avatar world messenger guild system as HiRise.

We're an adventure fishing game, but the possibilities are really endless as we're not only offering the game as the core attraction, but rather the social experience as a whole. So in the interest of time, I'm not going to dig too deep into the nitty gritty details of our implementation, but I would like to summarize what we talked about today, which is Hi-Rez is a social first game that is 50% app and 50% game. It is built on an architecture that leverages the silky smooth UX of native UI and the power of a real game engine. And we at Pocket Worlds is looking to take this architecture to the next level by building more experiences and games that are social first by design. So I'll wrap things up by talking a little bit about our company.

We are entirely remote and we have been remote for 4 years, so we are ahead of the curve and we're doing very well. We just closed a Series A to build out more games and worlds and we're looking to grow our entire team with lots of open positions. So if you're interested in building amazing games and crafting worlds with us, please email me directly at jay at highg.rs or check out our website at pocket worlds dot com. Thanks.

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MMOs in the Instagram Era: Highrise (S18) - YC Gaming Tech Talks 2020