How to bring two stranger together in mobile game design?

Mobile Games nowadays made people SILO, addicted and stay in their own world (less socialize)
And for those involve lots of social engagement multiple games (hack & slash type), they mostly AAA class and i can't build as indie.

What could be the best way to design a game that bring two strangers together? As in indie-friendly
I tried to think like reward player some items by getting them meet up with stranger.
E.g. "Meet a stranger and dance infront of him/her for 1 minutes to UNLOCK a sword"

So, the actual ground works are

1. Player received a quest 'Meet a stranger and dance infront of him/her for 1 minutes to UNLOCK a sword'
2. Find a nearby strangers
3. Convince the person to look at your funny dance for 1 min
4. The stranger SMS a secret CODE to player
5. Player input the secret code (backend have to check the sender is not in contact list)

But it sounds dummy and i wonder if it really 'rewarding' the player?

Comment & critics are welcome

 

I'm a little concerned about step 5. The player may have difficulty reading the secret code texted to them, at least until the Mace wears off.

 

Forcing a person to so something the dont want to do or are uncomfortable with is a reciepe for failure.
Dont do that. If people want to meet strangers the will put down there mobile device and engage with someone.

People most commonly enjoy playing games with people they know - or like me like playing single player experiences.

 

Tinder comes to mind

 

1) Co-op with random player.
2) PvP with random player.

Achievement? No. As people already said - forcing someone to do something is bad idea. I never understood all those stupid achievements in games that force players to do some stupid things which will never be done, if not that achievements. What's the point to even have such achievements? I can't remember a game, but it had many different achievements, and one of them was to invite 3 or 5 or 10 players to your friend list after you play with them and you get some reward afterwards.... oh man, how I hated it, I had to go to options and make automatically reject all friend invitations, because I was spammed with them after each game. Oh, and at start, when I didn't know about that achievement, I accepted some friend requests and then they instantly kicked me from their list, only then I understood what is happening.

And your achievement is even worse. Dance 1 minute infront of another player? Seriously? How the hell will it bring them two together? ^_^ If that achievement will worth it, then they will just do it for the reward, they won't care about relations or socialization. Players are smarter, than in real life, they obey stupid and illogical laws and government, but when it comes to game rules and features, they grow bold and smart They exploit and abuse every feature in their interest, and your "force players to socialize" will never work, unless game requires co-ordination and 100% co-operation without ability to complete it solo. But even then, the only "socialization" they will have is co-ordination of their actions.

 

Actually, what i planned to do, is to create a simple tap-titan like game, with intensive story driven design, the player would have to get items from stranger by perform strange thing (dancing... singing...) This mechanism is actually similar to what's currently available in market (invite friends/share to get more items/rewards)

I think all of you got points but i just feel like the whacky the games designed, the higher the chances it get notice @.@

 

This is a truly terrible idea. Nobody wants a game about harassing strangers. In fact, harassing strangers is a crime in most civilised countries. Don't pursue this idea. It's awful.

 

I firmly agree with@cdarklock.
Sometimes conventions have to be broken and shown there is better ways to show how rediculous previous norms used to be. Dont do something simply because others think it is acceptable.

Forcing people to meet/interact with strangers is an equally bad idea.

 

OK, but just to play Devil's Advocate (*) here, you might be OK with a game that connects you with other strangers who are also playing the same game. Using location services (which the player would have to explicitly turn on), you could broadcast your location to nearby players, and see other players near you. And then by getting together and exchanging the secret handshake, you could give each other resources or whatever.

In this case you're not harassing complete strangers; you're meeting complete strangers who have declared their willingness to meet for this purpose. Maybe there could be a street-cred component, where the size of your castle (or whatever) is advertised to other players in the area, so you get to show off a bit. And when you get sick of it, you just quit the game (or turn location services off).

I could see something like that working in places where you're likely to have a high concentration of players, e.g. school campuses or big cities. Heck, if there were such a game in Tokyo, I'd play it — I'll take any excuse to practice my Japanese.

- Joe

(*) The desktop version, of course. The mobile version requires you to either wait 2 hours or pay real cash for every contrary point you want to make, and that is just so not worth it.

 

Yeah. Like I said: Tinder.

 

pokemon go

 

This.

Games about socializing tend to fall fairly flat. Basically you are creating a dating app with an additional layer of silliness.

Games that people can socialize around tend to do much better. I met tonnes of new people during the Pokemon boom, based mainly around the shared experience of playing the game. I hear the Nintendo Switch is having a similar effect.

 

The nintendo switch OR easter eggs and secret piñata called zelda breath of the wild? It's not like there is OTHER games on switch now lol.

 

when you say "dancing for strangers", do you mean actual-real-life dancing for actual-real-life-strangers?
if so: i agree with the others that its a bad idea. it's an rape or mugging waiting to happen
imagine your child (or little sister) playing that game and going out in the world and dancing for strangers.. imagine what can happen.
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also, can people enter their own actions in the game (other then dancing)? a predator or ill-meaning person can do some real-life damage with this power.
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also, how would the game know that i got the code from a stranger, and not from a friend or that i made it up myself?


i think your idea of wanting to bring strangers together is very noble. but i would keep it in-game. not IRL.