SquadUp Gaming

Timeline: October-December 2021

In fall and winter of 2021, I attended a startup studio class where we learned how to take an idea from ideation to launch. My startup team, by the name of “Gen Z Suppliers”, wanted to explore the gaming space. From personal experience, we felt that gamers have a hard time genuinely connecting with others in an environment where negativity is often normalized. We wanted to explore solutions in which we could better connect the gaming community. Our startup was an entertainment service that aimed to help disconnected gamers find positive and safe gaming experiences, meaningful gaming groups and communities, and other gamers on the same level of mastery.

Problem Statement

How might we connect gamers looking for new communities, teammates, and tournaments and provide them with a fun and safe online experience.

Observation

Although there are other similar platforms that separately offer gamers a way to find teammates, create tournaments, or search for communities, we have yet to find one platform that combines all of these together. With this visible lack in the community, we aim to find a solution and better the gaming industry.

We started with identifying the possible circumstances and desires of our audience, gamers who want to become more connected with other gamers and find fun and safe online experiences. We looked at potential elements our startup will need in social, economic, and technological aspects.

Social Economic Technology

Industry Research

According to the Entertainment Software Association, players tend to take great pride, often using their rank as a status symbol. Dominance hierarchies are common within groups of ranked players, which tend to turn negative in a lot of instances.

On many online platforms, like Reddit, gamers have expressed reasons on why they leave the gaming community due to toxicity, sexism, racism, and different types of harassment. Toxic players have been a big issue for a long time, and it's prevalent in almost every entertainment-related community, but especially online gaming.

“81% experienced some form of harassment while gaming”

- ADL 2020

Surprisingly, research shows that a large proportion of individuals playing multiplayer games are experiencing many different forms of abuse from other gamers. We noticed that since there is a lack of attention to these specific issues, individuals are experiencing more loneliness and anxiety in the gaming community. We aim to design a service that will help narrow this gap and increase the psychological safety between gamers.

Personas

The three personas we wanted to focus on were casual, minority, and professional gamers. We wanted to reach a variety of audiences who want to play video games for fun but may also want to build and play against strong teams.

Competitive Analysis

We analyzed the top features of several different applications that had similarities to our idea in terms of communicating with and finding other gamers, like GamerLink, Plink, and Discord. As for features, we looked at each application and any features like matchup, tournaments, or profile personalization. Along with these features, we planned to add new unique features in our application, like ways to directly combat toxicity in gaming and increase the bond between teammates. By doing so, we can provide them with a multitude of services while also fueling their gaming ambitions.

Through competitor research, we were able to get a first hand experience of each application. In these competitors, we saw what features stood out, what features were overlooked, and how we could combine features in our application.

Sketches

During a brainstorming session, we sketched our application. From those sketches, we handcrafted a prototype with clay, paper, and other craft materials to make a physical version so that our peers could interact and give quick feedback on their experience. During the user testing session, we explained the basic concept of our startup to our peers and then allowed them to “click” on the center buttons to activate panels that overlaid the base, to simulate the changing of pages.

Prototyping

Based on the user feedback we received on our lo-fi prototypes, we decided to use similar layouts to competitor platforms to ensure an intuitive user interface.

We created three main categories on the home screen with messaging and pinned group chats for easy access and personal achievements on the side, so new teammates can see tags and interests before matching. Below are the prototype features.

Features

Matchmaking

Within our matchmaking feature, we wanted to keep it simple and have a user-friendly interface. Based on tags and interests, the user would be able to choose what games they want to play and their level of mastery overall. From all of the data collected, they would be matched into groups that would be successful, based on the algorithm.

To ensure that the platform would be utilized by a large number of users, we wanted to make sure that we include multiple genres and types of content that would be interesting to many different audiences, including the personas we have focused on.

Tournaments

Keeping with our theme, we wanted to keep the tournament pages user friendly by creating different slots with different skill levels, entry fee, and team size. By having these differentiating factors, users can quickly scan the available tournaments and select which fits their liking. After selecting a tournament, the user will receive a confirmation message with all the necessary information.

Coaching

Similar to the tournaments page, the coaching feature shows all of the different coaching opportunities, the different available games and details for the listing. After signing up for a coaching session, the user will receive a confirmation message for the appointment.

Testing

Design Expo

On the UCSD campus, the Design and Innovation Building had just opened. Our class was invited to display our startup projects at one of the opening week events, which was a perfect opportunity for us to get live feedback on our idea and prototype. We created a poster explaining the features and goals of our startup and used Figma’s prototyping feature to test it on people stopped at our poster.

Results

Testers suggested that the main possible reason behind toxicity in gaming could be because of anonymity. Thus, a way to fix it could be a way to verify a user's identity, like registering a phone number per account. Second, people suggested that the application can make it easier for gamers to find similar games with their teammates. Third, they reinforced the idea that there will need to be a good review system in place to weed out the players with problematic behaviors. And lastly, in order to establish a connection between previous matchups, we could incorporate a history log that keeps track of past matchups as to help those connect better with teams that they have already played with.

Social Media and Branding

As the last part of our project, we created branding, social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram), and email marketing & digital advertising posters.

Final Thoughts

This startup class was really unique to my past projects. I learned a lot about startups and the design process while working with my teammates and the professor. I will use the skills I’ve gained through this project to help push me towards my entrepreneurial goals. Thanks for reading!