What's a door game?
Door games are games on a platform that get you to visit the platform time and time again, playing on a regular cadence. Since you’re there anyways, you end up using the platform as a whole.
The concept of door games isn’t new. It originated from the early days of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) in the 1980s. Andrew Chen, a partner at a16z, highlighted their significance in an essay at one point — this essay influenced the way I think about building social games, and it’s well worth a read if you want a deep dive on this topic.
Back then, BBS door games like Tradewars 2002 and Legend of the Red Dragon provided simple yet engaging turn-based gameplay that kept users coming back. These games not only entertained but also fostered social interaction and community building, as players often teamed up and competed within their local areas. Despite their low-tech graphics, the persistent social experiences they offered made them incredibly sticky and memorable.
Additionally, later on we saw the rise of Facebook Gaming. This was led by companies like Zynga that doubled down and chose to focus on Facebook, creating games that Facebook users could play — these games ended up working similarly to BBS door games in that users would come back every day to play against their friends and strangers on the platform, some of these strangers ended up becoming friends through playing as well. These games on Facebook historically haven’t been referred to much as door games, but I think that term is still a great way to describe how they ended up working alongside Facebook as a whole.
Farcaster, in comparison to leaders in social like Facebook or Twitter, has a few problems:
Lack of engaging, genuinely interesting content. Lots of spam and people farming airdrops, not as much organic use — though that does seem to be getting better over time.
The app isn’t very sticky. I find myself still using Twitter a lot because most of the content I actually want to consume, and much of the information flow I need for work is there.
At a quick glance, it doesn’t feel like there’s much to do unless you’re in the know and in the right places on the app. Discoverability still needs some work.
How can we try to fix this?
We need more people coming back to Farcaster daily, posting good content that users actually want to engage with. One possible solution is to create unique, sticky social gaming experiences similar to the FB gaming era, the kind of games Zynga was creating.
Give people a reason to come back every day. They’ll come to game because they can have a unique experience they can’t get on any other platform (shoutout to Frames), but they’ll stick around because they meet friends both on the timeline and in these games that they want to engage with.
Crypto as a whole often takes a carrot-on-a-stick approach where the incentive to come back is for tokens or some other financial incentive. Farcaster, in my opinion, has shown potential in being a platform where this approach can be disrupted.
We need actual fun, engaging reasons for people to come back. While I love what $DEGEN, $HAM, and other financially incentivized projects have done on Farcaster, I worry that sometimes these coins bring people back for the wrong reasons. When prices go down, so can the daily active user count. It would be much healthier if we slowly build up a user base that is here for the protocol itself and the activities it offers.
Door games, and other genuinely engaging, interesting activities like these games can fix the aforementioned problems.
What to Watch
Here are some questions to consider as we explore the potential of door games on Farcaster, and gaming on Farcaster at large. I'd love to hear what you think about these either in the comments, or on Warpcast (you can find my announcement for this blog post here)
Are Farcaster Frames the ultimate solution for door games on Farcaster, or might another, more game-centric infrastructure be needed? Additionally, would it be helpful to have a front-end client specifically for gaming, or would that fracture the community?
What types of games would be most effective in driving user engagement and retention on Farcaster?
Are there other unique activities besides gaming that could bring people back to Farcaster on a regular cadence?
What would the ideal social game on Farcaster look like? Is there a way to make the social aspects of a game feel completely native to the timeline on Warpcast?
How can we measure the success of door games in terms of user retention and platform engagement?
I'm going to try to write blog posts like this once a week, the goal is to write about consumer crypto products primarily. Social, gaming, the Farcaster ecosystem, anything that's top of mind during a given week. If you'd like to hear more about these topics, it would mean a lot if you either subscribe or toss a follow over on Warpcast so you can stay tuned.
As my co-founder and I build out PlayMini, we're thinking about these topics anyways and I always feel like it helps to do long form writing on subjects so you can fully digest them. Putting your thoughts out there provokes feedback from others as well, which I feel can be incredibly valuable — if you have any thoughts on the topic from today, or anything else I write I'd really love to hear from you. Subscribe for more, and see you next week!
