iJustine on PlayCafe

This Monday, iJustine was our guest at PlayCafe. The crew had a ton of fun bantering back and forth with her, and we even gave away an 8GB iPod nano in her honor (iJustine is madly in iLove with iApple). If you weren’t one of the 600+ users who played along with her, check out the archived video below.

Sample segments from iJustine@PlayCafe (~20 minutes each):

- Show 1, Segment 1

- Show 1, Segment 2

- Show 2, Segment 3

iJustine, you were awesome. Thanks for stopping by, and we look forward to the next time.

P.S. We have another guest contestant coming up in a couple of weeks, someone quite famous in their own right. Our only hint: “74″.

Teams, after a fortnight….

We’ve now enjoyed two weeks of Teams on PlayCafe. More than a hundred teams have formed. A number of teams (The Best Team, Lobby 2 Noobies, The Board Room) have already reached the maximum size of 20 players. And, as you might expect, team players stick around longer, win more prizes, get more dates and lose up to 4% body fat overnight.

Most people have discovered the easy features around teams, like the ‘team chat’ button. One that many haven’t used is ‘chat profile’ linking. If you see a username in the chat, whether in a public or private room, you can click on their username to see their full profile information–their current points, team information, even bonus keys. Click on their team name, and you can see the whole roster–and then find out about any of their teammates with another click.

Click on sweet05, and….

…..a profile pops up. Is someone trash-talking you in the chat? Call their bluff with a single click.

We’re continuing to iterate these features on the basis of what you’re doing and telling us–especially your chats, and your emails to feedback@playcafe.com. Hint, hint.

There’s no “I” in Teams–but there’s an “M” and an “E”…

Hey, everyone. I’m Dev, one of the co-founders of PlayCafe (along with Mark). You may remember me from such PlayCafe episodes as ‘Devine Wisdom’ and ‘Help! My answers submitted late!’. Anyhoo, I’m excited today to kick off our company blog and describe a major feature that has been weeks (if not months) in the making–teams.

Some of you may have played in our special one-off team games a few months ago–at the time, we were gathering information on how you used teams, what the best scoring algorithm would be, what kind of chat you engaged in within your team rooms (collaborative? competitive? supportive?). Much of that data has gone into refining the teams product into something that would satisfy our regular players as well as provide a smooth on-ramp for newer, casual players. And, as you may have seen in the story that the NBC Nightly News did on us, we wanted to make it easy enough for our Moms to play. Because, really, they do. And when they’re confused, we get the call, often at tragically inappropriate times.

So here’s the deal. You can create a team, invite anyone on or off the system (on the system by email or username, off the system by email), and accept/decline invites that come to you. You can belong to one team at a time–to change teams, just leave your current team and accept the new invite. When you play, your score will be counted twice–it will contribute to your individual score as it always has, and it will also contribute to your team score, on a separate leaderboard. Your team’s score for a given round is simply the best score of the individuals on your team, for that round–so if you score 7500 and your teammates score 2400 and 7400, your team is awarded 7500 points for that round. There’s no penalty for having a large or a small team–but the larger your team is, the more likely it is that your team’s “best score” goes up on any given question. There’s also no penalty for having less-skilled players on your team–they’re not going to hurt you. The team leaderboard will have a separate weekly raffle, so now you have even more chances to win.

Your team page, in addition to the typical roster and maintenance information, also has a private team blog. You can post whatever you like–strategies for playing, coordination messages, general encouragement, love letters. It’s a pretty simple feature right now, and we’ll build it out depending on how you use it. Definitely let us know at feedback@playcafe.com.

You’ll also notice some changes to our chat application. Previously, we had separate ‘Switch Room’ and ‘Create Room’ buttons; both of those functions are now included within the ‘Change Room’ button. There’s a new button–the ‘Team Chat’ button. If you’re on a team, and click on that, you’ll immediately enter your private team room. No searching through lists of rooms or anything. Once inside the team room, the ‘Team Chat’ button will morph into a ‘Public Chat’ button; click it again and you’ll come back out to the last (public) chat room you were in. What if you’re not sure if your friends are around? Just type in ‘users’ and press return, and you’ll see a complete list of who’s in that room. The ‘users’ command also works in the public lobbies. Looking for a particular friend? Just type in ‘user <friend_name>’ and we’ll tell you if they’re in that room or not.

We’re really excited about teams. Until now, there hasn’t been a strong incentive for you to invite your friends–in fact, in some ways, inviting your friends (in the old system) just increased your competition on the leaderboard. Now, your friends/classmates/workmates/roommates/family can help you directly. But, more importantly, teams is all about supporting the sense of community on PlayCafe. We’ve been pleasantly surprised with the kinds of interactions and relationships that you’ve formed on our site–with each other and even with the crew. Many of you who met on PlayCafe have developed off-line friendships as well. Our vision for this company has always been creating a ‘Game Night’ for the whole world—the fun and coziness of a family Scrabble game with the expanse of a worldwide player community. And, today, we’ve come one step closer.