Pretty cool. I showed it to my daughter and she created a chic stylist game with it after playing around with a few of the ones in the app. You should showcase some girl-focused content as well as they make up a meaningful percent of gamers.
Do you think it’s more interesting to play or to create? Meaning, do you believe people will play these games as much as they play Minecraft, or will they use this app to make games more than they do in Unity?
I think we end up seeing a similar dynamic as other ugc apps, likely 99% consumers, 1% creators. But I think it’s a different group of creators. Personally, I enjoy making vibe games way more than selfie dance videos, or hot takes on X. This is, for me, the first form of social media that I truly love. I feel way better spending my interstitial time being creative on BLAMO than on scrolling through the other slot machine apps. I am personally hooked on the creation loop, the slot machine reward is when it generates something that is pure gold. That said, I’m sure I still spend way more time playing the games than making them. And it’s easily seen in the data that there are at least 100x more plays than creations in any given time period.
The other super fun part for me is seeing what my friends create. It’s a very different kind of creative community when the unit of content is an interactable rather than a witticism, rant, or selfie. I’m sure not unlike Minecraft, though again, the affordances there dictate the kind of creator it attracts, someone who is willing to spend many hours placing blocks in complex arrangements is very different from the person who has 100 fun ideas a minute and not the patience to spend months or years realizing them. I think Blamo is a better fit for the latter.
I do think in general that UI-heavy game engines like unity are going to lose out to code-centric platforms. The leverage you get from code generation tools greatly outweighs the old ease of use of friendly interfaces. IMO the best interface is a combination of asking for what you want and having it give you the best custom interface for you to apply your creativity. I’ve spent a ton of time in unity, and while I’ve enjoyed much of that time, I also spend a very large percentage of it being infuriated by it. And Unity was, prior to AI, probably the easiest way to make video games that we had come up with. I’ve never had more fun making games then in the last month or so of vibing them with BLAMO.
> Is it possible to get people to throw their phone off a bridge for a high score?
In fact there was actually a fairly well-known app that Apple removed from the App Store about a decade ago that used the accelerometer to measure how high you could toss your phone in the air and catch it. Shockingly, this led to a noticeable spike in repair requests at Apple Stores, and the app was eventually taken down.
> "is it possible to turn your phone into a vibrator using haptics?"
Yes - there's about a hundred of these apps on the app store. Just, you know, make sure your phone is rated IP67.
Other feedback
Make sure the various games subscribe to resize events. I tried the Mario one, and when I maximized the browser window it left a huge blank area to the right.
Pretty cool. I showed it to my daughter and she created a chic stylist game with it after playing around with a few of the ones in the app. You should showcase some girl-focused content as well as they make up a meaningful percent of gamers.
I love that idea. I have two daughters and their gaming habits have definitely informed what we’re building. My favorites are the multiplayer-1-phone games. E.g. my take on pong: https://www.blamo.ai/vibes/4e20ba08-3239-4ba0-beba-0659cc2f7...
or Hungry Hippos: https://www.blamo.ai/vibes/9363b89a-e427-4a0f-9190-0e6e6c505...
Great for those moments while you’re waiting for the food to come at the restaurant and need to distract the hangry kids.
Haggling for bessie was fun: https://www.blamo.ai/vibes/79469cec-44fb-4ccd-bc32-d159794ce...
It's cool you can make a text-based game also.
Do you think it’s more interesting to play or to create? Meaning, do you believe people will play these games as much as they play Minecraft, or will they use this app to make games more than they do in Unity?
I think we end up seeing a similar dynamic as other ugc apps, likely 99% consumers, 1% creators. But I think it’s a different group of creators. Personally, I enjoy making vibe games way more than selfie dance videos, or hot takes on X. This is, for me, the first form of social media that I truly love. I feel way better spending my interstitial time being creative on BLAMO than on scrolling through the other slot machine apps. I am personally hooked on the creation loop, the slot machine reward is when it generates something that is pure gold. That said, I’m sure I still spend way more time playing the games than making them. And it’s easily seen in the data that there are at least 100x more plays than creations in any given time period.
The other super fun part for me is seeing what my friends create. It’s a very different kind of creative community when the unit of content is an interactable rather than a witticism, rant, or selfie. I’m sure not unlike Minecraft, though again, the affordances there dictate the kind of creator it attracts, someone who is willing to spend many hours placing blocks in complex arrangements is very different from the person who has 100 fun ideas a minute and not the patience to spend months or years realizing them. I think Blamo is a better fit for the latter.
I do think in general that UI-heavy game engines like unity are going to lose out to code-centric platforms. The leverage you get from code generation tools greatly outweighs the old ease of use of friendly interfaces. IMO the best interface is a combination of asking for what you want and having it give you the best custom interface for you to apply your creativity. I’ve spent a ton of time in unity, and while I’ve enjoyed much of that time, I also spend a very large percentage of it being infuriated by it. And Unity was, prior to AI, probably the easiest way to make video games that we had come up with. I’ve never had more fun making games then in the last month or so of vibing them with BLAMO.
> Is it possible to get people to throw their phone off a bridge for a high score?
In fact there was actually a fairly well-known app that Apple removed from the App Store about a decade ago that used the accelerometer to measure how high you could toss your phone in the air and catch it. Shockingly, this led to a noticeable spike in repair requests at Apple Stores, and the app was eventually taken down.
> "is it possible to turn your phone into a vibrator using haptics?"
Yes - there's about a hundred of these apps on the app store. Just, you know, make sure your phone is rated IP67.
Other feedback
Make sure the various games subscribe to resize events. I tried the Mario one, and when I maximized the browser window it left a huge blank area to the right.
OK, thanks for the feedback.