Conference Presentation, Interview, Other
MMOs in the Instagram Era: Highrise (S18) - YC Gaming Tech Talks 2020
- Company & Product Performance: Pocket Worlds, a fully remote company operating for four years, launched HiRISE, a social-first MMO available on iOS and Android.
- The application has surpassed five million total downloads.
- The product currently generates over one million dollars in monthly gross revenue.
- The company recently secured Series A funding to expand its portfolio of games and virtual worlds.
- Strategic Design Philosophy: HiRISE employs a "social first" approach, reversing traditional game development hierarchies by prioritizing community infrastructure over gameplay loops.
- Standard Industry Practice: Designers typically create a core minigame first, build a metagame loop, and add social features (clans, marketplaces) as secondary elements.
- HiRISE Approach: The architecture begins with a messenger, newsfeed, guilds, profiles, economy, and world, with the core game added last.
- Core Gameplay: The specific game layer is a fashion contest where players design avatars and outfits to compete, but retention is driven by social connections rather than gameplay mechanics.
- Technical Architecture: The platform is engineered to feel simultaneously like a native application (50%) and a game engine (50%) to ensure long-term retention and seamless user experience.
- Language Split:
- 50% of the codebase utilizes Swift (iOS) and Kotlin (Android) to handle UI, leveraging native capabilities for fonts and animations that game engines cannot match.
- 50% utilizes C++ to manage the game engine, virtual world, avatars, and business logic.
- Cross-Platform Strategy: The C++ logic is shared as a sub-module across both platforms, reducing development overhead and ensuring consistency.
- Integration: Components interact via feature-separated bridges using Objective-C++ on iOS and JNI on Android, creating a microservices-like architecture.
- Modular Scalability: This design allows for swapping out mini-game and metagame loops while retaining the core social infrastructure (avatars, messenger, guilds).
- Language Split:
- Future Vision & Expansion: Pocket Worlds plans to leverage the HiRISE architecture to build diverse social-first experiences beyond fashion.
- Potential Formats: Proposed concepts include hero-collector games involving monster battling and adventure fishing games, all utilizing the existing social ecosystem.
- Goal: To create a platform where the social experience itself is the primary attraction, with various game types serving as interchangeable modules.
- Business Operations & Recruitment:
- The company maintains a fully remote workforce and is actively expanding its team with numerous open positions.
- Interested candidates are directed to contact co-founder/CTO Jimmy directly at jay@high.rs or visit pocketworlds.com.