TLDR: I’m proposing a working group to take ownership of the work I and others have been doing to support games on atproto.
There have been lots of efforts to support games on atproto already.
- @rpg.actor is building an ecosystem where data can be shared across games
- @byjp.me created a mod for Slay the Spire II that puts your runs on protocol
- @orta.io added Atmospheric login to @puzzmo.com games and stores some data on protocol
- @lemmaeof.gay is building rhythm game score tracking on Tsuganite
- @zeroassembly.net is building postgame for tracking a player’s library
- @cjfulton.bsky.social has video game reviews on Popfeed
- I’m building The Pentaract, a set of game lexicons and a public AppView for games
Beyond that, we have a bunch of games already building on the protocol:
- Chaos Soccer from @chris.pardy.family
- Clun’s Cannon from @rpg.actor
- Deception Town from @chris.pardy.family
- Fashionista Runway from @rpg.actor
- Firehose Defense from @equalnotequals.com
- Skyrdle from @smol.farm
- Spot 'Em from @rpg.actor
- Straitsweeper from @smol.farm
- TANKS from @equalnotequals.com
- ZOMBIES from @equalnotequals.com
Obviously there’s a lot of interest in using atproto for games, and I’d like to bring a group together to better enable coordination and collaboration across the space.
The primary goal of this group would be to develop an interoperable standard across games and games-related applications building on atproto. Here are a few examples of work that might fit this group:
- collaborating to develop a standard game lexicon (similar to standard.site’s
document) - a lexicon for scores
- collaborative ownership of AppView infrastructure for this data
- development of Unreal/Unity/Godot/other game engine SDKs that ease adoption of these tools
This is a long-coming follow-on to the work I started with The Pentaract (Original Discourse post, the article I wrote about my goals). I’ve tried to foster collaboration on these tools, but I think it’s time to get everybody to the table to make sure we’re on the right track.
Is this just one group?
There are two concerns here that could arguably be separated: games metadata, and games infrastructure. Metadata is what exists in The Pentaract today: titles, descriptions, release dates, as well as the social graph around them with reviews, likes, and follows. Infrastructure is everything else that supports development of a game: friends lists, matchmaking, achievements, etc.
Since I started on my projects I’ve seen these as deeply interconnected: a game could give a user a bonus for liking it, and achievements make just as much sense in a trophy showcase website as they do in-game. I think this is one of the first questions this group will have to tackle.
I’ll definitely need a co-chair here. If you’re interested in being involved in this work, please let me know! I’d really like to make sure it’s a group effort and not just something Trezy is building, and this WG is the next step in that direction.
UPDATE 1: Lemma (lemmaeof.gay) has volunteered to co-chair! I’d still like one more co-chair to make sure we have a tie breaker for WG-specific things, so let me know if you want to throw your hat in the ring!
UPDATE 2: Mike (zeroassembly) has volunteered to be out third co-chair! We’re still happy to grow the list, so feel free to reach out if you’d like to help with the committee.
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