Tuesday, March 1, 2016

What Find My Game does for you


I will admit it, I get lost easy.  I long since removed that gene in the male mind that is scared, or to egotistical, to ask for directions.  I'd rather some stranger think I'm nuts, than arrive late or miss an event because of ego.

But I know that's just me.

I've been to GenCon several times and what I found frustrating, was asking people where Purple 540 was, and told be the expert guides, two different directions.  We arrived late to the game, and as a consequence, we were allotted the poor end of the Mechs for the game of MechWarrior minutes we'd signed up for.

I maintain that had we gotten the cooler Mechs we might have enjoyed the game more.  Showing up late, even a tiny 5 minutes, changed the gaming experience for us.

There had to be a better way.

Along came Game Rustlers and while the original motivation behind it was to secure seats to game demos, and to find players for games at 2AM, it didn't even occur to me that it could be used to solve an even more common issue.  My issue with arriving late.

So I added the feature to the backlog. Now all you have to do is sign in to the site, reserve a seat and poof, you'll be able to find the game.  The cool wrinkle is that even if you don't reserve a seat, you can add it to your game list so you can find it.

Some conventions sell tickets to games, like GenCon, so they don't need the reservation system that game Rustlers offers, but you still need to find the game!  By adding a game to your watch list, you can get the GPS location from where you're standing, directly to the table where the game is being played.

Now lucky for you, the GPS display is NOT like the unit here.  As much as it uses the same data, the display is a lot more user friendly.

We tap into Google Maps, and assuming that you're walking.  It's not dynamic, so it will take a snapshot of where you are currently standing.  It will not update as you move.

Ask me nice and maybe I'll add that feature.

Right now I'm assuming that if you are walking, you can find it with just the one map.  But, if you get lost, you can ALWAYS ask for an updated map.

See what I did there, asked for directions again.

I hope you enjoy this feature and use it often.  If you show up for one of MY games late, that's the first question I'll ask you... "Didn't you use Find My Game?"

And if you see me walking around, feel free to share your MechWarrior stories.  I don't get to play and sometimes, I am very jealous of those that do.

You can sign up for Game Rustlers and find your games!

Check out the huge list of games we're backing in our Kickstarter Round Up, we do Previews, Reviews and we're starting video play-throughs soon.

See ya there!