What is BattleID?
We’ve been keeping a close eye on where you guys are clicking (by we, I mostly mean me) and have noticed that about 60% of you basically leave once you get to the crossroads of “No BattleID?” or “Have a BattleID”. It’s a clear sign that you don’t know whether you have one or not, the page itself is stark, and you get confused and say “FUCK YOU BattleID!” and leave.
That page was never really meant to stay “stark” - I’ve been meaning to make design tweaks to that page since its inception a few months ago. The whole sign-up is a hack right now mostly due to we just needed to get it out there and see. We could have easily just sat in development mode for another 3 months and launched with a perfect application, but we launched instead, and have had plans to streamline important processes like the sign up since the beginning. The priority was to fix any major bugs (Week #1), re-integrate an important feature (Teams, Week #2) along with also fixing bugs, and any other smaller features that week, and then the third week would be devoted to streamlining this process, which is next week.
So what the fuck is BattleID? BattleID was an early idea. Some (coughBryan teh hackzorcough) would say too early. It’s a big idea that is in its infancy and is a long term system. It’s basically a global user system. A single username/password that lets you jump from one tournament host to the next. STORY TIME!
So lets say you enjoy playing both Starcraft and Team Fortress 2 - The chances that a single host would host a tournament for those two games are rather rare, at least we think so. So instead of having a unique username/password for each of those two hosts (sc.tbblive.com & tf2.tbblive.com as examples - they don’t exist btw), you would sign-in at one, and could jump between the two without ever needing to login or sign up again.
Okay, so you are still saying “Matt, WTF?” - Okay fine. Pictures.
Figure 1.1: http://screencast.com/t/Y2Y2NzFhY
The above paragraph summed into an image. But now you are like “but Matt, that’s not really a big deal?” - Yeah I agree. This user experience case is not really an innovative, break-through, OMFG where was my life before BattleID, kind of moment. This is why it’s a long term idea. That case is the short term. That functionality exists today.
Figure 1.2: http://screencast.com/t/MzlkMzNjNzAt
I’m sure you have a Facebook account right? Yeah, like who doesn’t. Again, nothing groundbreaking in this idea either. And in fact, this functionality won’t even benefit the early adopters of our services. This idea is just to make it even easier to sign up for a BattleID using an existing login from these services. Later though, we’ll actually hook into these services and let you post your results, tournaments you are in, invite your facebook/twitter friends to play in a tournament with you, etc. So that much farther idea is probably the biggest benefit to our entire user base for hooking into these services.
Figure 1.3: http://screencast.com/t/ZmJiYmFiNWMt
So this is where it gets interesting…we already have an idea for our second web application. Don’t want to spill the beans on it, but lets just say it’ll be awesome. So then you’ll be able to use your BattleID to signup for a new account with this app, and have it connect with our other application.
Figure 1.4: http://screencast.com/t/MGU5MTczY
Now I bet you are going, “oh shit now that is sick!” - Well maybe not, but I am. I’m pretty excited for the future of this idea. I think it has great potential, and I think when we do finally get to this point, we’ll have the perfect platform for it to exist, grow, and make for a great experience.
So that pretty much sums up BattleID and it’s future. Next week we’ll make the process easier (One page, instead of 3) and make it seamless to sign up. If you were hesitate to sign up, I hope this has shed some light on the confusion.
