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.
Beginning the Battle
Hello there, I’m Leon Gaban otherwise known as Lipton of Starfeeder.
Today I’m proud to say I’m a part of The Battle Begins team and their vision of supporting and enriching the gaming community at large with their gaming related apps.
I’ve ran very competitive and high-profile tournaments in the past. As one of my major roles here is to showcase our apps in action, I will be hosting, promoting and covering many exciting tournaments to come, be they competitive games from the past, or even games that are in beta ;)
My love for competitive gaming is the reason. As a tournament host I’ve experienced many headaches every time I’ve run one, and the Battle Center tournament management web app is the best thing since slice bread (or the laser mouse), when it comes to organizing and hosting a competitive gaming tournament. If you haven’t seen the tour check it out now, from automated brackets to intuitive participant management and a simple and easy to track communication system, running tournaments will now be a breeze.
On Starfeeder, I will continue to cover very specific topics about Starcraft 2. However here at The Battle Begins, I will be writing on a wider range of gaming news, topics and give my opinion on the state of the gaming industry and eSports.
So a little bit more about myself
The first game that gave me a competitive rush was Warcraft II, however once Starcraft was released it took my experience of competitive gaming to a whole another level. Watching the global eSports scene evolve was an enlightening moment as I realized the direction that competitive gaming was going, a future with a mainstream digital sports industry. I feel it’s still very much in its infancy and I’ll be covering a lot about its continued growth here on this blog.
Don’t forget to follow @TheBattleBegins on Twitter!
Welcome, let the Battles Begin…
Finally Launched! (Stealth?)
Its been a while coming, longer than we had anticipated, but the app is finally launched!
Its not perfect yet, and we are constantly working to make it better, but now that it is live, we can finally get some real usage out of Battle Center! If you don’t know what Battle Center is, its a tournament management tool that lets you either host and manage a tournament or participate in someone else’s tournament. If you want to learn more, check out www.thebattlecenter.com
Now I’ll explain the “Stealth” part in the title. We opted out of doing a huge promotional launch for a smaller steady launch. This means that we will slowly start telling those close to us who want to try it, and once we get some initial feedback, we will start publicly promoting more often. We figured that instead of building more of the app without feedback from the community, we would rather get real usage out of the app and real feedback. This will allow us to start improving the app in ways it is actually used instead of ways we think it will be used. Bear with us while we work to improve Battle Center. If you want to help us do it, sign up and send us feedback. To submit feedback or report a bug, there is a feedback button in the application. You can also always use this link: http://support.thebattlebegins.com/
Be sure to check back to this blog to hear about new updates and features as well as the app to see the changes for yourself!
I wanted to give you a look back at some of the early designs of the Battle Center to get an idea of how far we’ve come and how much we’ve already improved the user experiences of the application before it has even gone live.
We really want the experience of using our application to be as natural and as easy as possible.
As you can see we have really come a long way. And you have really only seen the surface of what we have in store for this application.
We really want to hear from you about what you think about these screenshots. Think there is something we could do better? Have an idea for a feature? Please let us know!
