WHAT IS ZAZZER ANYWAY
First off here’s a blip from the homepage zazzer.me.
Ok you brave soul, here is a quick overview of Zazzer. I had the thought a while ago – wouldn’t it be cool if there were some technology, like an AI wingman, who could introduce you to people you’d want to hang out with? Not by introducing you to profiles with blind emails – I’m not in 4th grade anymore, anonymous notes don’t appeal to me. I wanted real life, face to face!
That idea grew into my graduate thesis, which required a real world implementation. That’s what this is. Now if you move into a new city and want someone to play tennis with you’ve got Zazzer to introduce you! The introductions happen through quick, video chat GAMES.
You should know I’ve actually spent a long time building this (longer than I’d care to admit) and that I have a long long list of killer ideas. What’s the point? That this is just the beginning. If you like it at all, support this by telling your friends about it, telling me when something doesn’t work, and just playing the game, and it will continue improving every day!
ABOUT the GAME
By the way I’m in rapid development cycles so these pictures are out of date, they’ll be updated soon and a movie will be posted to show the game
I guess I should start by saying Zazzer is first and foremost a game, but you have some features baked in here to help you keep track of the new friends you make here. You can change colors, minimize labels and panels, upload a picture (if you click the house button at the top left it takes you to your profile – then just hover over your pic and you’ll see the camera icon you can see on mine at the top left of my head in screen shot below), and all kinds of stuff. Play around. When you add friends they’re always put in Zazzee (since Zazzer, presumably, introduced you) and from there you can put them in three different labels if you like. As you can see in mine above none of my friends have added their pictures yet. But mines up and this is here so there’s hope.
STARTING THE GAME
I hope you’ve noticed your notification, it pops up and lets you know what’s going on from time to time. Hovering over Zazzer’s little blue head at the bottom left will get him to talk to you (or at least show you what he’s said previously). Anyway that’s what the screen shot below is meant to show you. TO PLAY THE GAME just click the PLAY button and Zazzer will start looking for a match for you. Once it’s found one it will move your screen over to the game area for you (waaaaay to the right).
At that point if Flash isn’t being stupid, it will ask you for permission to your camera and you can start the game with your partner (right click on it and click settings if your camera or sound aren’t working). You should see something like this:
DONT BE A JERK
You’ll notice that there’s a report button – if you click it takes serious points away from your partner and immediately stops the game. IMPORTANT though, is that in your notification bubble that pops up with info – you can filter people based on their points. IF YOU REPORT someone who isn’t being a serious jerk then they’ll get filtered out of games. If you feel like you’ve been filtered unfairly, get in touch and we’ll look into it. Anyway bottom line, don’t be a jerk.
GAME PLAY/RULES
SO! On to the game (that’s why you’re here right?)! There are 2 60 second rounds; one for you to try to figure out what Zazzer matched you on and 1 for your partner. The purpose is for you to figure out the strongest thing you have in common faster than your partner (or at least be able to convince them that your idea is better). You see, at the end the videos pause and then you both choose which you thought was the best. If you both choose one you input, you get 10 points and they get 5. If you choose differently though, then choosing your own will get you 2 points, and choosing theirs will get you a big fat 0. So will you risk choosing theirs?
Also as you get more points you unlock special features (like being able to create labels instead of using the pre-set ones. Many more features are being worked on currently and quite a few of them will be tied to point totals. Also you can filter your games based on how high you want their points per game average to be (to help you avoid jerks.
Below is a screen shot of choosing the item at the end of the game…
One last curve ball. You can hang out and talk to the person after the game. You can add them as a friend. But you’re also allowed to give them +10 or -10 just for the heck of it (this is after scoring and they don’t find out).
ONE LAST THING
You can also be matched and just plain video chat with a random partner without having to play the game. Just uncheck game in your notification area. And if you’re really shy and want to just be matched with no game and be given the option to add that person… you have that too – menu that’s always at the bottom of your screen
I’m sure no one ever reads this far so I’m stopping now.