Completed
Mobo Gaming Network
Product Development, October 2014 - May 2016
Mobo is came from reading "Mobile" in American English, from its name you can easily know it's for mobile users. When joining MEcorp, I worked as Content Director of Mobo Portal and didn't know that it's just a small part of very big project - a social network for mobile gamers. Sounds very interesting, right? With closer look, Mobo is an ecosystem created by Mobo App, Mobo Portal and Mobo SDK for Game.
Mobo App - Social Network
Few months later, I joined Mobo Team and 1st time really work as a Product Designer. Mobo App was in development but not ready for beta launching and basically, main features are similar to Facebook: find and add friends, share, connect, chat, group chat, etc - but only for users play games that integrated with Mobo SDK, my 1st task is to optimize chat feature and the rule of contents appears in user wall (like Facebook wall). It was ok, but not good I think, because the content is still showing signs of repetition. Due to the small number of users, I had to wait for a larger sample to ensure editing.
MEcorp had around 5-6 mobile games at that momment, almost MMO. According to our estimations, if all games integrated with Mobo SDK and release the app, we will have massive amounts of users and also impel the development of the project, however, at this time a major problem arises.
Mobo SDK for Game Clients
To be brief, Mobo app is just the tip of the iceberg while Mobo SDK is the real sunken part, because with SDK users can also chat or connect friends while playing games without using Mobo App. Moreover, as I talk about from its beginning - almost users of Mobo App is from MEcorp's Games. It means the SDK is crucial to the existence of the Mobo Ecosystem.
Acknowledging failure is not easy, The structure of the SDK seems to have gone astray from the beginning, dev team was trying to improve it but troubles standstill. One day, Head of Mobo Marketing Team decided to force co-current users of a game move to group chat. Immediately, disaster appears. With more than 200 groups and 1000 users each group, the games went freeze and crash, users become angry, not only the game, if those players play another games, they will be crashed too. It means the "connection" becomes a double-edged blade kill both Mobo System and Game Clients.
End of A Journey
As a result, Mobo Project was scale-down and all SDK development progress was canceled with 5 product managers had left the team. Mobo App returns to its mere value: just an app launcher for MECorp Game and no longer be "social network" anymore. Although not the one who led to the project's demise, I feel a bit regretful because this is really a nice project with high potential and prospects. After working in Mobo Project, I recognized that how importance of technical structure in development progress.