Go Go Bots, Meta

Overview
Go Go Bots is a competitive, fast-paced, robot climbing Facebook Instant Game set in a glitchy, cyberpunk future.

Goal
Build a flagship game to showcase the capabilities of the Facebook Instant Game platform.

Challenges
- Enable friendly competition and instant playability
- Engage users via a high-quality, casual, gaming experience
- Inspire developers by showcasing the unique possibilities of the Instant Games platform

Role and Team
My responsibilities included leading the architecture of the game front-end as well as the backend.

For the front-end, I laid the foundation for and contributed to the core game systems including custom (Redux-based) state management, finite state machines for animation, a custom level editor plugin and the core game mechanic. I was also responsible for developing numerous prototypes to validate assumptions and game play mechanics through the beginning phases of the project.

For the backend, I used Azure (Functions, Logic Apps, PlayFab) and Facebook Instant Games. I was also responsible for implementing Facebook Analytics for tracking all important KPIs at a fairly granular level using.

The team consisted of 3 developers, 2 designers, 2 technical artists, 2 project managers and 2 QA engineers collaborating closely with client stakeholders.

Results and Learnings
- Utilizing Azure PlayFab, PlayFab, Azure Functions and Logic Apps – instead of a custom Node.js application – resulted in a high performing backend and optimizing development time/effort/cost. This solution helped easily scale to over 600k monthly active users without any failures on the backend.
- I learnt how to build and implement a custom frustum culling system which increased the performance of the game to consistently be 30-60 fps on older mobile devices. Other optimizations included, reducing the load times to 5-10 seconds by consolidating API requests and lazy loading numerous game assets.
- I streamlined the level design process and enabled designers to quickly create, test and iterate game levels by building a custom level editor CocosCreator plugin.
- I successfully enabled the entire cross-functional project team to effectively collaborate on GitHub.
- The game garnered coverage from The Verge, engadget, Creative Review and VentureBeat