Hi HN! I'm Eli, the founder of Guilded (http://www.guilded.gg), part of YC's Summer '17 batch. Guilded helps online gaming teams recruit, improve, and compete.
I've been a gamer my whole life, and I made Guilded because I was tired of using clunky website builders, random recruiting forums, and Google Calendar/Docs to manage my teams. I thought it was kind of crazy that in a world where hundreds of millions of people play team-based online games, it's still hard to find the right people to play with, still difficult to collaborate on strategies and organize your team's schedule, and still hard to find the right competition for your team. Players are stuck with whatever tools the developer was able to fit into the game (often none) or whatever forums and game-specific and platform-specific tools have come along.
Guilded launched recently and is still in beta, but over the last two months, it's become the most popular recruiting platform on the web for Overwatch teams, and has picked up a lot of traction in some MMO communities as well.
I'd love to hear your thoughts/feedback/questions!
Is the name an intentional pun on "gilded" (in addition to being a reference to gaming guilds)?
I'm always amused by names rich in puns and wordplay, but at the same time curious whether they impede adoption at all through ambiguity. Then again, if it's primarily shared and mentioned through writing online, then that's probably less of a concern.
A quick check shows that "gilded.gg" is unregistered; you might consider picking it up as a redirect, just in case.
Apart from that, this looks impressively integrated. Do you integrate with Twitch as well? Would be nice to automatically tag guild members with roles in Twitch chat, no matter who is streaming. People could connect their Guilded account to their Twitch account, and check a box like "automatically grant [mod/flair] to [guild members / guild leaders / people designated as global mods by the guild]".
Is this focused exclusively on games you specifically support integration with, or would it work for other types of gaming-related groups (for instance, tabletop gaming)? The team coordination, communication, and storage features seem useful for that, for instance.
> Is the name an intentional pun on "gilded" (in addition to being a reference to gaming guilds)?
Yup. It's a play on the terms "Guild" (gaming guilds) and "Gilded" (to cover with gold). This inspired the gold brand colors/identity.
> A quick check shows that "gilded.gg" is unregistered; you might consider picking it up as a redirect, just in case.
Thank you for the tip! Just grabbed it.
> Do you integrate with Twitch as well? Would be nice to automatically tag guild members with roles in Twitch chat, no matter who is streaming. People could connect their Guilded account to their Twitch account, and check a box like "automatically grant [mod/flair] to [guild members / guild leaders / people designated as global mods by the guild]".
Yeah, we have some basic Twitch integration right now. You can connect your Twitch account and it'll show when you're live and import your past streams. That's a great idea, though, and is something that I think is definitely consistent with the product goals.
> Is this focused exclusively on games you specifically support integration with, or would it work for other types of gaming-related groups (for instance, tabletop gaming)?
One of my goals is to make it feel like you're immersed in your game's atmosphere as soon as you create a team. For that reason, we don't have generic game categories now, only explicitly-supported games. We're working on expanding the game catalog over time.
> One of my goals is to make it feel like you're immersed in your game's atmosphere as soon as you create a team. For that reason, we don't have generic game categories now, only explicitly-supported games. We're working on expanding the game catalog over time.
Fair enough. This is probably too far from your primary mission, then, but I will say that I wish there was a service that did what you do, for tabletop RPGs. Something that makes it easy to organize games, track character sheets and setting documents, provide maps, keep logs of events (including markers on maps), facilitate between-session communication and compartmentalized communication (GM/player), and so on.
I haven't seen a service that offers all of those things with good integration.
It might not be quite what you're looking for, but our group started using Roll20 recently. It has some quirks and is missing some spell data, but it is very customizable and includes online video chat. Think "Google Hangouts meets D&D."
I've used roll20, but I don't find it very useful for non-virtual roleplaying. I'm looking for something that integrates calendaring, drive, etc; meanwhile, video chat is not particularly valuable.
I've been bouncing a similar idea with the GM of my (sporadic) tabletop game and would be interested to hear more about what others would want in such a service.
Very cool. I have so much nostalgia for my gaming days and the connections I made with clan mates back in MOHAA/BF2/early TF2 times. Such great fun. You looking for any contract development/other assistance?
One random note - I don't think you need to post all those library licenses (on the About page) unless you are making modifications to the actual libraries. IANAL, though.
> Very cool. I have so much nostalgia for my gaming days and the connections I made with clan mates back in MOHAA/BF2/early TF2 times. Such great fun. You looking for any contract development/other assistance?
Thanks! I totally get the nostalgia (for me, mostly Age of Empires/SOCOM/Diablo II/DaoC/SC2), so I'm really enjoying being able to combine software engineering and gaming full-time. I'm not looking for any development assistance at the moment, but I'll note your handle down for the future.
I could really use a filter for Location (or better yet +-time zones). Finding folks to play with in the Sydney (UTC+10:00) offset is often a pain, moreso than finding a common game or platform.
I've been a gamer my whole life, and I made Guilded because I was tired of using clunky website builders, random recruiting forums, and Google Calendar/Docs to manage my teams. I thought it was kind of crazy that in a world where hundreds of millions of people play team-based online games, it's still hard to find the right people to play with, still difficult to collaborate on strategies and organize your team's schedule, and still hard to find the right competition for your team. Players are stuck with whatever tools the developer was able to fit into the game (often none) or whatever forums and game-specific and platform-specific tools have come along.
Guilded launched recently and is still in beta, but over the last two months, it's become the most popular recruiting platform on the web for Overwatch teams, and has picked up a lot of traction in some MMO communities as well.
I'd love to hear your thoughts/feedback/questions!