About Me
I’ve been a gamer for…basically my whole life. I grew up in a small village in Switzerland, with a population of around 50. My neighbors were, literally, cows. I didn’t really have that many friends around as most lived in the city (about an hour away by train), so it was natural to me that I’d turn to gaming as my past time. At first, I was just playing offline games like Independence Day on PC, or WipeOut Fusion on PS2.
Everything changed one day when I had a sleepover at a friend’s place. He wanted to show off a game he just got, one called World of Warcraft. Like many other gamers at the time, it was the first ‘social’ game that I’d ever seen. I was hooked.
I had some savings that I’d gathered from doing odd jobs in my town. Just enough to purchase the game. I went out that weekend and rode my bike over to the nearest village that had a video games store first thing in the morning, before they even opened. I eagerly purchased a copy of what the kids at school weren’t calling World of Warcraft any more but WoW, like a codeword among the nerds. I sat through the multiple disc install (kids these days have it easy!), studying the game’s manual to determine what race I wanted to play. Luckily my friends chose the Horde (Lok’tar ogar!), so I settled on being an undead mage. Unfortunately, I couldn’t play until about a month later — no one told me that I needed to buy a subscription before being able to play!
I have some fond memories with WoW. At the time, it was the game to play. I remember sitting in the cafeteria with 3 other WoW-heads when one friend tried to pitch Guild Wars to us. We shut him down hard (“you can’t even jump!”). Note: I eventually played GW around the release of factions. Great game.
Joining a guild, doing Ragefire Chasm after standing around Orgrimmar trying to figure out what LFG meant. I made a lot of solid friendships through the game, friendships that lasted for a long time.
Modern Days
Fast forward to these days. There are so many cool games coming out. WoW and its successors showed game developers that they have the potential to create great online world for us to explore.
Yet I feel that due to the overwhelming selection of games we’re able to play, it fragments our group of friends. You’ve got the big ones, like the DotA-group versus the LoL-group. The Battlefield-vs-CoD groups. Or, in recent gaming news, Fortnite vs. PUBG. When I started playing DotA, I started alone as my group of friends felt that it looked crap compared to LoL.
It’s even harder to convince people to play some of the smaller online games. There’s been times when I was so stubborn about wanting to play something that I just bought it as a gift for a friend or two because I really wanted to try it, and they didn’t. That tactic doesn’t really work out because 1) it’s expensive, and 2) they just weren’t into it, and I felt like I just burned money.
Couple that with games that focus on faster matches, where you focus on doing the thing and then queuing up for the next one, it’s hard to meet people that are into the same games as you. It’s like when WoW introduced the LFG feature. It took away some of the investment that you needed to put in. Game studios saw it as dead time, and wanted to smooth the process, but being there and talking to people was part of the game — you’d find people that you had a connection with, and you’d continue to play games with them.
nubbl
It’s why I see the potential that nubbl has. My first introduction to it was in the same way that many members of the team were first introduced, Joe’s Reddit post. Reading it, it just clicked with me. Joe’s story with WoW was very similar to my own, and I felt that something like this could really pick up. The sheer amount of upvotes that the post gathered showed that others agreed with me as well.
I thought about the games in my steam library that I could play if I met someone on the service. Finally, I thought, I won’t have to match with randoms in Vermintide 2. nubbl has the potential to shake up how we meet people in games. It’s a tool that gamers can use alongside what they’re familiar with (e.g. Steam and uPlay) dedicated just to making connections. Go on it, send a message, add them. I don’t have to make a fool of myself using the voice chat asking if someone wanted to go for another round (and be met with ‘friendly’ responses).
I wanted to know how I could help — being a young marketer, I understand that it’s a lot easier to do my job when the product is something that you believe in. I reached out to Joe, and through a total coincidence, we found out that we’re living just a few minutes away from each other in the small country of the Netherlands.
Meeting with Joe, his passion for this project is inspiring. He talks with an honest excitement, telling me that he was completely blown away by the amount of positive responses that he’s gotten so far. He built nubbl to give back to the gaming community — solving a problem that he’s had before, and knows that others have as well. The Reddit post and the feature on PrettyGoodGaming made him more dedicated than ever to make it the best possible service.
Joe has a vision for nubbl, and one that I sincerely hope will come true.
Joe also told me about something that I hadn’t considered — finding people to revive classic games. Think of the games you had to drop because the matchmaking just took too long. Wouldn’t it be amazing to relive the feeling of full servers in games like Natural Selection 2, or not spend hours trying to find a match in White Noise 2.
In a way, nubbl solves a problem by creating another one. I just don’t have the time to be playing through all these awesome games. Damn you Joe!
The path forward
Of course, we can’t do this alone. nubbl depends on you — we want to create a community that’s filled with awesome gamers like yourself. Reach out to gamers that seem interesting to you. After all, a stranger is just a friend that you haven’t met yet!
I’ve told my story, but I’d like to hear from you too! You can do so in several ways. If you’d like to play some games with me, feel free to add me on nubbl (Widdly)! You can also reach out to us on our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Thanks for reading and I hope to hear from you soon.
