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Hm. Well, that made me a bit concerned to start, as I'm working on a Slack-based hack-and-slash RPG [1] that I'm planning on running entirely on their free tie

Hm. Well, that made me a bit concerned to start, as I'm working on a Slack-based hack-and-slash RPG [1] that I'm planning on running entirely on their free tier, but I'm pretty sure that their use cases differ from mine significantly. I'm not worried about message archives (as it's just game history), and I have @here/@all locked down significantly. The "max user size" thing is a bit worrisome, but MMOs have a history of sharding to solve that problem anyway, so hopefully that shouldn't be a problem either. (Players will be able to chat together in a shared Discourse forum, so sharding shouldn't really hurt community-building.) I wonder if any progress has been made since then to support larger teams, though? It's been quite a while, and Slack's engineering team has been cranking out a lot of great features and improvements lately. [1] http://www.slackandslash.com http://www.slackandslash.com

jerf 10y ago
Are you planning on trying to make money with this? If so, you're in some amount of trouble, depending on how much you're looking at trying to make. If you're not trying to make money, you still should check the agreements for Slack; this may constitute abuse. You should also take a look at your architecture, too. You've got a clear message bus where you send things to and receive things from Slack. You may notice that where those messages go matters less to your code than you may think. If you find you can't go with slack, it may not be all that hard to simply set up a web site that plays your text-based game by shimming the message flow in and out, in which case you can do whatever you like, at whatever rate you like. Despite the slick name, you may not need Slack at all. You'd still have the conceit of the chatbot experience, which will definitely appeal to a certain niche, just as MUDs did. (And that name may be too slick. I don't know how nasty Slack is inclined to be, but directly referencing brand names in your name like that is dangerous from a trademark perspective.)
- DanHulton 10y ago
  I don't think I trip up the agreements anywhere, I've checked over them a few times and also emailed Slack to ask if it was cool if I made a game on their platform before I started. I didn't share too many specifics (I said it was MUD-like and was going to use their buttons), but they told me to go for it, so I think I'm in the clear there. Also, while I haven't figured out monetization, I don't think there should be any real problems with that either. Other people charge for their slack bots and integrations, so unless they specifically have a problem with a game-style slackbot charging money, there shouldn't be anything preventing me from charging for stuff. You very well may be right about the name, though. I've just registered "chatandslash.com" as a backup that I can switch to before too much marketing has gone forward, and I've already emailed Slack again to show them what I've come up with and for further confirmation that what I'm up to is fine and dandy before progressing any further. Oh, and you're totally right about shimming out Slack with my own frontend. It's in the backlog of stuff to do some day potentially, but I think there's a lot to be gained in the meantime by explicitly staying with Slack in the meantime. "An RPG you play in Slack" is a lot more interesting than "An RPG that looks kinda like chat, I guess". Thanks for the advice!

jerf 10y ago

Are you planning on trying to make money with this? If so, you're in some amount of trouble, depending on how much you're looking at trying to make. If you're not trying to make money, you still should check the agreements for Slack; this may constitute abuse. You should also take a look at your architecture, too. You've got a clear message bus where you send things to and receive things from Slack. You may notice that where those messages go matters less to your code than you may think. If you find you can't go with slack, it may not be all that hard to simply set up a web site that plays your text-based game by shimming the message flow in and out, in which case you can do whatever you like, at whatever rate you like. Despite the slick name, you may not need Slack at all. You'd still have the conceit of the chatbot experience, which will definitely appeal to a certain niche, just as MUDs did. (And that name may be too slick. I don't know how nasty Slack is inclined to be, but directly referencing brand names in your name like that is dangerous from a trademark perspective.)

DanHulton 10y ago
I don't think I trip up the agreements anywhere, I've checked over them a few times and also emailed Slack to ask if it was cool if I made a game on their platform before I started. I didn't share too many specifics (I said it was MUD-like and was going to use their buttons), but they told me to go for it, so I think I'm in the clear there. Also, while I haven't figured out monetization, I don't think there should be any real problems with that either. Other people charge for their slack bots and integrations, so unless they specifically have a problem with a game-style slackbot charging money, there shouldn't be anything preventing me from charging for stuff. You very well may be right about the name, though. I've just registered "chatandslash.com" as a backup that I can switch to before too much marketing has gone forward, and I've already emailed Slack again to show them what I've come up with and for further confirmation that what I'm up to is fine and dandy before progressing any further. Oh, and you're totally right about shimming out Slack with my own frontend. It's in the backlog of stuff to do some day potentially, but I think there's a lot to be gained in the meantime by explicitly staying with Slack in the meantime. "An RPG you play in Slack" is a lot more interesting than "An RPG that looks kinda like chat, I guess". Thanks for the advice!