introducing Playsum

Hi, while we (Katie and Alex) are working to get Playsum launched into early access we wanted to shed more light on what inspired and motivated us to create Playsum. 

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Lost to the void

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Many people started playing video and tabletop games as kids. For us, it started really young - we’ve been gamers since we were 2 years old. Mesmerised by the games our sisters were playing, we fell for the classic “giving your younger sibling an unplugged controller and telling them they’re playing it. “ move.

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We vividly remember being amazed at the speed of Sonic on Dreamcast, mind-blown to find out that time passed in Animal Crossing when you’re not playing, playing Halo: CE on display Xboxes in stores.

Over the years we’ve had so many great moments while gaming and hanging out with other gamers. We’ve also noticed how difficult it can be when you’re really excited about a certain game but none of your friends play it, and how hard it can be to find friends online who do play it.

Across every social network, community board, and messaging apps we’d see so many posts with people looking for others to play with. Usually, they get a couple of responses at most. 

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It struck us how difficult it is to find good gaming friends. You have to use multiple platforms to throw a message out and hope that you mesh with the people who respond.

We want to re-capture the feeling of playing games with your friends when you were kids, where the game was what brought you together but it was really about hanging out with your friends.

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Gate-keeping and toxicity

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We’ve worked professionally in the Trust & Safety and Support industries on social platforms for nearly a decade. We learned a lot throughout this time and it further cemented our deep love for protecting and supporting communities, which we’ve had since we were teenagers. As teenagers, we frequently participated in online forums and IRCs, talking to people with similar interests, and that’s where it all started.

Video games and tabletop games are wonderful mediums, playing together or merely geeking out about them is a great way to form amazing friendships. But the road to that is often rough, amongst the friendships are gate-keeping, unwanted advances, calls to harm yourself, slurs, and derogatory insults.

All of this can make social gaming intimidating and inaccessible. 74% of adults in the US experience harassment in online games*. While 72% of women say they would stop playing a multiplayer video game if they saw toxic behavior**

Gaming is about having fun, whether you have fun by striving to be the best in a competitive game, roleplaying a character you created with pen and paper, laying down with a cozy game, or getting lost in a story-driven adventure. Your gender, sexuality, race, how you game or what you like to play shouldn’t matter.

We want Playsum to be a place where gate-keeping and exclusionary behavior don’t exist. We plan to partner with nonprofits, streamers, game devs, and others who share in our mission to solve this in the whole gaming space. As a community and industry, we can make things better together.

Now and the future 

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We’re so excited to get Playsum into people’s hands soon! We’re aiming to release it to a small group of people from the waitlist in September. Early members will help play a massive part in improving the function and features of the app as well as shaping the community.

The first release of the app will help you to:

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• Find gamer friends that you will actually enjoy hanging out with. The discovery system uses your game library, the platforms you play on, timezone, and other criteria 

• Join or grow a community and keep in touch with friends with channel-based group chats.

• Play more often with your friends, by finding the free time you have in common using the gaming session scheduler (think Calendly for gamers).

This is just the beginning, we have many more features planned to solve long-standing problems for gamers. As we get feedback from you and the rest of the community, Playsum will continuously evolve and improve.

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We’re excited to be a part of helping people take part in the joy of gaming!