Pusher contest ideas/discussion thread

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Hey everyone. Whether or not you plan to submit an app or hack to the first DEV Contest (deadline May 25th), here is a thread to throw out ideas to help those who are excited to take part but don't know what to build.

The contest requires making use of the Pusher Channels product

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One idea I have for this sort of contest is a live map of public data. Civic data, like in New York is a good source, as are tweets, Instagram data, etc. Things with a time and a location can very nicely be plotted to tell a story. Always a great use of realtime tech.


Online games are another really good use of this tech.

I think PWA concepts present a pretty interesting opportunity for mobile-based "party games", where nobody has to install anything, but they can all play some sort of live collaborative game on a whim.


Combining these two ideas into a game: a live "Where's Waldo?"/"Where in the world is Carmen Sandiago?" where anyone connected to the site races to try to find the character on a map. The location of the character for each "round" could be based on something fun, like highest concentration of a specific hashtag at that moment.


I would love to see a game similar to Twitch Plays Pokemon. I feel like a live chat and simple movement game combo would work really well.

Twitch Plays Pokemon was/is a livestream where anyone can enter a livestream of a computer (I think?) playing Pokemon, and the live chat would dictate what commands to do (move up, move down, hit a, hit b, etc.). When there were enough players, it was complete mayhem, but also hilarious to watch.

...maybe I'll do it myself. 🙃


A PWA able to do realtime updates to schedule/timetable for a group of users. Like a group of users attending the same tuition classes wanting to set appropriate time for the common tuitions.


A few ideas:

  • a collaborative "art" piece or canvas that updates live, sort of like reddit's r/place from last year
  • Prisoner's dilemma online, either matched up with a random partner or maybe even splitting everyone on the site into two groups that vote each time on what to do

I was actually thinking of doing something like r/place but with some personal touches, some other ideas I have are:

  • A social helping network for developers, like a live code reviewer to learn how to implement paradigms, clean code, architectures, etc.

  • A collaborative platform/drawing/race game where a team draws a path to the finish line (upwards) and the other team (or maybe the spectators) draw obstacles to stop the "runner" to get to the end in time.

  • A trading/betting app idk.


I have an example of that (r/Places) using SocketIO, Express and React ( github.com/pekosoG/JS-Isomorfico ), using Pusher and replace SocketIO would be really easy (;


I'm toying with 2 ideas: a word game, and a werewolf game. The word game can be quickly tested, and is therefore likely to be easier to judge and might do better. But the werewolf game might be handy for me personally. Werewolf (often also called Mafia) is a social deduction party game, but it's quite hard to play as a visually impaired person. I have a solution, with the added benefit that you don't need a narrator, so everyone can play. The problem with that, is that it takes a group of people and a bigger time investment to try it out. If I build this, I'm hoping to get together a group of people to test it out and record a video of us playing, so I can upload that to showcase the app.


I have an idea that I am thinking of implementing. So, a pdf/medium article reader in which a passage being highlighted is shown in realtime. So two users reading the same article simultaneously can then maybe chat each other on the same site which again uses Pusher channels. How does it sound? Should I implement it.


How about the Realtime To-do list? Although it is a fairly basic idea, can be we do something interesting with it?


It could be in the form of an Eisenhower Matrix!


Nice Idea...I can think of doing that...Thanks for suggestions!

I've had the thought of an Eisenhower matrix that was backed by GitHub issues, or some other task board. And then you could get realtime indications whenever an issue is changed or commented on.


Ben gave some excellent suggestions! 🙌

To get some inspiration of what can be built with Channels you can check out our use-cases page, or our tutorials :)

It's a lot, and I'm super eager to see what you folks come up with! 🚀


I have been working on an opensource porting of the (abandoned) mobile game Earthcore: Shattered elements.
I already have a working prototype build in React with a stupid AI (who selects random cards when is its turn) Elime.

I would like to make it work with pusher using websockets to allow people to play remotely, if anyone wants to help I am here


I'm so hyped for this contest!

Personally, an idea I had for the Pusher contest is a collaborative code editor -- for pair programming and the like!


Just thought of an idea based on all the awesome conferences going on. It would notify registered attendees via SMS that the event is starting. How does this sound? Has this been implemented already?

Classic DEV Post from Feb 12

There's no such thing as a full stack developer

Is it possible to be a Full Stack Web Developer? I say no but these are just opinions so don't like - roast me on twitter ok just ideas here.

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A Canadian software developer who thinks he’s funny.

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