Bob the Blob

Social online games have become one of the primary ways young adults build genuine friendships and emotional support. But when a player's entire social life is contained inside these platforms, their relationship with gaming shifts. They stay in games they no longer enjoy, stepping away feels like losing their support system, and they find themselves trapped in a dependency loop they never chose.

Bob the Blob is a gaming companion built around three ideas: to help players set intentions for how they want to game, to encourage them to explore interests outside of gaming, and to connect those interests with the friends they already play with.

Bob shown on desktop and mobile. The desktop screen shows a post-gaming session recap with two goals. The mobile screen shows Bob introducing themself to a new user.

Before each gaming session, Bob is on your desktop and asks one question: what do you want from this? Maybe it's control over your time, playing with people you enjoy, or just wanting to feel better. That intention becomes Bob's anchor. During and after gameplay, Bob tracks how the session went based on your stated goals— e.g. how long you played, how your mood shifted, who you were with. Over time, Bob surfaces patterns: e.g. you feel worse after late-night sessions with certain friends and better after shorter ones with different players. Bob won't force you to stop, but Bob will tell you when you're past the goal you set for yourself. What you do with that information is your call.

A diagram showing the six stages that lead to gaming dependency, starting from a lack of social connection in offline life and ending in a cycle that's hard to break.

But patterns alone don't change the fact that your friendships live inside one space. That's where Bob goes further: Bob accompanies you into your life beyond gaming, logging places you've been, things you've tried, and hobbies you're picking up. When Bob notices you've been engaging in similar activities with your gaming buddies, Bob surfaces these parallels and lets you know. Not as a demand to meet up, but as a discovery: there's even more you have in common than you thought.

Usability testing with the player to balance Bob’s AI functionality and user experience

Bob doesn't shrink your gaming life. Bob expands it. By helping players take ownership of how they game and how they connect, Bob can finally let people experience what gaming can be at its best — not a place that traps, but a place where real friendships are built and grown.