Building a successful video game is incredibly challenging. Not only do you have to spend months (or years!) creating a compelling interactive experience, you have to attract an audience. Fortunately, there’s a solution. When you combine Discord, the gaming-centric communication platform, with Phaser, the popular JavaScript game framework, magic happens. You get access to over 200 million monthly active users and an SDK that makes bringing your game ideas to life easy.
What are Discord Activities?
Discord Activities are games and interactive experiences that users can engage with directly within Discord servers and DMs. They allow for real-time collaboration, communication, and multiplayer interaction among users. These Activities range from voice-channel games to shared experiences like watching videos or playing simple, interactive games. Since they run within Discord, they can be accessed on desktop, mobile, or the web.
Why Discord Activities are a huge opportunity
Given its massive gamer audience (over 200 million MAUs) and a platform built on top of social servers, it’s poised to become one of the biggest game platforms. Discord’s foundation is built for developers to fully utilize chat, voice, and video features to create more immersive and engaging experiences. Their primary audience is players in their teens to twenties that are organized in small interests-based servers. Therefore, game developers can create Discord Activities tailored to these interests and are all but guaranteed a significant player base to connect with. Finally, integrated monetization featuring native payment and checkout offers developers an easy way to sell subscriptions or one-time purchases and players the confidence that their purchases are secure.
This is an exciting moment not just because of Discord’s unique offerings, but also due to a resurgence in web-based gaming. In the early 2000s and 2010s, platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok attempted to establish HTML5 gaming spaces. However, these platforms faced a conflict of interest: game engagement often competed with their core social media focus. Discord, with its roots in gaming and an established distribution model, is well-positioned to succeed where others didn’t. Discord Activities just launched in September 2024 and is already seeing incredible adoption, with over 90% of Discord users having tried Activities.
Recent successes in web gaming, including indie platform itch.io and the popular game Wordle, signal a turning point for the industry. Facebook also had 200M MAUs when they launched their app platform and many hit games and companies were built. So, now is the time to join Discord as they lead this renewed wave of web game innovation.
Cool Activities to Try
Over 90% of Discord users have tried Discord Activities, and when you see the types of games and experiences that companies are building, it’s easy to see why. Some of our favorites include:
Gartic Phone
This 2D multiplayer cartoon game is a smash hit! Gartic Phone is a unique twist on the classic “telephone game.” Each player writes a silly/quirky sentence then has to draw someone else’s sentence. The results, as you can imagine, are hilarious.
Krunker Strike FRVR
This 3D low poly arcade shooter gives off serious Counter-Strike vibes. Krunker Strike is fast-paced and fun game featuring dedicated servers and a thriving economy with thousands of items and cosmetics to unlock.
Farm Merge Valley
This 2D cartoon puzzle business farming game lets the player grow crops and manage a farm full of a variety of animals.
These are just a few of the awesome games that you can play on Discord. Curious about building your own game? Check out Phaser.
What is Phaser?
Phaser is a popular JavaScript game framework that lets you build powerful 2D games using web technology. It has been in active development for over 11 years. A dedicated full-time team behind it constantly strives to make it the best it can be while keeping it easy to learn. Developers worldwide have used it to create thousands of games, from small prototypes to full-scale commercial titles with millions of players.
Build a Discord Activity with Phaser
Discord Activities are web-based, built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. They are single-page web applications hosted on an external site and embedded in an iframe. Since Phaser’s focus is web-based games, it’s an excellent choice for building your Discord Activity.
Why Phaser for Discord Activities?
Phaser is a first-class web citizen. As mentioned, it is built on and around web standards and prioritizes the browser. You can code games in vanilla JavaScript or TypeScript, and there are many ready-made templates for those looking to integrate with React, Vue, Svelte, and more.
Create super-fast 2D games. Given its social nature, Discord Activities work best as multiplayer experiences. Phaser can easily handle the demands that multiplayer requires and has always been built with high performance in mind. With its constantly improving hardware renderer and open source code, your Phaser-based Discord Activity will be well received with Discord’s gaming-centric communities.
Build for the real world. Discord users expect high quality, responsive experiences that load instantly, whether they are at home or on the go with the Discord mobile app. Thanks to Phaser’s compact sub-200KB builds, you won’t risk losing a potential new player’s attention.
Distribute beyond Discord. Phaser games run in desktop or mobile browsers as well as apps that run web games, such as SnapChat, Facebook, WeChat, Playable Ads, Telegram, Twitch and more. Investing the time to learn Phaser is well worth it given you can reach new players everywhere.
What will you build?
Access to millions of players. A robust, battle-tested web gaming framework. How will you leverage Phaser to build the next viral Discord Activity? Start building now by checking out our tutorial on creating Discord Activities with Phaser.