Ctrl+Femme

Inspiration

The gaming space is mostly dominated by men, making it difficult for women to strive in this environment and find other women they can relate to. Many of the currently available networks do not focus on making a comfortable community for women to join and meet people with the same interests, making it difficult for many female gamers to step out of their comfort zone. We wanted to create a safe, close-knit community for female gamers to match and connect with each other. In a world where women are often overlooked and underrepresented in gaming space, Ctrl+Femme builds a social network with its users to forge authentic connections between all games, regions, and platforms.

Our goal is to empower women in gaming and challenge the barrier that discourages women from exploring the world of gaming. By offering a supportive community for women to gather and have fun together, we hope to create a space that prioritizes the safety of women online and empowers women to thrive in the gaming community.

What it does

Users must sign up/log in to access their profile, friends list, messages, and connections tab
After logging in, users are redirected back to the main page, where they can choose to browse connections or go to messages
In the connections tab, users can view other users who are actively interested in finding new friends and may have similar game preferences, region, or skill level. Users can also request to friend other users in this tab
In the messages tab, users can message friends they have made through the connections tab

How we built it

For the front end, we used Figma in React and CSS to create customizable, interactive UI. We used components and variants to create small animations for buttons and visual illustrations.

The back end uses MongoDB to create a database for our website and Gemini AI to match users together based on the information from their profiles. We used Javascript for the main server and to connect most of the project together. Finally, Rest JSON was used for all features related to interchanging data, including messaging, profiles, and authentication of users.

Challenges we ran into

The most challenging part of our project was integrating UI from Figma into our back end code, especially since it was our first time using Figma. We also had a lot of difficulties with merge conflicts throughout the project, mostly due to the complexity of files and the use of branches to implement various parts of the website at the same time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our team worked really well together, and each of us were able to help and learn from each other throughout all components of the project. All of us tried learning an app, programming language, and/or concept that we never used before, and we worked together seamlessly through errors that arose.

What we learned

We learned a lot about how hackathons work and how short 36 hours can actually be... Through all of out problems, we ultimately helped each other and problem solved together. We also learned that git merge is difficult.

What's next for Ctrl+Femme

We plan on adding a dedicated space for real-time events, like a casual lounge, and recruitment for games that require a lot of players. For example, games like Among Us and Pummel Party can have lobbies of 8+ players, so an active recruitment page will help hosts find other players who are ready to play at the moment.