Brag House: Using Python to build a social platform for gaming

Brag House is a platform that gives casual college gamers the experience of being professional esports gamers. Built on long-standing college rivalries, they have created an intramural experience that centralizes all the features of professional esports, from commentary to in-game interviews and game analyses. Brag House is providing a community where students can compete, talk trash, and win prizes.

The founders created Brag House to cater specifically to casual gamers, filling a void in the gaming market. Nearly all existing platforms focus on the top 3-5% of their users, those who spend extensive amounts of time gaming. Brag House was designed to provide a competitive, community experience for new gamers and those who only play for a few hours a week. So they began by engaging a key portion of this audience: casual college gamers.

How does Brag House work?

Brag House is a social network dedicated to building a community around the college sports culture in the United States. Brag House started with a focus on the college market, combining the fanaticism of college sports with competitive play for casual, but passionate, gamers and their fans in tight-knit university communities, as the CEO and cofounder, Lavell Juan, stated in an interview with GamesBeat. Their mission is to create a community in which gamers, streamers, fans, and friends can play games and win prizes.

After registering with the service, users receive a virtual currency called “brag bucks” in their account. Administrators create records of upcoming games and add Q&A opportunities. To answer a question about a game, users need to spend some of their virtual money. At the end of the game, the winners receive their game prize in the form of virtual currency if they get the answer correct.

The users who have won the most are included in the rankings table. The service also offers users a free daily chest that gives a random amount of virtual currency.

The challenge

By the time Evrone joined the project, the client already had a prototype in the form of an application for mobile devices. Most of the mobile backend used AWS Amplify, which limited certain functionality. So the client decided to use Python to create an MVP, rewriting the backend of the application in Django. They turned to Evrone for help, as we have vast experience in Python project development and the expertise to provide continuous integration for Django projects.

Our task was to develop an API for creating an MVP, in order to pitch the project to investors for further funding. On our side, we have rewritten part of the functionality from scratch, converting it from AWS Amplify to Python Django.

Why choose Python Django for project development?

We used Django as the main framework on the backend, as this framework allows you to quickly write prototypes and, therefore, get to market faster. The client has a technical background and was aware of the advantages of the framework, so they were looking for a Django fast development partner to implement their ideas.

Technologies that we used in the MVP development process with Django:

• Python3 as the main language for backend development
• Django as the main framework for building APIs
• Celery to perform pending tasks in the background
• RDS as the main database
• Git as a version control system
• Github for hosting a git repository and DevOps processes
• Docker for deploying the application in different environments

As for third-party services, we used AWS services (EC2, RDS, S3, etc.) for infrastructure, Stripe as a payment gateway, and Twitch API for getting information about streams. To implement push notifications, we carefully studied and used the Expo Push API.

Before the release of the application, we had to urgently implement some features (for example, adding notifications for messages and the free daily chest) and offer new technical solutions to the client. In a short time, we implemented everything that the client asked for.

The conclusion

Just a year ago, Brag House was an experiment driven by a grassroots college ambassadorship program. Now, the founding team has a vision of building a new Python social media network app and platform for gaming and is successfully developing and growing it. They’ve added capabilities for private tournaments and have already partnered with several international companies to host large-scale tournaments.

We are happy to have helped Brag House with their migration from AWS Amplify to Python Django and their successful development of an MVP. And we’re thrilled that, in October of 2021, Brag House closed their Series A round and will soon be taking Brag House public on the NYSE (NASDAQ) through an IPO. The Series A round was led by Black Sheep Ventures and also included Venture Capitalist Ron Bauer of Theseus Capital, notable gaming and crypto investor, Adrian Beeston, and others.

We are excited that Brag House is going global now, and we will be by their side if they require technical help. Reach out to us via the form below if you need help building an MVP with Django or you want to create a social media app with Python!