What GAGE is
GAGE is a game built on real sports. Before a game starts, you make picks on how its players and teams will do, and every pick is scored against the odds you locked in when you made it. You play it against your friends, on the game you're already watching.
Why I built it
Every other sports app is a lonely experience. You're on your own in it, and the app is on the other side. I wanted a fair game, where knowing the sport is the only edge, and where you play with people you know. Strangers don't care about strangers. Your friends do, and that's where the fun is.
How the scoring came to be
The first version scored over-unders with points I made up, and the points were arbitrary. They needed to mean something. Now every pick is worth 10 points, split by its chance of landing, so if you pick everything the way the odds do you finish around zero, and every point above that is a read the odds didn't have. That works for one game, and it works across a season with your friends. We tried a version where average finished at 75 first. It still felt made up.
The idea is older than the app
I first tried to build it years ago, and it went nowhere: the tools for one person to build something like this didn't exist, and the sports data was locked up by a few big companies. Both changed. So I built it.
One thing I'd tell anyone building their first app
Don't. And if you have to, don't count on anyone else. It's twelve-hour days and weekends, and nobody wants you to succeed except you.
GAGE is free on the App Store. I write about building it on Substack, and GAGE is on X as @PlayGAGE.