How Nick Roessler built a community from developing a poker combat video game on 'Warcraft III'

When Nick Roessler was playing around with an editing tool in "Warcraft III," he didn't expect to create something that would amass a following of over a thousand players.

The founder of SkeleJelly Games — a small gaming studio named after his past online pseudonym — Roessler has built "Poker Warlords," which combines betting with combat from virtual armies. The concept stems from building a game within the strategy game "Warcraft III" and another iteration called "BattlePoker" made from "StarCraft II" tools.

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Roessler said he felt like a "lone wolf" while developing "BattlePoker," but joining a group called Philly Game Mechanics last year gave him a new community. "I have made friends that I'll see outside of the actual (gaming) events," Roessler said. "There really is a lifeblood of games condensed in Philly."

Building a game within a game

Roessler, who who earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2021 and lives in Graduate Hospital, developed an interest in software programming and AI in high school, when he and his friends started playing "Warcraft III" about 15 years ago.

"The neat thing about 'Warcraft III' was that it had a map editor," Roessler said. "It allowed you to automate anything that you wanted within 'Warcraft.' It lowered the barrier of entry for making things. Anyone can create and upload a (custom game). There was total freedom to make what you want."

Roessler said he made around 15 small games within "Warcraft III," allowing his friends to test them out. And one of those games, based on his experience playing poker with the same friend group, stood out.

"The basic idea was you'd be dealt a hand, but your hand would be a number of units," Roessler said. "... So you're getting dealt these hands that represent armies."

While Roessler and his friends knew they were playing something special, there were limitations in the early iterations. The game did not have a gambling system, so they could only make bets with chips in person. The custom poker combat game was not uploaded online and never left his friend group.

The birth of BattlePoker

In 2020, Roessler said one of his friends called to reminisce about the poker Warcraft game from years ago.

"It felt special compared to other game ideas we had," he said. "And I expected some other developer to make a game like that."

No one else filled that niche, so Roessler began remaking his old game. This time, he built it using the "StarCraft II" editor and made a proper betting system, letting players compete against each other online. The project, called "BattlePoker," took five months to complete, and Roessler had low expectations when he finally released it.

"It kind of went viral," he said. "I was mind blown. There was no marketing. I just put it online and it took off." 

Among other custom games made in StarCraft, "BattlePoker" became one of the top 10 played after its release. Roessler said 2,500 people are still playing every month.

When Roessler created a server on the Discord messaging application for "BattlePoker" players, it quickly gathered over 1,000 members who provided bug reports and requested new features. Roessler found himself with new responsibilities, not only updating "BattlePoker" but managing a large community.

Passionate "BattlePoker" players joined Roessler to help with the game, hosting tournaments and streaming gameplay on the Twitch platform. "BattlePoker" was translated into Korean, and the game was popular enough that Roessler had to deal with hackers.

'Fun is mysterious'

Roessler said "StarCraft II" was an aging game with security vulnerabilities so he decided to re-create "BattlePoker" as a standalone product called "Poker Warlords." 

After completing his Ph.D. and before starting a full-time computer security research job, Roessler learned how to use the Unity video game development engine, which became the technological foundation of his new game.

Like "BattlePoker," "Poker Warlords" combines betting elements with combat, and the cards that are dealt to players represent armies.

"On your turn, if you're dealt a good card, you can raise, and that means other people have to put in more chips to continue," Roessler said. "If everyone folds, then there's no battle and whoever raised will win the hand. If you get to the end of the hand, and there are multiple people still in the pot, then everyone's hands turn into armies and they battle to win the pot."

Roessler works on "Poker Warlords" roughly 20 hours a week, in addition to having a full-time job. He is the only programmer for the game, but he recruited three team members from the "BattlePoker" community for the project: Justin Goodrich, Garen Haig and David Tryon-Hughes, who work on the game's balance design and help coordinate with artists and musicians. 

Player-focused tests are also run to help Roessler continue to improve "Poker Warlords" — which is already the third iteration of this poker combat idea.

"In my day job, and most things in engineering, you can analytically approach something," Roessler said. "But in game design, you’re optimizing for fun, which is an ephemeral quality. You can think something is fun in your head, and you play it, and it’s not fun. Or there’s an idea that sounds stupid, and you play it and it’s really fun. So fun is mysterious, and the only approach that works is repeatedly iterating and trying and trying and trying."