Highrise

Jimmy, co-founder and CTO of Pocket Worlds, explains how Highrise combines a social app with an MMO. Its social-first design puts community features such as messaging, feeds, profiles, and guilds at the center, with a fashion contest as the game loop; players stay for the friendships they make. To deliver an app-like experience, Highrise uses native Swift and Kotlin UI alongside a shared C++ game engine, connected through platform-specific bridges. Jimmy describes how this architecture could support other games that reuse Highrise’s social systems, and notes Pocket Worlds’ plans to build more games and worlds.