thanks stack overflow! I'm better at googling when I'm more awake. so far this is crude and giving me very odd arrays like ['username, 'username', {username:username}] and its obvious why.... I just need to not do that and I'm almost there with this concept.
the amount of things I just realized about signalr is pretty amazing. props to some awesome stack overflow users for pointing me in the right direction. Before I attempt the game portion I'm going to finish reading the docs. Seeing the answer always makes you realize how simple the problem was after all.