Idea: Games section quality control in public listing

[Marked 197]

As you guys have noticed, I've been pretty active developing the games section (and other parts of the site) lately. I guess long breaks are the best motivator. Eg, made this

 

Coding is fun, and I'd like to continue to develop the games section into a web app / SaaS that people utilize or think about first when choosing to present their projects online.

 

You guys have recently displayed a huge amount of uncreativity when it comes to feature suggestions, but I'm always looking at ways to make the system better. Coding web apps is mainly quite easy. The main factor in success of an application is planning out or implementing what it is going to have and what it is not going to have. That's the pivotal part. I could have a logo upload, a width and height field, x and y fields etc, or I could just position is myself without any options where most logos will fit. That sort of decision making.

 

What this topic is actually about

Quality control. Here's what I think is a bit of an issue:

 

It's not very enticing. The landing game page is quite important in attracting new members to try it out and actually use it. Having games with barely any content isn't really helping our cause, it makes it look quite amateurish. But in reality there are those pages which are intended to be that way, so 1. we want game pages that are early in development, to slowly build and blog about etc, but 2. we don't want those on the public listing when they first go live.

 

So right now I am thinking about enforcing some parameters of eligibility to be displayed on the public listing homepage. Just the homepage. I am thinking these games will be a secondary featured category. The parameters could be:

• A logo upload - to tidy up the look and quality of the games landing page
• a demo upload
• at least 1 gallery upload

So rather than a public listing of all of our games, as is our current system, it would be a homepage with our most established and best-to-show-off games, followed by categories such as "new" or "all", plus the filters we already have in place.

 

Thoughts + discussion?

 

My next priority for the games section is built-in project cards (the project cards are coming back, but this time inside of the games section). Not just that, but a bunch of automatically generated images based on your various uploads, and automatically generated BBCode for you guys to advertise your game pages, coz you really need that... plus themes plus design options plus sidebar customization.

 

[Ultim1337Gamer 1]

I agree with all this.Except the demo upload.There may be people making a REAL awesome game but it's early in dev then they get featured with the fake games.Just kick out that demo upload.I think it's a very bad idea.

 

I have some suggestions :

• Must have a Logo
• Must have at least 2 screenshots
• Complete with character profiles
• A complete Credits & Thanks list
• And at least one blog entry.

[Marked 197]

Ah yes, I agree with the demo come to think of it. We have featured games already that don't have a demo link.

 

It could either by an automated system, or I just moderate all games and choose the ones which make the cut. Your final 3 I think are too strict and may leave some games outside that we want inside. For example, people who don't want to blog which will probably be those who aren't part of the community.

[ShinkuAura 15]

There's some pages that have been in-active.

Maybe Ultim' s idea isn't so bad.

[Marked 197]

It's not activity. Someone's completed game is the best content you could have. So activity is not a goal, its quality of page

[ShinkuAura 15]

Mark,

 

Is it still to late to suggest game page features?

[Marked 197]

Of course not

[ShinkuAura 15]

Well it looks like most of my ideas are already in.

 

But here's a few 'suggestions'

How about a more dynamic development progression system?

Remember those cool project cards we could make with custom backgrounds? Why not 're-introduce' them for the game page.

For example, in the game page you see a progress of 15% how much is 15%?

Story: 80% Gameplay: 10% graphics: 5% etc, etc. Of course that there's games that do not have a story so why not let the developer pick their own categories or something-ish.

 

Another idea I came around is. A review page section where users can review games and rate them and instead of manually featuring games the high reviews could help that game page be on the FrontPage of our site.

 

Also, it could help that you'd add a 'follow this project' feature because I would like to know if the developer added new characters, new team member, or a home-page update.

The only way to follow the game-page is by being a team member of the page itself.

 

I got more ideas, but I want to hear your opinion on these ones.

[Marked 197]

All good suggestions. You described pretty much how the project cards used to be.

 

Right now I'm not sure how to implement reviews. It doesn't quite fit with what I am trying to achieve with the games pages, that being largely a easy way to display content that looks good and works like your own website. Reviews is sort of like a tangent to that idea, being content generated by people other than the game creator. However, I guess I could just have it as something that can be disabled  by the page creator. Yeah, I think that'll work. Creators can opt-in to allow user-submitted reviews. Actually, I think that'd be an easy system to implement (a reviews system). 

 

 

As for "follow this project", I also want to implement this. It just takes a bit of thought as to how. Apart from a game page accumulating "numbers", I want to add practical functions, ideally:

• page creators being able to send newsletters out to their fans email addresses (perhaps this needs a separate subscription field).
• followers actually get updated somehow of the pages activity - maybe need to code a new section on the site for this (eg find the My GDU concept topic)
• follower notifications of new comments, reviews, blog posts etc. Basically any new generated content that's not page-content.

[Polraudio 122]

Sounds like an awesome idea. I still need to make a logo. havent made one yet cause i completely suck when it comes to graphics like logos and title screens... actually i suck at all graphics besides small simple icons.

[Ultim1337Gamer 1]

@Polraudio : I can make you one if you want :)

[ShinkuAura 15]

Hey Mark, I got some new ideas for the game pages.

 

Most of our game project s aren't completed just yet.

But I see that a huge amount of us posting demos and such. So how about a feedback section where users can post their feedback/flaws of a game. I think it's up to the developer to add a feedback section.

 

Ah here's another idea.

I was thinking about a banner generator. Just like the Project cards only that this time these banners/advertisements things can help developers advertise their game pages and at the same time have more people on the forums.

 

I had more ideas, but they flew away. I hope they fly back at me.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Omar510

[Marked 197]

Nice Omar, all nice ideas. In a world where I have unlimited time, I will have implemented all of these :) The auto-generated ad banners are high on the list, because I see that as a way to generate traffic. It's pretty common sense for people to do themselves... but people are lazy.

 

 

But I see that a huge amount of us posting demos and such. So how about a feedback section where users can post their feedback/flaws of a game. I think it's up to the developer to add a feedback section.

This is another thing I always wanted to do but again I have wondered I would implement. It really is a dilemma that needs solved, maybe you guys can help. On a game page, there's no such thing as necro-posting, the content should always be relevant. Often times general comments will no longer be relevant and sort of get in the way. There are various types of feedback that would be great for developers to have, including

• general posts/comments
• general game feedback aka a review
• bug report
• customer support (not called this, but where users can ask support eg the download doesn't work, the patch doesn't work etc).

This is fine, the challenge is how does this information get displayed and differentiated. They're all just posts, basically (with the exception of the reviews, possibly).

[ShinkuAura 15]

I think I'll have some more ideas later on.

But I'm glad you liked some ideas/suggestions.

[Marked 197]

I have made a decision on this topic (the original one about quality control).

 

I will release the following changes once I code 'em up

• the games homepage, gdu.net/games, will only consist of featured games
• thus, all decent game pages (even without demos) will get featured. The criteria for being featured is only to have made a good game page in terms of content, presentation and style.
• the layout will therefore change a bit. People will find games not featured only by going into categories (all new, most viewed, this engine etc) and there will be numerous filters on the side as well (as there is currently).
• presentation of games in the game page will change completely, to this sort of style
• 
• There will be some additional info but there will no longer be a description of the game. All you have to entice people into clicking is the title and the logo. Additional info like view count, download count, and a few tags (engine, genre) will be displayed.

[Ultim1337Gamer 1]

@Marked : Then I need to reload my GIMP and work on an awesome game page lol