I lost the suggestions forum post, and since I'm too lazy to find it, I decide to blog about it. Besides, I need to blog more, and be a little more active on the site.
Disclaimer: This will be a rant, so bear with me.So as far as I know, this is still a game-making site. And now we're getting a lot of submissions, right? That's excellent. Really helps step up the activity. The activity feed is a huge addition that has done nothing but help the site. The only thing that seems to help less (but still does some good I'm sure), however, is the blog preview section. It's no big deal, since the activity feed greatly makes up for it.Anyhow, the point of this blog wasn't to discuss the activity feed. This is targeted to game mods in particular (and by that I mean those who actually go through the queue). It seems like we're accepting anything and everything that's submitted. It's good for activity, but people have talked about the 64Digits image, and it's somewhat bad for it.Have we not talked about the 64D image? Before you say that, bear in mind the censorship that we have. Still can't curse in blog titles, and still can't post offensive pictures (thank God). So obviously some people care about our image, and that's why this blog is here.I ask why we accept games that clearly took no time to design. I'm talking Click the Clown, I'm talking 1945 clones, anything that doesn't look innovative or original in any way. Or anything that's done with very little time and care.First games are understandable, but should they really push the better games off of the recent submissions page? Some people care a lot about their games and put their hearts into them, and they won't last a minute on the front page.As of now, and sadly, the front page is the only attention games are getting (with the exception of a select few).I suggest being a little more frugal in accepting games. If the person really wants their game to get attention, why not post a series of blogs about it? DSG is doing just fine that way, and he's getting endless attention. Rez is doing the same, despite posting a demo earlier.If you don't care about the 64D image, then let me backtrack to the fact that no matter how good your game is, it has just as much frontpage time as anyone else. It's fair, sure, but at the same time, it's not. It's as I said before. Some people really care about their work and put all their being into making a great game for it to get little attention.The site's definitely improving, and I'm very satisfied with the work the staff's doing. But there are some things I feel might make it better.I understand this is somewhat controversial, so please keep your comments civil.And if you didn't read it, you're a lazy bastard (yes, know it's long).
Can't this be fixed by featuring games on the front page as well as just having a recent submissions page? That way you can include all the crap people submit so you don't discourage the newbies, but the good games still get exposure.
I'll gladly start being more sniffy once we get more games coming through. Frankly, the Mad Science game is so bad it's funny.
I think that the number of games on the front page should be increased to 9.
I think there should be badges for playing/reviewing x amount of games. In fact, I think the whole badge system should be overhauled.I think we need to add some competitive and collaborative aspects to 64digits, which would increase overall incentive to actually contribute something of value to the community. The ability to hold competitions, make groups, etc.I have some ideas for improving the quality of game submission handling and 64digits game support in general. Of course one of the top things on the list is to fix the download counter.
I agree with blackhole 100% percent. We need a featured thing for sure :D
Eh, the download counter doesn't seem all that important at the moment. That's why it hasn't been fixed yet, I'm sure.
But this site was originally based around game design, right? I'd like to see it start to emphasize it, especially when people with mediocre (or bad) games don't feel any regret when they submit. If the Mad Science creator were actually active here, I wouldn't be so blunt about it.Thing is, blogs are important as well. In fact, they've become much more important than the games have. Increasing attention to games will most likely take away from blogs.Still, I'd like to see the game comments get as many as blog comments. It's just that people are too busy to download and play the game, and reading is generally much less time consuming. Finding a way to coax people into being a little more patient as FCYW said, would greatly increase the amount of development here, I'm sure.Also, if there was a badge to review games, then there should be a review option, something that stands out past the comments, even to YYG's more pitiful (only able to see one review at a time) extent.I don't mean to ask so much of the staff. I'd just like to see one of my favorite parts of the site be improved. It's not like I'm asking for a feature to automatically transfer my comments to/from BlogSpot or whatever that place was, right? Riiiight?…Right?I have some ideas for game reviewing updates that shouldn't be too hard to add and shouldn't distract people from blogs either. The download counter isn't too important, but it also makes the site look bad to have a broken feature so obviously displayed. Plus the longer its down, the more games we will have with obviously low download counts.
lmao XD i didnt even notice
We could have it so there are two sets of "buttons": Main games and side games. Side games have a small bunch of banners, whereas main games get a larger banner, with less on there. Like this.
http://64digits.com/users/squeakyreaper/model.PNGThe game mods who approve game get to decide if the game goes to the main section or the side section. This way, games they perceive to have less time spent on them don't push off the games they think to have more effort on them.