ID:2152995
 
Applies to:Webclient
Status: Open

Issue hasn't been assigned a status value.
So, I have a game that might have its own niche appeal and a personal platform I can promote it from. I'm working to make it webclient-compatible (and vice-versa) because I believe "go to this website to play this game!" is a better marketing approach than "Go to www.byond.com and download this package, then run this program and connect to the server using the pager". The "buy-in" cost for new users is that much lower.

That said, I believe there's a significant amount of bounce that occurs for potential new players when the BYOND login screen appears, just by dint of it being a login screen asking them to make an account.

I know that client authentication can be turned off, but I don't actually want to de-couple the game from the BYOND hub and the advantages it provides (secure login, subscriptions/credits, BYOND membership checks). I just want a more accessible entry portal into the game I can use for advertising.

What I'm requesting is the ability to pass an argument in the URL of the web client that causes it to automatically skip the login and connect as a guest. This way when I advertise the game, I can be pointing to a version of the webclient-embedded page that will skip the login screen and dump people right into the game's main menu. Players who are connecting through Dreamseeker or another version of the same page that lacks the argument would benefit from authentication.

On my end, the parts of the game that promote features available to subscribers and BYOND members would have slightly different language and links to target guests vs. authenticated accounts, and there would be a one-time ability for any save data created under a guest to be moved to under a key.

The general scheme here is: get people interested in the game, and from there potentially leading them to BYOND, rather than having to get them into BYOND and then the game.

If this is not feasible, my fallback plan is to simply host two versions of the server, a "promo" one that's not authenticated and an authenticated one, but I'd rather not have to go that far. I feel like fewer players will choose to buy upgrades if it means starting over on another server.
I definitely want to do something along these lines. Revamping the webclient login is really high on my priority list.