IMO, moderators should set hubs that feature unplayable games to invisible. It's just a matter of the developer posting a comment on the 'admin feedback' page on their game if they want to host it then.

That would be a nice start. Some spring cleaning is overdue.

Nope. That's a beaten topic that has nothing to do with this, really.

That'd be a preferable default option I think. It just seems off to me that games that haven't been hosted in years rank higher than active ones.

Writing A New One wrote:

IMO, moderators should set hubs that feature unplayable games to invisible.

A problem with that is on a social/advertising level.
If all of the Naruto/DBZ/FanGames were invisible I doubt we would see any increase in traffic. Lots of people are constantly searching for indie/fan-games of their favorite shows, movies, games, series, etc. If they were to be invisible that's less likely any passer-by will actually stay. However, if they do see that there's been some attempt at their desired game, they are likely to stay and take a longer look around to see if there are any active projects that are similar.

I do agree though, that the algorithm or the actual sorting system is broken.

Spring cleaning would be great as long as every hub entry that has no host files or hasn't been hosted in ages, is given a notification that if they don't respond in X days their hub will be placed in a list of other hub entries. And if there is no activity within another X days those hub entries are taken off.

Speaking of which... I honestly think the Games page is severely outdated.
Recent BYOND Members, News, Updates, Recent Benefactors should be moved to the main Forum page. And that space they were taking up should be replaced with a Categories spot instead of the awful ugly "categories that are more popular have larger text" category stuff. I feel like it should be a check-box for Offline-Games and Online-Games. Like, whether a game can be played offline or whether it's an online-only game--obviously offline games would require host files on the hub entry. And then below that have the tags as a check-box so you can select multiple tags to narrow down games in the list to the left and even include the ability to narrow it further by how many active players are playing at that moment.



Mockup.

Actually, that's what I meant.
Inactive projects/hub entries that haven't been hosted in ages or have not had any updates nor contain any host files should be pushed aside. Combine that with "spring cleaning" and those hub entry owners should be given an automatic contact inquiring whether they intend to update or whether they're okay with abandoning the hub entry. If they don't reply within X days or if they are okay with abandoning the hub entry, the hub entry should just be removed after such amount of days.

What I'm saying though, is that hub entries that currently exist but aren't active actually do bring in search-engine result traffic to the website. For example, let's say there's no actively managed Naruto game. If a Naruto fan googles "Naruto free fan game" and sees BYOND they'll jump aboard the website, moreso if they see multiple hubs on the front page regaurdless of it's activity or not.
Now, flip it around, if the hub entries aren't posted on the front page there's a greater chance search-result traffic won't stay around long enough to browse the other sections of BYOND like the development section and the updates section, because unlike other web-based platforms, BYOND doesn't strictly split it's Games side and it's Development side.