ID:111071
 
Keywords: featured_games

I believe that, in the absence of superior technology and market penetration, BYOND's best way to lure in new developers is to provide a system that rewards projects for meeting certain standards. I believe this because BYOND's former channel system is part of what attracted me a decade ago.

Unfortunately, I don't know how much support the idea has. The channel system fell and I found that few were willing to shoot for feature status by the time the guild system was running. I began adding more benefits to act as bribes. I don't know how much they are valued, but I was given the chance to continue my efforts with the current system.

If I alone am the provider of these benefits then I am in fact advertising myself rather than BYOND. While I have strong opinions on how I wish to work, my goal is actually to make myself obsolete. Should my implementation of featured games fail, I hope to at least leave behind some tools for others.

The following feature benefits are automated:

  • Banners have been rotating on the site for the past decade.
  • The staff recently added a "scroller panel" on the front page.
  • CSS is used to highlight entries in the main game list. The staff endured my nagging for this one. ;)

The following feature benefits could be automated:

  • I've been posting updates from featured games on BYOND's Facebook page. I've made a feature request to have the posts filtered by public blog moderators referenced for automatic updates.
  • I've also been posting a gallery on Facebook. I know there are ways to upload automatically. If selecting pictures turns out to be a problem, perhaps the process can be eliminated by giving each game its own gallery.
  • With Along The Tech Tree, I learned to put the featured games on the right of every post so that my weekly efforts served as advertising. However, doing that with BYOND and Within requires more access to BYOND Central. Someone would have to maintain the blog's favorites list and the staff would have to be bothered every time someone new takes over. Instead, I've requested that a vertical version of the scroller panel be added.

The following feature benefits can't be automated:

  • Without a writer to add some personality and external influences, a regular column to keep people looking at the desired BYOND Central ads would likely lose what limited charm it has. On the bright side, the random staff announcements could still display the ads whether the column runs or not. If there are no ads then it probably doesn't matter and the column can simply end.

The following feature benefits can't be automated and are frelling necessary:

  • Reviews require sentient beings. I've made the feature standards public and tried to be specific. It is an attempt to provide integrity, remove unreasonable arguments and reduce the bulk of the work to a checklist. If I'm not doing the work then my "strong opinions" don't matter and the standards can be updated without me.
Since the "top new games" display (or whatever it was called) has been removed from the front page, its hard for new games to get noticed. Have you thought about this issue at all?

Being featured would give a new game the same visibility as all other featured games (assuming the rotation is random). As the number of featured games increases, the benefit for being featured decreases. I suppose you could mention newly featured games in your weekly column, but it might be nice to have an automated way for the site to highlight games that have become featured in the last 30 days.

I'm just wondering if you've thought about this at all. I'm not sure how much the volunteers could do because this'd require some site changes.
Hey, maybe someone could write up some kind of flash application on fbook to track games?

As to F_A's mention of the new games coming out... whatever happened to the all-mighty Thursdays? Remember those? When people would test usually on Thursdays? One could even make a category related to this Thursday thing... =p
We can add more incentives for people to feature games, but ultimately the problem comes down on the other end, finding people to review featured submissions. Part of the problem there is that these submissions tend to not get much of an audience, and when multiplayer is such a critical part that makes testing difficult. So I think the best idea is to do what Phriend suggestions:have a regular testing time (say, once a week) where a group of people can collectively play the submissions from that week. Then they could meet back to discuss. This is essentially what we did many (many many) years ago with the "Gathering of BYOND" (GOB). Now you may have some trouble gaining traction here (sometimes we did), and if that is the case, we could then provide incentives on that end. Food for thought...
Forum_account wrote:
Since the "top new games" display (or whatever it was called) has been removed from the front page, its hard for new games to get noticed. Have you thought about this issue at all?

Being featured would give a new game the same visibility as all other featured games (assuming the rotation is random). As the number of featured games increases, the benefit for being featured decreases. I suppose you could mention newly featured games in your weekly column, but it might be nice to have an automated way for the site to highlight games that have become featured in the last 30 days.

I was thinking featured should really be renamed to "polished". As it stands the purpose is not to "feature" games, but to separate the quite good from the awful. There are very few exceptional games among those featured.
I think the name is a little misleading, but I think the biggest problem is that our standards will change over time. As you said, being featured doesn't mean that the game is exceptional. Ideally BYOND will get more good games and eventually the majority of games will be featured. Then we'll have to find a way to distinguish the best games from the good games. Its not a problem yet, but I think we'll eventually realize that a static list of quality games is not sufficient.

An unrelated idea: Maybe the volunteers can organize some sort of medal collecting contest to get people to play certain games (especially the multiplayer-only ones). These contests could be run on a regular basis and would only include medals for featured games. It's an extra reward for the developer (and an incentive to add medals) and a way to direct players to specific featured games.
I don't find it a large issue, but it is a change I'd like to see.

An unrelated idea: Maybe the volunteers can organize some sort of medal collecting contest to get people to play certain games (especially the multiplayer-only ones). These contests could be run on a regular basis and would only include medals for featured games. It's an extra reward for the developer (and an incentive to add medals) and a way to direct players to specific featured games.

I actually suggested this a while back; the badge collecting incentive took the form of a game, in which earning awards would let the user unlock various cards or game board pieces. I think the blog post was titled "Kongai and BYOND". Vermolius was working on something like this, I even got to see an early version, but knowing him, he probably gave up. The problem is that the audience likely to be reached by this kind of advertisement is already the audience outside our "fangame community", that is, the audience which already plays those featured games. If we could convince the prominent fangame developers to have this kind of contests in their games it might just work, but I can't see why they'd do that.
@Forum_account: "Since the 'top new games' display (or whatever it was called) has been removed from the front page, its hard for new games to get noticed. Have you thought about this issue at all?"

No, my only department is featured games. I don't touch touch general listings. That's an area Tom could use some help in if you have any to offer.

As for contests, if you want to organize them then go for it and bring in whoever you'd like for your project. I'll give you whatever BV access you think you'll need. =)


@Toadfish & Forum_account: A name change wouldn't bother me. However, Tom has stated that he wants to keep things simple so a category for former features is not expected.


@Phriend: Asking people to schedule their lives around unpaid volunteer work honestly doesn't seem feasible in the long run to me. I'm trying to allow reviewers to act on their whims because their only motivation is what they bring with them. If an individual wants to set regular hours for oneself, that's cool. However, it won't be me because I already have a weekly column with a Gamasutra version every other week.


@Tom: My experience has always been that submissions are hard to come by period. The only games that have not been reviewed are my own. If I don't get players one week then I get them the next.

From my end, the only expansion of benefits is in genre. I was doing much of this work in BYOND Strategy. I'm just trying to see how much it can go on without me. Dependence on any one person doesn't make it stable or attributable to BYOND.