The new BYOND layout. A topic of heated debate, and understandably so. It's drastically different than anything we've seen on BYOND before. I'm going to go over a few of the things I like and dislike, and what I see the site becoming.

First, things I like. The new guild classified games setup is much, much better than the old channels. Early last week I didn't like the guild pages. They were a bit different than they are now, but I think the layout has improved significantly.

The games.byond.com page leads into the new guilds nicely, and gives a good overview of what's going on. On the right hand side, it displays how many games are in each section (as well as links to a few random ones) and displays how man players are currently playing those games, too.

Now, I want to go over some of the things I feel could create issues here in the future. First, the guild pages do -not- look like a BYOND page. It looks like you've gone to a totally different website - it NEEDS to be branded BYOND in a unique way that other pages can't match. I personally think that the sidebar of the main pages need to stick around on the official guilds as well, and slide all the guild page boxes to the right hand side.

Second, am I to understand that the guilds are moderated by normal BYOND members? I don't like this at all. It will lead to more problems for the BYOND staff than just maintaining would in the first place. As long as two or so staff members are in executive control of the guilds, and other high-ranking guild members can approve games, but not remove them, I think the system will work out fine.

Let me divert for a moment and discuss the old ranking system. Being a former channel reviewer for RPG and strategy, the major problem with the old system was that entries would pile up faster than we had time to review them. Even two or three people sometimes had time going through all the games, because the review process required you spend a good bit of time on each game. If we allow normal BYONDers to review and approve games, then the process will move along. The staff would then just administrate (like I said) in the executive position of ensuring that horrible games aren't getting approved, and favortism isn't taking place.

And the final thing I don't like is the fact that games live does not exist. Moving people into the guilds is great, but I firmly believe that there needs to exist a games live page, where anything goes, that shows what is going on. Why? It's a cross-polination, if you will. Often times you'd check games live to see what's up, to look for something new to play. And often times, you'll check out games of genres you wouldn't normally play because the game's intro and graphic has caught your eye. I think this is an important facet of overarching community development that we need to retain.