Anticipated stagnation of front page games in Off Topic

ID:107428
 
Jan 22 2011, 1:17 pm
Keywords: front, new, page
Just making a quick prediction:

By May 1, 2011, no more than two of the current "top 20" games will differ.

The new user experience: Try out the 20 games... visit every once in awhile... see that nothing has changed... go back to Kongregate, ArmorGames, etc...

A quick suggestion:
Make a temporal based rank as well. Dedicate the top five slots on both columns to be "Newest Games" (naturally, they aren't rips or fangames and would be easily determined by a moderator), and "Hottest Games of the Month". Hottest can be determined by some kind of Newgrounds/Kongregate criteria or simple "view count"-like value. Side note: make your ranking formula either public or simple.

The "top 10" historical should occupy the bottom half of the page.

This will keep your front page fresh and encourage people to develop new and original games on BYOND.
#1 Jan 22 2011, 1:29 pm
Wow, I actually agree with this.. o.o
#2 Jan 22 2011, 1:50 pm
That's exactly what I was saying here: http://www.byond.com/developer/forum/?id=770459

Good to know someone at least agrees with that point. I think it's very valid. Even if the new stuff isn't "featured" material, it's better than a stagnant listing to games. There's a featured list for a reason, not everything has to be on it. That's why I still believe non-members should be able to submit content. Either way, having to submit all of the content is a pretty inefficient way to doing things in itself.
#3 Jan 22 2011, 1:54 pm
Interesting that you mention this, as I was just considering this very topic. What I was thinking is that we redefine featured to mean "top 20 listed games by #member fans, no fangames included" + "the games featured in ACWraith's weekly column" (which would then vary week to week). The purpose of this would be to promote new games which _don't_ yet get played (since they need it more). For newer games that have some appeal, we could augment with a temporal factor (fans added recently or #plays) as well.

Agreed that we should make our ranking system public so people understand what we're looking for.
#4 Jan 22 2011, 2:10 pm
Or maybe take the games from the last month and sort those by #fans and throw those into the "new featured games" listings.

Keep in mind that none of this matters until people start making original games. I'm not sure we get 10 new original games a month. Our sorting algorithm isn't the only thing that makes us different from Newgrounds and Kongregate.
#5 Jan 22 2011, 2:35 pm
Tom wrote:
Keep in mind that none of this matters until people start making original games. I'm not sure we get 10 new original games a month. Our sorting algorithm isn't the only thing that makes us different from Newgrounds and Kongregate.

Absolutely. Perhaps I can "invest" some money and offer some monthly cash for best monthly games.

The main objective for this update, now this is just me guessing, is to recognize the efforts of original developers. The secondary goal, or perhaps more bluntly, the corporate goal is to encourage developers to create new content.

Another thing to consider, new content is not isolated to just game development. In the interim, you can use a "top 3" while new game development is revving up, and add more top 3s such as resources, tutorials, hot forum threads, hot blog posts... Again, the focus is on new content.


#6 Jan 22 2011, 3:56 pm
Tom wrote:
Keep in mind that none of this matters until people start making original games.

Original is great, but you guys seem to overlook the fact that the vast majority of independent games are fan games. People don't come here to earn money, they come to have some fun making games. Naturally, fan games follow. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
#7 Jan 22 2011, 4:51 pm
I'll be releasing something by May. There's one game to check off your list.
#8 Jan 23 2011, 2:04 am
Original is great, but you guys seem to overlook the fact that the vast majority of independent games are fan games. People don't come here to earn money, they come to have some fun making games. Naturally, fan games follow. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

I've been saying that for a while now. It seems you and I are right, too, seeing as BYOND has apparently been losing traffic (10%?) since the new website came about. The restriction on hubs and searches is, I'm sure, the cause.
#9 Jan 23 2011, 9:13 am (Edited on Jan 23 2011, 9:26 am)
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/byond.com Really? (towards the lose in traffic)
#10 Jan 23 2011, 9:32 am
It's hard to say if this change will have an impact on our web traffic without looking at it long-term. Typically we have a loss of users around this time as kids return to school (it comes back up in the summer).

In general, the web traffic has been declining as (I suspect) there are a lot more competing sites these days, but our pager traffic has been increasing.