Forums → Games → "Recommended Games" Section - Improvement Suggestion Applicable to Many Gaming Servers

Hi,

A browser game server naturally tries to catch player's eye with "you might also like these games" section. I think it could be done more efficiently than now. I may be wrong at some points, but I still think that some of my suggestions might benefit both the player (he'll know about more games) and the server owner (frequent visits => profits from advertisement).

Well-designed Random Choice of Games

At many browser game servers (I often visit Czech servers, but probably it happens also elsewhere), when I play the same game, I always see the same games in "You might also like" section. Here the server wastes a huge opportunity; it is OK to show the most "relevant" games more often, but many other games should make it at least once to this section - to get a chance to catch the eye of this player.

I think it might be very effective if the displayed games were randomly selected (and shuffled) from four sources:

• Random game at the server (this source should provide far less than quarter of the games)
• Random game at the server, favoring the more popular ones
• Random one out of recently added games (it is in the best interest of all parties that new games get a chance to attract attention and earn rating).
• Random one of games played often by players who play the same game as the current user (or: who play the game which the current user has played just now).

I also suggest that at least in some cases (page can roll a die each time it is displayed), the rating of the displayed games should be hidden, so that the player does not have the slightest idea which of them were chosen randomly, which of them were chosen for being recent, for being popular etc.

I think this will motivate the players to try more of them. I think that everyone will benefit from it - particlarly authors of recently added games who need to get rating and feedback.

Attractive description

I think that the format of the "try these games" section should be attractive enough. It should contain info that catches the user's attention. For example at ArmorGames, games in this section (bottom right beneath the game just being played) contains *nothing* but short game name, three numbers, tags (e.g.: tactical, magic) and one snapshot.

I propose that at least in some cases (the page can roll a die during each display request), the format should be more attractive (even at the expense of number of games displayed): it should contain two sentences of game description and maybe the snapshot should be replaced by a video, if the game author has supplied it.

Detailed Bubble

Hovering a mouse over a game info should display a huge bubble help (if the author supplied it) covering more than half the screen and containing more info about the game to attract the player (this is not a game manual, just an advertisement for an ordinary flash game).

It would contain much text (more than the ca. 200 characters permitted above for a "two sentence description" ), snapshots (?maybe even videos?) and formatting (at least 'bold' and 'section title' formats might be allowed; no wild colors).

This way, the user could get a good picture without having to: 1. wait for the game to load; 2. go through the menu and 3. playing the unchallenging tutorial and then starting a real game.

And maybe (in some displays of the page) this detailed bubble could be displayed immediatelly as part of the page (rather than as reaction to deliberate hoovering) for the topmost game in "recommended games" section - even at the expense of number of recomennded games displayed. So the 'recommended games' section would usually contain several games (each with 2 sentences of description), but in 25% cases it would instead contain a detailed info about one game. I'd suppose this could attractively catch the attention.

I admit that it would take some labor to allow this formatting, but the server would get it back in increased number of accesses and popularity, because the players would find more interesting games on the same server.

Advertising

It is common that server's advertisement runs while the game loads. Why not replace this advertisement in 5% of cases with a rectangle full of "Try these games" brief descriptions (composed randomly in the same manner as "recommended games" section - that means: picked from four sources as mentioned above, but not telling the player which game is from which source.)

And in a third of such situations, the advertisement could instead contain a detailed bubble for one game...

And the banner fixed beneath and over the flash game window could perhaps be used for a similar purpose (in 20% of cases, which may surprise the user).

Maybe some of these things might catch the attention of players who seldom scroll beneath the current game to see the "recommended games" section which is hidden very deep beneath (still speaking about Armor Games).

* * *

So - maybe some these ideas are impractical for reasons that I can't see (I have no "game server admin" experience), but maybe others might be useful...

Reflame