So as I'm going through the site, I'll keep leaving comments and posts here so they are all grouped together. I think most of my feedback will be less on bugs starting out (because there are a lot of obvious ones I'm sure you guys are already aware of) but more on features , especially for developers.
* First off, site is looking great!
* I love having a featured game for each of the main sections. I think having a game featured on the front page would be even better and more alluring for developers to submit. Every effort to keep good games from being overlooked is a plus.
* On the user profile page, it'd be great if I could do more to connect with fans and users, aka profile posts, sections on upcoming games, places where I could put concept art, etc...
* Just a aesthetics thing, the bottom of the site doesn't stretch to the bottom in firefox, just a heads up.
Maybe add a section on the developer's page where the developer himself/herself can promote an upcoming game? Sometimes user votes themselves can keep good games from being overlooked.
Some games just need some time to learn and master and when that is done, the reward would be a very fun game. Some other games are do not require any learning and can turn out to be fun but only for a short time.
The former often gets overlooked as some users tend to rate a game poorly just because of their ignorance on trying out and learning a game concept. As a result, they say "This game cannot be played" after spending less than a minute trying the game out. New site users who might like the game may then come to the site and miss out on that good game that got overlooked just because the first few votes condemned the game to the bottom of the pit. But by providing the developer space to promote their own new games, they have a space to tell their side of the story and who knows, users who visit developer pages might see the good game that got overlooked.
Yeah I totally agree with Josh, many, MANY, games are overlooked just because the player didn't want to spend the 1 minute to learn it, deems it "unplayable" and quits.
Anything that strengthens the relationship between the developers and the players is a great thing.
We need ALL of our submitted games to display on our profile. A huge list of submitted games is big bragging rights (especially when good ones) and makes one profile totally own another when they have... no submitted games.
personally i greatly prefer games that you need to spend time to get right and, since i get bored kind of easily, the easier games get a shorter gameplay life for me. But then some people are completely opposite and just want an easy game that they dont have to concentrate on.
*Also it would be good if, as the site progresses and you get more votes, you can have a 'game of the day' sort of thing
Someone made a suggestion about authors promoting games. I think that is a great idea. Something that would be good for casual users would be a link at the bottom of the page (where users currently are rating the games, a nice added feature) to do just that.
If I like a game, I usually play it exclusively until I beat it. It would be nice if there were some link at the bottom where the developer could promote a new project, or some sort of widget along the lines of "players who enjoyed this game also enjoyed..."
My wife likes the new layout. On the old site, it was sometimes hard to tell which title went with which picture.
i had that problem too, the title for the picture was ussually underneath and a space away from the picture as opposed to the title on top which looks like it's right but isnt
Yeah, just so you know, games can take a looong time to make. StormWinds 1.5 has taken literally forever. And that's with me putting 40-60 hours on it every week.
