Game Jolt feels tired...

All right, guys. This is an important post.

Game Jolt is feeling a little tired, in my opinion. The spark is somewhat gone. It needs a good jolt to get things going again. =]

So, now, I ask the community and everyone that has an interest in the continued success of Game Jolt, as a developer what are the changes that should be done to make it exciting and transform it into a site that you'd use and keep coming back to. And, also, as a gamer what would you want to keep you coming back?

Again, only the top suggestions. Not a big list of everything that needs to be done to fix the site up, but some stuff that can really rock the boat and get it moving again.

Thanks guys!

Design-wise, I'm not really one to judge as that's not my fortay. I can't really tell why this place has been used less by people lately as I remember at one point up to as many as half the indie games being written about on places like the IndieGames blog were uploads from here.

I think, as a whole, freeware indie games has for some reason seen a decline. Getting more people to upload their games somehow seems like an absolute necessity; competitions seem to work to some degree but other ideas may also be needed to give a resurgence to uploads.

Unsure what the community is like here these days? The chat always seems moderately active so I'm guessing it's reasonable? 

No offense Cros, but how about you [as a community] judge contests? I repeat - no offense intended. But seriously, the one before the last was left unjudged to my knowledge. And the last one is still being judged after almost a month. I don't mean to be rude, but I think it's only fair that developers who participate are respected. I didn't finish the game, so I can't say that really pissed me off. However, this was just a one-week contest, so games aren't complex really. I used to review games myself, and in the last contest I judged, I finished 10 entries in one day. And they weren't short reviews, either. I don't want to criticize anyone personally, but maybe it's time to find dedicated judges.

That aside, I think that there isn't a lot you can do more. I think that given time, this site can really grow. I mean, look at the contest. There were so many entries! One thing I would suggest is starting an initiative similar to Screenshot Saturday. That would definitely help you reach out to more developers.

Last edited on September 17, 2012 - 03:30 PM by Nyphoon

A contest! Wait...

But srsly, banners on game pages would be cool (but I think that's already on the list), the voltage rating system you described to me on chat really can't come soon enough, and private messaging would be useful.

Honestly, I can't think of much this place is missing. I love Game Jolt 

@Nyphoon: Contest results will be out later today.

How about some more questions for everyone. What would keep you coming back? Do you ever check the homepage regularly. Do you look through new games? Do you feel the urge to comment/rate on new games, or games you like? What would help get more interaction?

Last edited on September 17, 2012 - 03:42 PM by CROS

I'm scared to comment or rate on games I don't like because of revenge ratings (although I know that can't really be helped). Also it annoys me when someone that signed up the previous day gives my game a 2 when it's upcoming without saying why and it gets knocked off the homepage when lots of active members had given it high ratings. So I'm still pushing for voltage.

What would keep me coming back? See new content, and update my game.

I do check the homepage regularly.

I don't look through new games, there seem to be too many small games to my liking.

When credit is due, I do comment or rate (on my other account though).

Try opening a FB page to get closer to gamers maybe?

@Nyphoon: https://www.facebook.com/gamejolt -- maybe it's not visible enough? It's on the homepage in that facebook widget, though.

Well, when I looked it up on Facebook, it didn't appear ^^ How about updating it more, though? Not just with Featured Games, but also with promising upcoming or released games.

More featured games would be a good thing. Maybe even featured developers? I don't generally browse and look for new games, but when a game gets featured I'll come over and play it.

Are HTML5 games on the to-do list? I think that could be a huge boost for the site. Game Jolt already has a community, a ton of cool features, and a good amount of traffic. It could become the best place on the web to find the newest/most inventive/best HTML5 games. That could attract a lot of developer and player attention alike.

I usually don't look at the home page. I just click my GJ bookmark and then immediately click the link to the forums. I like to stay up-to-date with the community, but there is not much reason to look at the home page unless you want to see what new games have come out.

I also spend time in the chat, but I haven't done that lately because I've been busy.

What if you featured 1 random game per day on the home page? Include almost everything that's on the game's page, but instead of forcing the user to go to the game's page to see info about the game, only make them go to its page to download/play the game.

You could even play the game yourself and do a write-up on it for the homepage. I'm kind of following the design of Woot (www.woot.com). They have all the info about the product-of-the-day on the home page, and there's a custom write-up that Woot made about the product.

I second cmasupra's suggestion, but rather than a random game, I'd choose a good random game. Because quite frankly, there are some crappy games too on Game Jolt.

Fix the upload. It's impossible to update supplemental files. Game Jolt doesn't seem to care.

Game Promotion in site would be a great feature, something similar to what AdDuplex does. Basically, you get an impression for each person that views your game, then for an exchange ratio of maybe 8/10 (you get 8 ads for every 10 shown) you show a users custom ad somewhere on the page for their game. It's like a specialized in-site form of advertising. This could be used to replace the random game or as a "Featured Game" in the recommendations.

Gamer Streams. For the contest you showed Streaming, it would be nice if you could reintroduce that as a permanent feature so the developers could stream their progress. Alternatively, Gamers could sign up and stream themselves playing Game Jolt games. This serves as promotion for the Game Maker and as incentive for gamers as they can now earn money on Game Jolt for playing games.

Further API integration. Things like Sessions and Achievements could and should be integrated more heavily with the site. This creates a bigger form of community.

cmaspupra's Idea is another great idea, though possibly time consuming. Moderator's picks might be another option in which each Moderator can add games they like into a Queue which is cycled through (only if a new game exists) each day. That way you can continue to focus on making Game Jolt great and also have a great new game.

Allow developers to submit their games for "Peer Review" to other developers. This is basically a closed beta open to all developers on the site. This way they can test their game with a smaller player base and look for bugs with people that have experience looking for and fixing those kind of errors.

Game Settings. This is actually an extension of the Game Jolt API's Data Storage. Basically, I want you to add a specific key to each game (With Roaming Storage Enabled) that allows a player to save their custom settings and sync them across computers. This is similar to what I am attempting to do in my C# API. But could be done better if it was specifically integrated.

Improve Game Recommendations. More click throughs to meaningful links equals more downloads.

While some of these will be less effective than others, all of them (at least in my opinion) would make Game Jolt better.

These are some really good suggestions!

I'm thinking that developers mostly like Game Jolt (besides some unresolved bugs and stuff), and that gamers and site interaction need to be the focus for a bit.

I'll try to write up a post of some of the things me and the mods are thinking of so we can all discuss it before I move forward with it all.