The idea games portal?

First of all, I think Flashkit Games forum serves as a very nice "Dev Portal". The talent I see here is top notch and the help that is provided comes from that same talent. The main thing about this place is that there is no money involved, which is a wonderful thing!

As far as the portals go, Newgrounds is where creative ideas have a chance, Kong is where the sequels go, and the shovelware sites are for Mochiads-funded games.

If you're wanting to make a new KIND of portal, consider how to control quality while maintaining creativity. If the content is as high quality and creative as possible, the traffic will follow on its own.

I think my ideal portal would limit the number of games available at any one time. Games would be chosen by the owners/operators of the portal and would maintain status on the site based on performance.

For example, say eight games are allowed on the site at any one time. Seven of the games are doing fabulous as far as traffic and user ratings and reviews. One that was previously popular is now seen to be straggling behind the others in a significant way. That game would be considered for removal. The eighth slot would now be open for a fresh, new game. After a time that game could return to the line-up and it would benefit from the nostalgic affect of "OMG! I used to play this game all the time! It's a classic!"

That way, you're allowing the users to "choose" the games they play, but YOU are in control of the quality. The exclusivity of the games would hopefully make the site more of an attraction.

Honestly, I hardly spend any time on new grounds looking at the recently submitted movies or games. I usually look at the top 100 or Weekly top 50. I don't even bother with Kong. I get most of my "flash game fix" from this very forum. The latest and greatest usually gets posted here before anywhere else.

Problem I see with any "lets accept only good games" idea is that you first need to define the meaning of "good game". Is the game good because developer has spent lots of time on it? Or is it good because the basic idea is original and has not been tried before? Is the goodness defined by the quality of graphics and smoothness of character animations? In the end, who is the person deciding which game is good and which is not?

If the portal is being run by developers, how will you avoid the situation where the game is bad but it is made by good friend and fellow developer? How will you say to your friend "hey, I know you spent 3 months making this game but its crap and we wont allow it on our portal and so you wont be making any money with it". As a developer I may admire fast and accurate physics engine used in the game but does that make the game good? Even when I know dress-up games can be made within day, is that enough the reason not to allow those into portal considering huge amount of visitors who just love to play them?

Sietjp's idea is excellent, and very intune with the way a lot of developers seem to be thinking at the moment. The idea of having other developers 'vote' in new ones or games is great and exactly how the XBLA community games system works. (although this hasn't been going long enough to know its effective)..

The killer is starting it off. Stimunation would be excellent as there is already a brand there supported by brilliant developers. get on it guys!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tonypa

Problem I see with any "lets accept only good games" idea is that you first need to define the meaning of "good game". Is the game good because developer has spent lots of time on it? Or is it good because the basic idea is original and has not been tried before? Is the goodness defined by the quality of graphics and smoothness of character animations? In the end, who is the person deciding which game is good and which is not?

If the portal is being run by developers, how will you avoid the situation where the game is bad but it is made by good friend and fellow developer? How will you say to your friend "hey, I know you spent 3 months making this game but its crap and we wont allow it on our portal and so you wont be making any money with it". As a developer I may admire fast and accurate physics engine used in the game but does that make the game good? Even when I know dress-up games can be made within day, is that enough the reason not to allow those into portal considering huge amount of visitors who just love to play them?

---

I completely agree with all of that. I think having a developers vote for including games approach, is very dangerous and frankly won't work and will lead to a lot of in-fighting, which is exactly what you don't want. I think you have to decide what it's going to be, a website where you and a few of your mates put high quality games, so then it's basically a showcase for a few people and not really a proper "games portal" or it's a place for the wider game making and game playing community, where not every game is done by someone you know or even a game you particularly like.

Of all the websites on the net the one that I think does the best job at filtering the crap from the at least "interesting" content if Digg.com. You end up with mostly decent stuff on the front page, and I think a similar approach is what's required for a games portal. You should allow people to automatically upload their own games, as a games developer I like that I can go a site, upload a game and it's on the site being looked at and played straight away almost and that I don't have to wait for it to be judged, or reviewed. New grounds uses this approach, but I still think the method they use could be improved upon :)

maybe people who have registerd on the site as a game developer and who have actually uploaded a game, will have more voting power then a player? that way the developers will basically have the "power" on the site, and that will help foster the community, but if say all of the developers don't like a game and all of the players DO, then the game will still do well and be high up the rankings on the site, and I think that's the correct balance.

Here's something to throw into the mix then, Jay's site ( http://jayisgames.com/ just in case :) ).

It only has great games, has a very regular and active community, it's well respected by both devs and gamers and has a higher Alexa ranking than FlashKit.

It may "only" be a blog, but it ticks a lot of boxes about what people would like to see.

Squize.

I agree on JIG but would like to point out that it has taken at least 4 years to gain that kind of respect and popularity. Its a full time job for more then one person running successful site and it may require quite an investment first.

JP could tell too how much effort it takes to create and run a portal.

Quote:

---

it's well respected by both devs and gamers

---

:) It depends. Clicking on his best games section I find mostly games that given a choice between playing them for an hour or shooting myself in the head, I'd really have to think about which would be worse.

He has no sports or racing games, and plenty of typical average gameplay, crap flash graphics games. I understand it's just a guy ( or a few ) and they may not like those types of games, but still....... If you are going to run a gaming site you should be able to cover it all.

i like jay´s site and he´s a friendly cool chap, too but yeah, dunno if the developers of the games get any propper money due to being featured on his site. Its a nice pat on the back to get a positive review there but due to the way the site is structured and its layout i feel like there´s not a huge longtime exposure for most games either and since the times there are more reviewers there are also more reviews of course and that makes quite a big part of the front page change quite often and therefore not have that much longtime exposure for each game in particular anymore.
While i like many of the games there Mike has a point in saying the site caters to a particular crowd (a broader and more casual crowd than kong for example) and that also makes it less an ideal place for certain other game types (mostly more "hardcore"/classic game genre games).

I doubt any successful portal can be targetted to every person out there covering people of all age groups and interests. Instead of having site that everyone likes, you end up with site that nobody cares about. Both NG and MiniClip are tailored to very specific core audience.

As about the ideas so far presented in this topic, cant say I have seen much nothing new and groundbreaking. Simply "same as NG but with better games" does not sound too exciting to me, there are hundreds of portals offering same thing alreay as there is thousands of portals copied straight from Miniclip. Just because you have a site with same games as every other site does not mean all the players in the world will visit it instead of thousands of similar portals.

All these lists of games are so very last century :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tonypa

JP could tell too how much effort it takes to create and run a portal.

---

Yes I can tell it's a lot of work. On all my websites I've developed a community and a team of adminsitrators to help me. I have a fulltime job, and I still find some spare time to run my websites (overall 40,000 visitors a day) and to develop new games. Bigger and professional portals requires much more effort. Mainly they have to continuously find new games for their portal, and to find and negociate the games they want to sponsor. A fulltime job.

About the idea of a portal run by developers, I don't think it would require so much effort. No sponsorships to negociate, no games to find. All games provided by developers who have been trusted to enter the team. A developer can make a game that players will not like, but it's not really a problem IMO. There are many great game developers on this forum, and I know they can make good games, and the other games are just not popular but still high quality. IMO, this is enough for a portal because you need only one popular game to make a portal popular.