I understand that @grazer is too busy for most things, but here’s an idea I thought would be beneficial. It’s not an editor request, however.
Update the flowlab guide and video?
Make a better favorite system. When I first came on this site there were pretty decent games in the front page, what inspired me to create my own games here. Now, lots of people are either making fake accounts to spam favorites on their game, or winning them from their school, whatever.
Maybe make a “Featured game” table, so games chosen by grazer would get to be on the front page. And/or a rating system with 5 stars, instead of just “Favorite or not”.
Game descriptions/profile descriptions/a “User’s favorite game” mark/“Finished and WIP” marks on games
So I definitely agree that we need better guides & videos. Those take a lot of time though, and that takes the place of fixing bugs and adding features. I need to find a way to improve this though.
Game descriptions are a good idea as well - we need a place to add a description and instructions.
Regarding favorites: it is interesting to hear your input here. I actually feel like people should be clicking more favorites, not less. My main goal with favorites was to try and make a way to bubble up projects that have real effort going into them, so stuff like like StarBlast will show up near the top, and stuff like “My First Game Test” with three generic blocks would sink to the bottom. I just checked SB:NW, and it only has 7 favs, which surprises me. I’m not sure why people seem to be reluctant to hit the favorite button. Maybe I should have made it a “thumbs up” or star icon instead?
For what it’s worth, I pretty much always Favorite a game if I open it up and it seems like it either has potential, or clearly has some effort going into it.
Also, I try to keep an eye on folks that are gaming the favorites and wipe them out when I see it. I don’t see any gamed favorites in the list right now.
Well it’s basically the same thing w/ me… Final days is the best game that I made and I feel like it should at least be higher than Battle Island. Though that’s my second best I want Final days to be known more than the latter.
I think people favorite the TYPE of game they want- for instance, Flappy Bluebird is in page 2 even though it’s hard to control. People who like basketball games probably favorited buckets, FNAF fans Haunted, minecraft fans 2d minecraft. Whether they’re good or not, if it’s what they want to see they’ll favorite it.
Favorites don’t really show how people appreciate or hate the game, so I think star ratings would be better. Comments would be nice as well.
@grazer I still see some games that look suspicious in the front pages,
“The bouncy world”
“The land of parkour”
and a whole bunch of them at page 4.
I’m not particularly requesting you to remove them but I just feel like they shouldn’t be there
How about we make a “Check this out” section that changes every week and gets chosen games in a different but easy-to-access page. So people can easily try out Starblast 2 and Cube’s adventure etc. with an option to favorite. This can help remove fake ones from the front pages and get decent games in there.
So I checked Bouncy World, and it did indeed have a bunch of garbage accounts that were created to game the system, so I wiped out those likes. The stuff on later pages, like page four, don’t actually have that many favorites (like 14 or so), and they are legit. Another issue is that many people don;t look past more than the first couple of pages, so it’s hard for a game on page 4 or more to get noticed.
I’m not really sure what the optimal solution is, but a good start might be for all of us to just click favorite on good games so they will rise to the top It doesn’t really take many clicks to bubble a game up.
Maybe I just need to take a more heavy-handed approach and add a “featured” tag that will move games to the front like we had in the very early days. I wanted to avoid that if possible because I don’t like the idea of people getting upset if the game they are working on isn’t getting featured. Anyway, I’ll think more about it, and thanks for all the suggestions so far.
@jngthree yeah, I think it’s because of those education accounts
@grazer I think it would be tiring have to always be on the lookout for fake accounts, and this devalues favorites a lot. A lot of people work hard for those likes but some users either create fake accounts or use friends/classmates to favorite their games. I think it’s quite unfair and kind of problematic.
I think the “Featured game” idea could be an option, and people can nominate them or submit them to you to try and get their game featured. Instead of favorites there could be ratings and comments, with offensive comments being removable (with a report option) and ratings not greatly affecting the games’ position.
this could remove some of these incidents and games that actually deserve it would be on the front page.
I think that would mean someone trying to game the votes would just make a game and add an object - that’s only two extra clicks. The “real” fix would be to require email address validation, but that’s a bunch of extra complexity that I’m not super excited about adding.
@grazer what I noticed is that there are lots of people that make a bunch of free accounts to make more games- and favorite all their games from the past (games like “Walkey Blockey”). Also people making fake accounts (Spike fall, bouncy world) and friend/class favorites are skyrocketing. If Flowlab was expanded enough so 15 or so favorites would be nothing, this wouldn’t be a problem. But for now just that amount can get their games to page 3.
Because this site isn’t too big yet, I don’t think giving all members favorite privileges is a good idea.
Here’s some suggestions that I THINK would be better:
-Featured game idea
-Must have stayed on flowlab for at least a year, or 6 months with a premium account
-Must have grazer’s permission
It doesn’t really take many clicks to bubble a game up.