It was mentioned a long ago, so I’ll summarize it a little:
I think the favorites system is sort of messing up the front pages in these ways.
Class/Friend/Fake favorites. Games made popular this way are creeping up the pages, getting to the 2nd or 3rd page just because they have an education account or are using it together. Just look at page 5. I think favorites should determine how good the game is, not how many friends you have here. A lot of indie games, like Starblast series, are struggling up the climb while classmate favorites swoop them right up to 15. There’s a reason why they never really climb anymore, because they’re not really good at all.
Favorites system is like a competition. To make your game be in the front page, your favorites have to be higher than the other games. Why would kids want to fall down by giving others a condition they need to win? They huddle in groups and raise their own up, no matter how bad theirs are. And the separate users don’t want to fall behind either, so they just don’t favorite many games, unless the projects really moved them.
The problem with bad games in the front page is, people won’t easily get inspiration. Who’d want to build a game like “KYS” or “Adventure”, honestly? People who make crappy games get more attention than the ones who are actually better at making games than them. There are games rotting at page 270 because they never got any favorites but are actually pretty GOOD. People don’t get to see half of the decent games because they’re not up front. I feel like Starblast, and some of Latif3’s games (he makes great games, just doesn’t show them off) should be noticed
So… yeah. That’s my post. I think FG would make Flowlab better. Favorites still SHOULD be in place, but maybe there could be a “Featured games” button and it’ll move you to a whole selection of carefully chosen games.
Well I’m not sure how the system works now, but it used to be view count, so refreshing your own game counted as a view. Refreshing a game hundreds of times would probably put it at the front. People that edit their games a lot, hit play a lot, and each test of the game counts as a play. This broken system allows any game to get to the top without being a popular game. If the games are organized by favorites, it is also a broken system, because classmates will like their own games. I proposed a system that would allow grazer, I, and a select few people to vote on games that are well made and polished enough to be front page games. There would be Staff Picks and Community Picks instead of Featured Games. This would make flowlab more organized, allow hard working developers to get the appreciation they worked for, and would make flowlab look really good to passing people that are curious about what they can actually achieve in flowlab. If people see low effort games at the top of the list, they will be turned away with the idea that flowlab isn’t a creative and powerful engine.
There is plenty of room for advanced material. I could easily build a demo of Super Mario Bros 3, Metroid, Street Fighter, or almost any arcade game from Atari to Cabinet, like Centipede, Pacman, Mario Bros, Galaga, Balloon Fight, etcetera. The only reason I’ve never made anything like those, is because it wouldn’t benefit me at all, and I could get a copyright lawsuit against me. Flowlab is definitely a good engine. If you can code it, you can probably emulate it in flowlab.
It’s sad that I kept deleting games just to create new ones
I think we should replace favorites with star ratings like in newgrounds. Comments would be nice too, but we already have this forum for that. There should also be an email verify system so people can’t spam ratings on their own games with alternative accounts.
I don’t have a solution for the education account. I’m pretty sure people will always give 5 stars to each other and don’t have any criticism. Comments wouldn’t work too because it would only be “nice game” and “awesome!” comments.
Atleast it’s better than the favorites which grazer totally didn’t put effort in it.
I want it so good games are up on the front page, not poorly made ones.
Also, with featured game, we can always remove old games from the top list. If the newer updates caused a bug over the years, and the game doesn’t have its owner to fix it, then it’d be removed from the front page.
I’m definitely going to add a “featured game” feature, probably after the current update I’m working on (sounds improvement).
I think probably bumping a new “featured game” to the top of the list once a week would probably be a reasonable way to approach it, I just hope noone gets upset waiting for their favorite game to get featured.
Maybe we need a system to nominate games and vote or something each week? Which game should get featured first?
I would agree if anyone is putting effort into completing a game, it’s pixelpizza. Awakening is still getting updates long after most people would start making something else. A game of the week and game of the month would be nice, with an archive of games. Maybe in a year from now, game developers can receive awards for their games that show up as icons, like voted most creative, artistic, challenging, or fun for that month and year, and a tag system for games so we can organize by like platformer or rpg
