The Biggest Problem With Flowlab

Feature Requests
21

honestly @grazer the trending tab is basically kinda like the first tab right now flow jam game winners and a bunch of plays currently

2 Likes
22

yes but some people dont even like the games even if they actually like/play the game because

  1. There is zero use for it
  2. It does nothing for you if your the one who likes it
if we had a use for the like button like maybe @grazer (when you like a game it goes to a favorites page made by you and its a collection of games on flowlab that you have liked! This would be nice so each time you wanna play a good game you've liked you don't have to search for it...)
6 Likes
23

Likes by registered users is definitely one way to determine some ranking.

Ok, doesn’t prevent some eager beavers to create dummy accounts.
To be honest, it is disappointing that that kind of system abuse even exists here.

5 Likes
24

I brainstormed the issue and came up with this:

Screenshot (9)
Screenshot (9)836×531 52.7 KB

Any thoughts?

6 Likes
25

image

2 Likes
26

That “submit games” page seems a bit off, it would have to be autonomist and people could just make alts because there’s no email confirmation yet.

5 Likes
27

It is mentioned that you can only submit and vote if you have indie. This won’t keep everyone away, sure, but I think it might discourage a vast majority of spammers.

28

If we had a release/publish button, this would be inadvertantly handy as well. I’m going to give a quick run down of some good reasons to add a “publish” button.

Reasons

  1. We regulate the thousands upon thousands of New Games in the games page which show up by proxy of them just existing. This will likely cut the number of pages by a lot, even if people do publish new games any way, which means better games are easier to find and look for. (I imagine games will just be considered unlisted until released)

  2. We allow creators to make “updates” so that way people playing the game will not randomly run into changes the creator is making to the game at that moment. (This would require two instances of a game: public facing and developer facing so it’s unlikely that Grazer would be too fond of this, but I think it is handy enough to consider anyway)

  3. Games can now be categorizied by “new” or “newly updated” in this hypothetical sorting system. This means that we can sort trending games as those who have recently been released and have gained multiple hearts than the day before (hearts can not be faked as they will be tied to user’s profile similar to subscribing to a youtube channel on Youtube but with games you want to keep track of and promote)

[I have a whole other tangent about hearting games right now, but I’ll stick to the point]

  1. Creators can release more meaningful update logs if those ever come around as Grazer has mentioned the idea before.

tl:dr

  1. Get rid of the thousands of games that are 1 object and no effort
  2. Give creators agency over updates players see
  3. Games can now be categorizied for this suggested sorting system
  4. Update logs are one step closer to being “real” update logs
    Bonus: Hearting needs an overhaul as well
5 Likes
29

This would be an amazing addition!

2 Likes
30

That seems unfair to some people, however, and would well not do this

1 Like
31

These are all fair points, and I like the idea of a “release” mechanism of some sort. I would also really like to add update logs, and make the likes more useful as well.

Making a “released” vs “unreleased” version would be tricky, since that would need some sort of copies or clones of the game.

9 Likes
32

In a way we have a ‘sort of’ release mechanism. Just called unlisted/listed in Flowlab terms :slight_smile:

7 Likes