Skeptim
commented
10 months ago To clarify a few things: I suggest that the top game in the home page would be the last game that has been added to a collection, this way the home page changes regularly and is not occupied by the few most popular games even if they can get there from time to time (which is good). And there should not be a limit in time a game stays on the home page but a limit in number of games that are displayed. If a game keeps being added to collections then it should keep being shown on the home page. When it's not added to collection any more it will be chased by other games.
The "popular" category would rely on the number of times a game has been added to a collection.
There could be a "recently popular" category that would be the same than the home page but with no limitation in the number of carts, so all the carts that have been added to a collection once would be in this category from the most recent addition to a collection to the less recent.
That's 100% inspired from how I think itch.io works.
Hi,
I would like to share some thoughts about content curation on the website, in particular about the home page.
Currently the website is relying on likes. If I understood well, with two likes a game goes to the home page for a few weeks.
One problem with likes is that you don't have incentives to put likes. Therefore people can appreciate a game, even add a laudatory comment, without liking it. In particular when someone sees the game from social media, the likes on the social media have no impact on the website curation. At the end some very good carts (in my opinion) can struggle to get a few likes. https://tic80.com/play?cart=3583 is a recent example.
Also a cart can be highlighted on the home page only when it just got published. Which means that someone publishing an alpha version to share with friends will get most of the views on this version and not on the final one. Even games on the WIP category have that issue.
Also likes do not mean anything in particular, we can like a cart because that's a fun game or because that's an impressive technology or amount of work. The public that will like the game is not the same.
I propose something that is used on itch.io and that works well in my opinion. The success of itch.io rely on how they manage to highlight the good games, so that's something they thought about. The idea is to allow users to add games to their own "collection" which is a place where they can access these games. Then, curation rely on this, games on the home page would be games that have been added to a collection recently, no matter how old these games are. Someone adds a game to its collection only when this person wants to play this game again in the future, or to use this tool, or remember this demoscene. Likes and the "top rated" category should still exist in parallel, they show that we appreciate a cart in a more impartial and distant way but not that we particularly appreciate this cart and we want to use it again in the future. There could be a "popular" category that would rely on the additions to collections rather than the number of likes.
I think that gives much more meaning to what appears on the home page. People that like games a lot will add less games to their collections, only the bests, and people that never put a like, will probably add games to their collection from time to time because that's useful. Someone that sees a good game on social media or without being connected to the website, can connect in order to add the game to their collection while that is less likely if it's just to add a like. People could also spend more time testing games if they can add them to their collection.
At the end we could get on the home page games that really worth a look even for a public of gamers and not only TIC-80 developers.
On a parallel subject: on the "top rated" category, when two games have the same number of likes, the oldest will be shown first. I think that should be the contrary as an old game has profited from a long period of time to get that number of likes while a recent game got as many likes in less time and might go further. So that would be more representative of the games popularity to put the most recent first in this situation.
I know that you (nesbox) already have plans for the website and you probably don't have much time for it, but I just wanted to put these thoughts here even if it's for long term purpose.