New GG Front Page?

#1 You realize that most of that space is going to be cycling around? The amount of space actually dedicated to our game development products is that blue box in the top right corner. Everything else will change as new products are announced.

Honest to god, we're not out to screw people. :)

#2 Not saying your trying to screw anyone :D Selling a game engine like Torque for $100 shows that you aren't out to do that, I just thought it seemed weird that all of a sudden all of the emphasis of the published games has been diminished. If you look at the main page, then look at the play games page there is a major major difference.

Maybe there could be a combination of the two developed to allow the games to get their moment in the spotlight as well.

I might piddle around with some concepts for fun, see what I can manage.

If nothing else I would at least do constantly rotating small blocks, the ones right under the big gigantor TSE add :P, so that they might include more games.

Maybe its just me but who knows?

Shay

#3 The giant TSE ad is going to turn into a little TSE ad when we have something new to put up there.

Instead of spending time on a website, why not make an awesome game so we can put it up on that front page? :)

#4 I'm runnin a little short on time atm, getting married and going honeymooning in 4 days... Don't think I could quite pull off a game in 4 days, but I could do some web work :D, plus like I said it would be for fun anyway.

After the honeymoon though its time to get started on a game, if I can squeeze enough time out of the week to allow for my full-time job, plus contract design work, and the few web projects I have in the pipeline right now.

Shay (Future front pager :D )

#5 Hey, that looks cool, but what would be really cool, is if it would cycle through products using like flash or javascript. Just a suggestion, I like everything how it is setup.

[edit][edit2] Nevermind....

#6 I like the new front page (apart from the price error which has been fixed) Looks a lot more professional and the game titles are featured clearly enough. I imagine that most of the people who hit GG are developers anyway.
Maybe GG could try and help game publishers to do a bit more marketing on their titles. To be honest I think GG could do with a bit moraketing all round, so if your on a forum or website, drop em a mention :)

#7 I like the new look, too. Though I think they should go back to the old "Make Games/Play Games" theme. The new "Game Store" doesn't quite sound as fun.

As for more marketing, I'm surprised someone hasn't already created a banner exchange somewhere, for both GG and game developers. I at least try to put a mini-banner on my site linking back to GG.

One thing I didn't like about the old look is how crowded it was getting. The design worked well when there was only about half a dozen games on here, but now that number has nearly tripled. Some of the lesser-known games were getting unfairly crowded of the page. GG might want to consider the future, as I am sure this number is going to increase. Perhaps some kind of category view? Arcade, Adventure, etc?

I'm encouraged there have been website updates. I am hoping that in the future the projects/companies/help wanted sections will be redone so they are more useful. Searching by "latest additions" and alphabetically would vastly increase the usefulness of those sections. Plus, adding categories would help there, too, so I could filter game projects based upon that. I'm tired of all these "!!!! Some game company" entries cluttering up the database. It gives this website a less professional feel.

#8 I like it :)

#9 Eliminating clutter was one of the major concerns when redesigning the page, as was the desire to split out the Game storeand developer sections again, and make the front page for general GG news and major announcements. Eventually the sub-pages will also be redesigned to provide more access to the various games, and categorization by genre, etc. when we eventually have enough games to warrant that.

As for the projects/companies/etc.... eventaully those will be cleaned up and better organized, too, but probably not for a while. It would be nice to have a reliable (and difficult to stack) way to rate companies, projects, etc. - but that would probably require some sort of site-wide karma system.

#10 Man, we can't do anything right.

I like it too, and we are sticking with it.

-Jeff Tunnell GG

#11 I like it because I seem to own most of the products on it...and always hated looking through a cluttered page to see what new toy I could spend my money on.

#12 I don't think it's possible to make a single page that appeals to both gamers and developers. The new frontpage is better than the old... but still suffers from schizophrenia.

"TSE? How do I play that? $150?!?!?! How did I stumble here?" - Gamer
"TSE? A shader engine on the same page as 3d mahjong? How good can it be?" - Developer

Any way you cut it, it's kind of wacky. The price of being different, maybe. One idea: 2 nice big buttons: "Play Games" and "Make Games" kind of like when you select english/russian language versions of a site?

-Josh Ritter
Prairie Games

#13 I think its perfect as is, but then I go straight to my home page.. Ie my garage.. the main page is really for people outside of this site who are just looking at games.. :)

The core site is unchanged so it isnt like anything really changed.. :) other then the front page, (which I didnt even see much of anyways) so its a non-issue.. :) but good job anyways..

*oh yeah, save some room on taht front page for my game.. :) Demo coming soon.. :)

#14 The problem is that our business plan is schizophrenic:)

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. If it doesn't work, we'll change it. If it works, then we were right. That is the cool thing about web pages.

#15 Hey guys. The boss has spoken so it must be right?

In any case, I think the message is clear with the Make Games/Game Store box (although I would have used Make Game/Play Games theme to be consistent with the navbar).

What someone does need to do is to make a flashier screenshot for TSE. I mean, we all know the SpaceOrc is cool but where's the bling bling?

#16 Dammit, the space orc _was_ the bling bling. :P

#17 The nav bar will soon be assimilated.

#18 @Ben: Been writing shaders for the last 36 hours so the orc just doesn't do it for me anymore.

#19 I love it. I always thought the main page was a bit cluttered. As long as there is a clear way to a page that summarises all the games to purchase, I don't see any problems :)

#20 Late to the scene as ever.... The front page looks like a shop and nothing else. But as Jeff admitted, GG is schizophrenic at the moment.