Portals: Room for improvement?

[Lord007]

First I'd like to say this forum, over the past couple of
months I've been registered, has been very informative.
I realize in order for me to reach my goals in life then
the sooner I start the better.

Now my question for the experts out there is on
Portals: Can you see any kind of improvement that can
be made in terms of layout or function? All of the
current famous sites out there each seem to have a
slight variation in how they present their "Top Ten"
lists and such, but one problem that they all seem to
share is the sort of "Blackhole" syndrome where a
worthy new title gets quickly shoved to the back
regardless of its quality.

I've spent some time now trying to think of a work
around that would not only appeal to the general
casual game consumer, but also to the developer in
that they'd be excited to see how their latest product
traveled through the ranks over time (and not
instantly into oblivion). Yes I realize pretty much
any developer is willing to have their games hosted on
any portal which has the possibility to make them
sales. What I want it to do though is have a unique
and innovative experience, for both consumer and
client, that has a large chance to grow in this
crowded industry. As you can probably guess it's a
rather daunting task that will need a large amount of
time, work and perhaps gobs of luck.

I am in the very early stages of designing a site
and want to discuss this a bit before moving forward.

Thank you all very much for your time and any insight
you can give me.

[soniCron]

I am in the very early stages of designing a site
and want to discuss this a bit before moving forward. All that and you don't tell us your idea? ;)

[James C. Smith]

This one (http://www.reflexive.com/) is a little different than the standard. The list is different every time you go to it (once your session cookie is expired or deleted)

[Lord007]

All that and you don't tell us your idea? ;)

Sorry about that, I kinda got ahead of myself. :D

What I have in mind, and I'm not entirely sure this is a financially stable idea just yet, is to perhaps offer a *small* discount on game prices for the consumer. Now of course developers get their full share, so the discount would come out of the portals pocket. I'm thinking that feature and obviously some much needed marketing to get the necessary hits, could be a nice alternative to the more established sites. Now I'm not sure how developers feel about this sort of business practice so some insight on this would be very welcomed.

I also have been given some advice to add more of a dynamic structure to the portal. This would include having consumers register a free account so that the various Top Ten lists would change according to who is logged in (games already bought wouldn't be listed). While this adds a bit more of an input needed from the consumers, I'd imagine this could potentially give much more of an edge to developers. For instance, I could report to you guys the general purchasing trends of casual gamers in that after buying X game(s) they also bought Y game(s)...those sort of statistics. Is this information that would generally be sought after in order to make more informed decisions for the future? Am I totally off base here?

Thank you for any input.

[Sybixsus]

While I can certainly see why developers hate their games disappearing into the black hole you refer to, I do think it's an essential element for the customers. Perhaps if you had a more advanced category system than most portals you could have favourite genre setting ( either manually selected in profile, or calculated behind the scenes according to what games the player downloads and/or purchases ) and games from the preferred genre are given preference over other games.

[Lord007]

Sorry about that, I kinda got ahead of myself. :D

What I have in mind, and I'm not entirely sure this is a financially stable idea just yet, is to perhaps offer a *small* discount on game prices for the consumer. Now of course developers get their full share, so the discount would come out of the portals pocket. I'm thinking that feature and obviously some much needed marketing to get the necessary hits, could be a nice alternative to the more established sites. Now I'm not sure how developers feel about this sort of business practice so some insight on this would be very welcomed.

I have quickly changed my mind on this particular subject. This sort of structure almost makes games seem like they would be of lower quality or "bargain bin" titles. That is certainly not what I would want consumers to think of when visiting my site.

Back on topic, with whatever market I finally decide to go towards (Casual or more core/casual), I certainly plan on implementing Amazon.com-like dynamicly changing game recommendations and search functions. This would need a very stat-driven system for it to work obviously and that ties in nicely with wanting to provide detailed sales stats/trends to developers.

I am just unaware of what the average stats developers get at this point in time from portals besides simple CR's or download rates.

[Rainer Deyke]

As a gamer, I have so far avoided the portals mainly for two reasons:

1. They don't have any interesting games.

2. If they do have interesting games, they are impossible to find among the heaps of generic casual games and retro arcade games.

[Christian]

There is a big problem in most portals, the titles that they show, even in the genre a customer may choose, rarelly fulfill the needs of what the player is looking for.

For example, i am looking for a game where i can control a lot of units, a war game, where i also need to build a city, becuase i like to be creative, and also i want to play with other people, so, the portal shows me a small list of genres, so, i guess i have to choose strategy, or RTS (this, in the case i know what each genre is about, what if i didnt know?, if i am a casual player?), so, there is a list of top 10 and a huge list of 123234 games, so, i look at the drawing of the top 10, none of them appeal to me, some too techie, some to gory, some too historical, so, i dont get to read the reviews, and the other option i got is to go to the list, arg, what a pain, its a huge time waster...clicking on one game, not liking the features, next game, and so on, until i find something that i dont dislike, so i download the demo (5 hours pased since i entered the portal), and i dont like the game!, so i get back to the portal, i click on the top 10 list (the number one game) and i download it, its fun, but it wasnt what i was looking for, so i buy it anyway since "it appears there is nothing better than this".

This last sentence is the core of the actual portal systems, they say what is the best thing to all kinds of players, they impose what is the best thing, and it shouldnt be like this, players should decide what is the best game for each one of them, since all kinds of players are different, with theyr own things they like.

How to achieve this?, an idea is to give the possible customer a list of questions, the kind of experience they are looking for (something based on the 4 key players researched on this site http://xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames.html) and then, when all questions are answered, a small list of possible games appear.

[soniCron]

...I certainly plan on implementing Amazon.com-like dynamicly changing game recommendations and search functions. For what it's worth (and you'll have to find it yourself), Amazon.com has (surprise, surprise) a patent on that.

[svero]

I think there's certainly lots of room to improve or at the very lest experiment. Id like to see a lot of the ideas used by sites like amazon or programs like itunes moved into the portal sphere.

One concrete example, for instance, is that we don't make the most out of our hit games (or even the non hit games) by even a small fraction. There's little or no merchandising, no hint guides, no t-shirts, no level packs etc... About 1/2 the people that buy Aargon also buy one or two level packs and a hint guide. I'm sure people would have gone to Realarcade and paid a few bucks extra to download some additional zuma levels and a tradewinds 2 strategy guide etc... For relatively low effort real/popcap etc.. could have increased their profit on Zuma by 25-50%. There are no mechanisms in place to sell anything but the original game. It could be much much better. And that, to my mind, is just the tip of the iceberg.

[Dan MacDonald]

It's interesting to note that while "the long tail" is working for books, movies, and music online. The same cannot be said of casual games, perhaps it's because there isn't enough history, but I suspect not. We don't see much of a tail in the retail sector either.

[arcadetown]

Think we serve our developers and users nicely here (http://www.arcadetown.com). Great new games exposure, quick access to top games per category, easy access to complete category listings, multiple ways to view top games, etc.

When I visit RealArcade am perplexed how users find games. BigFish shows just 4 or 5 main features on home page, although providing better category access. Perhaps that's the point, focus users on the very top sellers to maximize sales? Not sure what approach is best. Personally rather provide best user experience with quick access to suite their taste, rather than focusing them on a limited selection.

I'm sure people would have gone to Realarcade and paid a few bucks extra to download some additional zuma levels and a tradewinds 2 strategy guide etc...
Sounds good but why not just sell a whole new version at full price instead of a cut price level pack? Magicball 2 New Worlds is one example. From developer perspective you get exposure as a whole new game, instead of side exposure as an existing game addon. From portal perspective, already much work managing all them games and addons is just extra headache plus why market a $9 addon when can market a whole new game.

[svero]

Sounds good but why not just sell a whole new version at full price instead of a cut price level pack?

Well the idea is that you're not making a completely new title and therefor you're doing only a fraction of the work. I guess if you equate making magic ball 2 with a magic ball add-on or hint guide in terms of the amount of work required, then yes it's better to just release magic ball 2 at full price. I personally don't think that has to be the case though. It depends on the scope of the add-on.

[GameStudioD]

One obvious problem with the portals is search.

If you go to Yahoo's downloadable games section and select the action section, you are presented with six pages of text links. So, what is a user to do with a list of games she has never heard of? Click all 60 links? The lists of games you never heard of is overwhelming for any user, not just casual. I play these games all the time and I do not want to sift through 6 pages of text links. It's a lot of clicking.

Yahoo's system (remember, they are a search engine) cannot even handle the 60 games in their action section. The problem is not unique to Yahoo, because all of the portals use text lists of game titles, split by category, as the primary search tool. If Yahoo got more action games, the list would be even more overwhelming for the user. So, Yahoo is limited in the amount of games they can carry at a given time. The solution is to throw out the games that do not sell well to ensure their site is managable for users.

So, the average portal carries 200-300 games. With the current search technology of "text lists", no portal can carry much more than 300 games. More games would make searching more difficult. Forget about a library of 400, 500 or 1000 games and beyond.

I do not want to rant about how much I hate text search for games. But, if a user has trouble with long lists of games she has never heard of, how is a text search going to alleviate the problem? If you were to implement a really, really good text search, the results would be displayed to the user as a text list and we are right back to the same problem.

Text lists, text search, lowering prices, Amazon-like searching or Amazon-like recommendations will not solve the problem of searching a large library of games. Although rare examples exist, running a "portal" by yourself will likely not be profitable endeavour. Even if you added some bells and whistles, you would be fortunate to make enough to pay for hosting and miscellaneous expenses.

[soniCron]

The Netflix recommendation system is really, really good. Really good.

[Hamumu]

Well the idea is that you're not making a completely new title and therefor you're doing only a fraction of the work. I guess if you equate making magic ball 2 with a magic ball add-on or hint guide in terms of the amount of work required, then yes it's better to just release magic ball 2 at full price. I personally don't think that has to be the case though. It depends on the scope of the add-on.

Absolutely! If you make a game that has levels, unless those levels are completely unique artwork and enemies, etc., a level pack is a trivial amount of work. It's a fun weekend of messing around! A hint guide is a fair amount of work, but it's easy, rote work, and people will sure buy it. And compared to writing a game, it's nothing.

The difference between making a game and making an add-on of any kind for a game is like the difference between building a car and changing a tire.

I think the money is definitely there in add-ons, if you've got the traffic of people interested in the original. Throw in an auto-advertiser in the game to let people playing the game know about new add-ons, and you're rich!

[Lord007]

The Netflix recommendation system is really, really good. Really good.

Thanks for pointing that out! I actually use NetFlix myself and choose most of my movies through their recommendation system. Why I didn't put two and two together in regards to a portal site is beyond me. :p

I also imagine implementing a similar approach like with NetFlix instead of Amazon might actually be easier:

1. Amazon's inventory spans a very wide variety of items so their recommendation system must be more complex to cover all bases.

2. NetFlix's model only deals with movies and categorizes them into seperate genres. This is exactly how a game portal should work as well.

Now the only thing I see as a possible problem is for new users just coming to the site. People who have already been a member of the portal would have their particular interests calculated, a new person would not. I think somebody mentioned this earlier (or in a different thread), but I think it would be worthwhile to offer a sort of survey to a new customer which would ask them the types of games they are looking for, their age, gender, that sort of thing. Then start analyzing data trends along side game ratings and I imagine a decent recommendation system can be built.

With a system in place like this I should be able to generate important statistics that a developer could use to further focus in on their audience. If customers agree to receive newsletters/emails, it would also be very easy to let the "right" people know when a game perfect for their particular tastes is released...or a map pack/upgrade which was recently discussed here.

The only way for the NetFlix system to work to it's full potential is if people rate the games. Without a certain customers ratings, it would be impossible to know their tastes. So it's a sort of "You get what you put into it" deal.

Thank you all for the feedback so far!