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Posted some thoughts on Twitter but figured I'd put them here for the masses to debate...

Zep tweeted about adding some more categories to the forum including Snippets, Music and some others. However, I feel one category the BBS is lacking is simply a Games category.

We have a Cartridges category and while every Pico-8 creation is a cartridge but not every cartridge is a game. There are a lot of (wonderful) non-games getting posted everyday...from art to demos to whatever. When I load up Splore, there's a lot of non-game stuff to sift through to find new games (or discover old ones).

I'd also throw in there that since Pico-8 is the promoted gaming feature on PocketCHIP, when new PocketCHIP owners boot up Pico-8, they should be able to dive into the games right away. PocketCHIP owners give us an immediate and captive audience so lets show them the games that make Pico-8 so great.

So that's one thing...

I'll also throw out there that it would be great to see the Featured category in Splore be curated rather than simply ordered by star ratings. The Featured category could change out daily or weekly or whenever to promote all the great carts we're creating (even non-games). New releases, older carts...it would help discoverability more and give newer developers some early smiles. Not that Celeste, Dusk Child Hug Arena, et al aren't awesome games but the well of games is deep so why not take advantage of that?

I know content management is time consuming and maybe the site isn't readily available to support these types of things, but I think it's worth considering. I'd also be happy to help if it's a matter of man power.

And that's that...just some thoughts that have been simmering.

P#32375 2016-11-10 09:48 ( Edited 2016-12-02 05:36)

I wholeheartedly agree with toast on both accounts.

Even a "featured of the month" could probably be automated easily.

P#32377 2016-11-10 11:20 ( Edited 2016-11-10 16:20)

This is a great idea. A rotating top 20 of the week, with a mixture of old favorites and new upcoming titles (with presumably fewer stars) would help folks find more gems in the library. (Also, it's very tricky to get something on the first page of popular carts and I would selfishly like and unfair shot :-) )

P#32381 2016-11-10 12:56 ( Edited 2016-11-10 17:59)

Nothing selfish about it! Well, okay, maybe a little but we're all in that boat.

Not that the App Store is a shining beacon of awesome design and marketing, but having a section or some sort of organizing that promotes the breadth of games would be awesome...in addition to the forum itself.

P#32382 2016-11-10 13:45 ( Edited 2016-11-10 18:45)

Totally agree. I was thinking about a post about that featured mechanism as well.

There might be a "middle way" between curated and automated: Take the star-rating and subtract it by the date of the cartridge. The older the cartridge get, the less likely is the chance, to stand at the top of the featured list. Or something similar...

P#32386 2016-11-11 04:34 ( Edited 2016-11-11 09:35)

...hehe, and combine it with a "curated classics" list.

P#32387 2016-11-11 04:36 ( Edited 2016-11-11 09:36)

So on Twitter, Zep made it sound like some of this is in the works or at least on the road map.

https://twitter.com/lexaloffle/status/796856739001864192

Sounds like tagging will come to carts so we can filter/sort by that way, as well as a rework on the Featured setup. Good to hear...

Although last night, inspired by the thoughts, I made a web page mockup for the site. Just for funsies.

https://twitter.com/MorningToast/status/796901369886150656

P#32394 2016-11-11 11:32 ( Edited 2016-11-11 16:32)

One category I would like to see would be for teaching or tutorials. There's something so attractive to me about the curated 'console' experience as a teaching platform. If Pico 8 games end up fun and popular enough, and carts so easy to read and share, I imagine beginning programmers popping up from many different populations. The community seems to be one that encourages growth, learning and creativity. Sounds like a perfect school to me.

Anyway, I am a teacher first, and really not a programmer at all.... but I am already working on a sort of 'curriculum' using games and Pico8.

Would be nice to have a whole collection of good educational materials and discussion. Also a noob friendly place for questions. Which seems to be the case in general anyway

P#32892 2016-12-01 20:35 ( Edited 2016-12-02 01:35)

Yah, a "Trending" category would be great. It would show the games with the most stars added in the last time period (1 week would be my recommendation), where as featured is the most stars all time.

P#32901 2016-12-02 00:36 ( Edited 2016-12-02 05:36)

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