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What's the best way to present games on a website?

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Aerjen
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Joined: 08/28/2008

Since, I'll be demoing two of my games at an upcoming festival, I decided to create a website (www.keeponbreathing.com) so that attendees (and hopefully publishers) can find more info. I'm having some trouble in how to best present information and am trying out different approaches on the site.

I'm looking for feedback on what's best to put in the "welcome" text and how to best present game info. Below is what I've been doing so far:

- Hatch has only promo artwork where Pleasant Dreams and Leprechaun Slap have the real in game cards presented
- Leprechaun Slap on the other hand has most game details in the description, whereas the other two don't.

I think one of the problems is that I'm pursuing different ways of getting my games out there. For Hatch I'm looking for a publisher, Pleasant Dreams I want to Kickstart and Leprechaun Slap I can't decide upon. All games have been thoroughly playtested. Hatch has completed artwork, Pleasant Dreams is waiting on the last couple of cards and Leprechaun Slap needs the most artwork still.

Looking forward to any feedback you guys have :)

Itsdan
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Joined: 05/19/2013
You'll want descriptive text

You'll want descriptive text if only for SEO reasons. Google and other search engines don't really understand your beautiful images, they're about text. As someone who buys games I want to see the box art, some components closeups, and a shot of the game setup as well. If the rules are done and in PDF form make sure they're available.

Video content is always excellent and if you host on YouTube you'll get a 2nd avenue for traffic.

Corsaire
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As a player what I want from

As a player what I want from a game description is to see myself playing the game and enjoying it. Similarly I'd think a a publisher would want to see buyers buying the game, and they would see that if they can see what would attract players.

A game description that works for me is one that gives me a sense of how a particular moment of particularly fun play is. And from a graphic standpoint, what I most want to see is to see a picture of the game in progress.

I suppose something like "push-your-luck" might work in a quick desccription to a publisher, but it is a bit insular and doesn't quite get the gamer me into the game's mindset. Engage me.

As is, none of the games catch my interest other than a brief admiration for the artwork on the Pleasant Dreams game.

I've read a bunch about and worked on sellsheets for products and the one point they emphasize with those is that you want the potential buyer to be excited to repeat some buzzphrase that encapsulates your game. "I just saw this crazy card game, where you are a kid trying really hard to fall asleep but everything in your room is scaring the bejeezus out of you." Or such.

Aerjen
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Joined: 08/28/2008
Thanks Itsdan

Hi Itsdan,

Thanks for the feedback on SEO optimization and what kind of illustrations you'd like to see. I've really been trying to make a minimum viable website for now, since I only decided to make one a couple of days ago. The initial goal was to have something other than my e-mail address on business card for when I'm showcasing my game at Boston FIG. I realized that attendees are probably not going to want to e-mail me if they like my games, but might want to see what else I'm working on. At the same time I want to have my website work as a portfolio for if I talk to a publisher about one of my games.

Aerjen
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Thanks Corsaire

Hi Corsaire,

Thanks for the honest feedback. I'm glad to hear that you find my site not engaging or appealing at all in the sense that I can now improve on it. So far, I've had a lot of positive feedback when I demo or talk about my games in person, but I realize that I can't upload myself on my website or ship myself to game stores. Next to adding picture of the game in progress and buzzwords, what are some of the contents you'd personally want to see?

By the way, the page for Leprechaun Slap is completely structured following submission guidelines of two game publishers. I wanted to hear how people would perceive that. Apparently, in your case, as not interesting. I found this example of a sellsheet for games: http://andrewfederspiel.com/myblog/?p=226#more-226 Do you think it would work better if I go in that direction?

Corsaire
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Not faulting the website or

Not faulting the website or layout or even the thoguhtfully designed games (have followed some of your work.) But I want to see it with a fresh mind; just looking at the game descriptions from the idea of having twenty bucks in my pocket and would I want to buy and play one of these games. And saying I don't know enough and am not excited enough to make that purchase decision as is. Not so much not interesting as not engaging or informative to lure me in. But I'm only one perspective.

For each game I'd start with the first thing you say to someone when they are about to play the game for the first time, the equivalent of the culinary world's amuse bouche.

Definitiely follow submission guidelines, but the business person says what to tell them to feed their mind. They aren't going to tell you what to say to feed their heart.

I think that sell sheet advice link rocks. I know sell sheets from non-game products, but I haven't seen advice as sharp as his in that context.

Aerjen
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Thanks for the kind words

Thanks for the kind words and for the thoughtful feedback. BTW: I love the analogy to an amuse bouche. Even though you're right that you're only one perspective, I feel that you've hit things spot on. I wasn't happy with my webdesign and content (yet) and was looking for a fresh pair of eyes to look at what I'm doing. I'm not 100% sure whether I can get things in shape before the festival on Saturday. Especially since, being one of the producers of the festival itself, I'm spending quite a lot of time in getting everything in order. So excited (and a little anxious) that we now have well over 4000 people registered already!

What you're saying about a mind and heart makes a lot of sense to me. I'm going to try by starting anew using the sell sheet and then look at whether it start's with the amuse bousche, talks to both mind and heart and has pictures that illustrate gameplay.

I haven't decided whether I already want to put up my rules online and whether I want to add a lo-fi PnP, but that's something for further down the road.

larienna
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If you want 1 site per game,

If you want 1 site per game, you can get inspiration from publisher's website. For example, fantasy flight's catalog has a site for each game with many information. Take a look:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_colecciones.asp?eidc=1

Another less professional example could be the website of my game fallen kingdoms:

http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/games/fallen_kingdoms/index.php

It could give you and idea about what kind of information can be placed on a website about a game.

Aerjen
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Joined: 08/28/2008
Thanks Larienna, those are

Thanks Larienna, those are both useful examples!

Zodiak Team
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Would it happen to be the

Would it happen to be the Boston Festival of Indie games?

Aerjen
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Joined: 08/28/2008
That's definitely the case.

That's definitely the case. I'll be showcasing in the Tabletop Room and am a co-producer and the tabletop-chair of the festival.

I was just being a bit obscure to prevent coming across as advertising too much ;)

Aerjen
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Updates

In case anyone's wondering: I've been working hard to make changes to the site and feel I've implemented a lot of the advice I've been given. At the same time there's still a long way to go.

Changes made:
* Added some gameplay photos
* Added a catch phrase
* Rewrote a lot of the info
* Changed my own slogan from "Games that explore human nature" into "Crafting Fun" (I got the feedback that the former sounded way too pretentious).

To Do
* Write a basic gameplay description for Hatch
* Figure out what I want to put on the welcome page after Boston FIG is done
* Re-write Leprechaun Slap to sound less boring
* Ask for feedback again and iterate, iterate, iterate

Itsdan
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Rewriting it to sound less

Rewriting it to sound less boring should be top of the list :)

The images on the LS page are obviously awkward being so wide. You're using wordpress so there's roughly 1 trillion slider and gallery plugins and it would be helpful to use one.

I think your overview should focus more on the experience. You're stating what players will DO, but that isn't "fun". Describe the 'feel' of the game and the emotional state you want the players to feel their in. Just a thought.

Not sure what your background is but I do a lot of work with Wordpress and if you need any advice or help with technical issues regarding your site feel free to ask here or in a private message. Good luck at FIG, I'm in the Boston suburb area but I'm not going to be able to attend this year, even though it sounds fun.

Aerjen
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Less boring

I fully acknowledge that making it sound less boring should be on the top of the list. What I'm not sure about is how to best write an overview that's focused on experience without making it sound hollow. Sure I know that people playing Hatch are usually laughing a lot, get really competitive and seem really engaged. Why would anyone take my word for it though? If I read a game description telling me it's the most exhilarating game experience since Dominion (or whatever), I usually disregard it and look for why I personally would feel that way.

You got me: I have 0% knowledge of Wordpress. I decided to build a website a couple of days ago and while I do know my way around html and css, I've got no prior WP experience. If the problem's only present on the LS page, then it's due to the original image. I only have an image with all the cards, but I can slice that up into several separate images and use a different layout.

It's a shame that you won't make it to the festival this year, but it looks like we will keep going and growing next year too. So you'll get another chance :)

BENagy
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My opinion is that your games

My opinion is that your games should be front and center, which means you need to have your front page be all about the games. A big picture of the game, that sellsheet you talked about, and then a link to more info.

If you haven't already, I would check out strikingly.com They're a new web design company, but they do awesome single page websites. I'm using them currently, and it's beautiful with next to no work to create. Make a different 1-pager for each game, a third for a home page, and you're done! Give it a look.

Just to see what one looks like at a beginning stage (I'm not done putting my site together yet), here's what strikingly can look like for a board game company. Again, in the future, I would link the pictures of games to a unique 1-page for each game. pair-a-dicegames.com

Aerjen
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Joined: 08/28/2008
Wish my site looked like yours

Hi Benagy,

Thanks for the advice. I recently broke the backend my website :( so that's why I haven't really updated after the festival last month. I plan to spend some time fixing things and will definitely make the games more prominent. I just took a glance at your website and it's wonderful. I really like the design and I'll make sure to take that as an example for my website V1.2

By the way, it just struck me that strikingly looks a lot like squarespace (example: http://rexbaker.com) Are you familiar with them and if so, why would you pick one over the other?

Cheers,

Aerjen

BENagy
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Very similar. In fact I might

Very similar. In fact I might go as far as to say that, without having seen how the website building works for squarespace, that they are essentially the same, and any major differences are in how the user customizes the content.

Later...:
So I went onto square space and checked it out, and it seems that site works pretty well. Awesome capabilities. The biggest difference is that strikingly is literally a single page you scroll around on, squarespace allows multiple pages you can transfer around on. My solution for strikingly would be to create several different "sites", and link them so that it works the same from the user end.

In the end I think it's a matter of preference, so it probably doesn't matter too much. I am a little biased and partial to strikingly because the CEO has an offer to meet him for coffee when you sign up, so I personally met him--pretty cool! But that shouldn't influence what sites you like. =P

Aerjen
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Small bug?

Hi Benagy,

I was looking at your site again, to see whether I can do the same with Wordpress since that will save me the monthly subscription fee :)

If I click on "Pre-Order Gaia", I get a new page with just the Kickstarter homepage. Is this intentional? It seems a bit weird to me.

Cheers,

Aerjen

BENagy
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Yeah, I set up the website

Yeah, I set up the website literally last week, and the 'Pre-Order' thing will eventually take you to a Kickstarter campaign for the game, but our game is a probably a few months away from being ready for Kickstarter. It's an external link that can take you anywhere, though, so I'm planning on linking it to a product page (also via strikingly) for the game for now (and by the end of the weekend), that will have a newsletter sign up for the product.

Again, with these ultra simple site builders, squarespace, strikingly, wordpress, etc, it's more about how creatively you use them to get what you want than what they offer as features. You can make anything work, it just takes a bit of work-around. ;) Let me know when you have a new site up! I'd love to take a look and see what you've done.

lewpuls
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Ask yourself, who are you writing for?

Ask yourself, who are you writing for? Publishers, or playtesters, or potential buyers (latter two fairly close together). Or potential Kickstarter supporters? The "excitement" quotient (which might also be, the hyperbole quotient) is higher for KS than for a publisher, for example. "Amazing" is a common word used to try to excite people, but I wouldn't use it with publishers because they're tired of hype.

Aerjen
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Joined: 08/28/2008
Europe vs US

That's actually one of the things that's giving me a headache. I can't figure out whether it makes more sense to write for publishers or for potential buyers. I'm talking to a couple of publishers for some of my games, but have others that I want to self-publish. I'm leaning towards a little less hype-like, but that might just be my European side talking ;)

BENagy
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My opinion is that the only

My opinion is that the only ones that you should focus on is your potential buyers/players. The only thing publishers are interested in is making money from a game they have published. That's how it should be. Your only real objective should be creating a game that people want to play. If people want to play your game, then the publisher has a reasonable expectation of being able to sell that game, and make money from it. Unless your name is Richard Garfield, Gary Gygax, or Steve Jackson, etc, who you are is irrelevant, unless you've had past successes. So, in my mind, players are the only people you should ever focus on. Sure, keep your possible publishers in mind, but if you start gearing a website towards them even 1 bit, and it distracts 1 iota from your players, I'd ditch it. As much as we like to dream it, publishers aren't trolling the internet, finding game designers' websites and looking for a game to publish. You'll submit to them, they'll look at your website, and decide if it's a game they think will sell. And showing them you know how to make a product for buyers is more important to them than you catering a product towards a publisher.

Again, take all this with a grain of salt. You have your European side talking, I have my American Business side talking. ;) I'm trying to start a company that will make me a living from the games I publish, so I may be in a different boat than you.

Aerjen
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Pushing back

Hi Ben,

I think I might want to push back a little on your stance. I'm talking with several publishers that have shown interest in my games. What I found out is that they, in general, have checked out my website. They refer specifically to things they could only have seen over there. So while I agree that publishers are probably not trolling the internet, they apparently do look at what you've got out there when they consider working with you.

On the other hand, I'm not quite sure what you consider distracting to players? What is in your opinion the biggest difference between building for a publisher and building for players?

On a different note: I'm also trying to build a sustainable business (and am living in the US) so that should not be too different a boat.

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