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[Codestar]

So I made a thing.

I've been working on a site for a while now to promote indie games and now it's out in beta!
http://www.indiegamesroulette.com

The idea is to give the users short 1 minute videos and information on games as a way for people to find cool games to play and a way for developers to promote their games and get them out there! So far there's a collection of indie games I adore that I added in, but also a lot from developers who have just submitted their games.

I've also got a system in place where you can "upvote games" to give them a higher chance of being rolled. You don't have to be the developer either, if you like a game, you can upvote it yourself to promote the game and it's creators.

Pretty much got this idea as a sort of chat roulette for indie games. I would love to hear some suggestions/feedback. :D

*note I'm not sure if this is where I should post this topic, if a mod comes across this please move it to the appropriate section, thanks.

[Snow]

I like this. I've always wanted to see a site like this with this type of simplicity. No bullshit, no ads, no need to load entire pages or websites for a single game. No searching or cursing because you forgot to bookmark a particular website. Excellent idea.

The only bug I'm encountering is the video box disappearing sometimes when rolling. Reloading the page fixes it, but I usually get 2 or 3 rolls before I crash. I'm using Firefox.

[Codestar]

Thanks, I think I've got that issue fixed now.

[ryansumo]

Excellent work!  I just tweeted about it.

[Pandara_RA!]

Paying .99cents to "upvote the game" just makes the credibility dip to nothing. I want to see indie games that hey, 20 people thought were cool. Not some dude with 20 bucks.

I'd also like to see genres. I dont want to see 400 puzzle games before the seeing 1 rpg game I want. Please include a genre selection.

[Snow]

Paying .99cents to "upvote the game" just makes the credibility dip to nothing. I want to see indie games that hey, 20 people thought were cool. Not some dude with 20 bucks.

I'd also like to see genres. I dont want to see 400 puzzle games before the seeing 1 rpg game I want. Please include a genre selection.

There is a genre selection button - dropdown to the right of the roll button.

I too, strongly disagree with the pay to upvote thing. That's stupid. I missed that. The roulette thing is otherwise an awesome idea. Don't wreck it with that. If you need money to cover the costs of the website, there are other ways without being intrusive.

[Schoq]

needs a filter for freeware

[Aik]

Needs a filter for games that actually exist. I want to play games not kickstart them.

[Codestar]

Thanks everyone for your feedback! As mentioned before, this site is in beta and isn't the final product.

This isn't a "shitty get rich quick scheme" or an "idea sullied by greed". I'm trying to cover the costs of hosting the site; it's all coming out of pocket and my own time. I wasn't wanting to display ads because I feel like it would draw too much attention from the games and be spammy, but from feedback it seems that would be the better alternative. I'm in the process of taking away the Upvote system and revamping it; if you have any more comments please shoot them my way!

[Snow]

Thanks everyone for your feedback! As mentioned before, this site is in beta and isn't the final product.

This isn't a "shitty get rich quick scheme" or an "idea sullied by greed". I'm trying to cover the costs of hosting the site; it's all coming out of pocket and my own time. I wasn't wanting to display ads because I feel like it would draw too much attention from the games and be spammy, but from feedback it seems that would be the better alternative. I'm in the process of taking away the Upvote system and revamping it; if you have any more comments please shoot them my way!

I too despise ads, but I was once thinking of a solution to this problem when I was going to put up a website for one of my projects. What I was thinking of was banner style ads but a bit below what you first see on the site when you open it in a browser. There would be nothing popping up and the only way to see the ads was to scroll down the page. Otherwise if you didn't want to be bothered by the ads, you just didn't scroll down and you didn't see them.

Then I was thinking, well if I had ads or links down there, I still want my page to look good, so I want the ads or links to look good. I also wanted to only put up stuff from companies that I liked. Like for instance if a company like Valve released a new game, I wouldn't mind having a nice ad or link to that game. On the bottom of the screen (when you first open the site), I was thinking have a donate button and next to it something like, "If you don't want to donate, check out some of these projects/links/ads/friends/etc".. something like that. I have no idea if you could get enough revenue this way, but you're giving the visitor a choice and not having some ad in their face.

[AKRansom]

I like this idea and your willingness to adapt. I'll help spread the word, for what it's worth.

[Codestar]

So I've updated IGR a bit and added a few more new features.

-Now you can add in a direct url for people to purchase/play your game
-You can also add in your Kickstarter information when submitting a game
-Design is responsive and resizes depending on your screen dimensions to be mobile friendly
-You can also submit a 300 character description for your game
-Changed the layout a bit to group together the UI a bit more
-Roll time is now 1: 30 instead of the previous 1 minute roll time. Most trailers range from about 1 minute to 2 minutes, so I decided on a bit of a half-way point between those.

*filtering has been taken out at the moment, I'm going to be adding a tagging feature when you submit a game, so that you can submit it with multiple genres.

[MrBones]

If you're going to add games with active kickstarters, I'd highly suggest a filter for finished games.
Other than that, nice job, the site's looking nice.

[Blademasterbobo]

why not make the roll time = to the video time

[Ant]

or just get rid of the roll time since they have a button to press if they want a new game

[Codestar]

Getting rid of it wouldn't really change much. If users want a new game now they can click the roll button. The timer is sort of a subtle way of influencing the user to give the video a chance. The idea behind the timer in the first place was to keep new games popping up frequently until a user finds one they like.

I could perhaps change this to be something more like how you can skip songs on pandora. Where you
have a certain number of skips you can do for videos until you have to start watching whole trailers.

Or just have the timer countdown for like 30 seconds, then give the user the option to skip the video. That way at least each video gets a chance to show some of its content.

Just an few ideas, I'd love to know your thoughts on them.

[Blademasterbobo]

I could perhaps change this to be something more like how you can skip songs on pandora. Where you
have a certain number of skips you can do for videos until you have to start watching whole trailers.

don't do this

[Danny Hayes]

This is quite nice! It'll be good to check out more when the list is expanded further, but I submitted my own game.

I actually wouldn't mind having an ad banner at the bottom of the page to support the upvotes, myself.

[Jondog]

If you need to put ads on there to support it then do so.

I don't think unreleased games should be on the site, if I want to see that I can go to the devlog section here or look at kickstarter, if I want to play something that has a really cool trailer seeing that it isn't actually released is disappointing.
Also the site needs to check what the previous roll was because I got the same trailer twice.

[Codestar]

If you need to put ads on there to support it then do so.

I don't think unreleased games should be on the site, if I want to see that I can go to the devlog section here or look at kickstarter, if I want to play something that has a really cool trailer seeing that it isn't actually released is disappointing.
Also the site needs to check what the previous roll was because I got the same trailer twice.

I just fixed the bug that gave you two of the same game in a row. You shouldn't be getting the same trailer twice anymore. As for the issue of having games that are not released yet, there will be a filter put in if you only want to see released games. I still want to show off trailers of cool "coming soon" games though, because it helps the developers get exposure and helps these cool games come closer to being in the hands of the player.