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[intradox]

Before I start, I noticed in the rules that advertising one's game is to be done in Town Hall but as this is not a game and revolves more around the marketing/business side I thought it would be most appropriate to post here.

I started working on a project last month called Playnamics: http://playnamics.com to solve the problem of game discover amd community management. It brings together games from across the many marketplaces and platforms onto one community. It's pretty basic right now but I wanted to share it with all of you and hopefully get some early feedback and feature requests.

It currently acts more of a repository by listing game information but a blog section and discussion forum will be launched this month. More Info:
http://playnamics.com/developers

Current Features

• Create game group & add basic information
• Integrate with 3rd party services such as HumbleBundle, Steam, iTunes, Google Play, Desura, itch.io, Kickstarter, & Indiegogo
• Add a Buy Button & Crowdfund banner.

Features Coming Soon:

• Blog to post news & articles: All blog posts will be automatically currated for gamers to easily see the latest news from across game groups.
• Activity Feed: members will be able to post "tumblr-like" content such as youtube videos, images, questions, etc.
• Development Roadmap
• Feature Requests/Bug Reports

Example Game Groups:
Castle Story: http://playnamics.com/game/castlestory
Minecraft: http://playnamics.com/game/minecraft

I know it's pretty basic atm but let me know what you think. If there are any features you would love to see added. I'm making this first and foremost for game developers so getting feedback from developers would be great!    

[Vallar]

It is a very interesting idea and I have to say that your website design is clean and simple. I didn't get lost in there and I knew where to go and navigate easily.

However, I don't know if you know of this or not... but you aren't the only one in this market of creating communities like that. There is a startup that is similar to your idea that posted a few weeks back called gameloop.io

They are mostly doing the same thing you are doing except they are using suggestions/feedback as cards. You can check out their website. This is more of a heads up, that is all. So I am guessing you'd have something in store that these kind of websites don't have.

[Dewfreak83]

This is fantastic, please keep us updated with the progress!

What is the ETA on activity feeds and blogs?

[intradox]

It is a very interesting idea and I have to say that your website design is clean and simple. I didn't get lost in there and I knew where to go and navigate easily.

However, I don't know if you know of this or not... but you aren't the only one in this market of creating communities like that. There is a startup that is similar to your idea that posted a few weeks back called gameloop.io

They are mostly doing the same thing you are doing except they are using suggestions/feedback as cards. You can check out their website. This is more of a heads up, that is all. So I am guessing you'd have something in store that these kind of websites don't have.

Thanks for taking the time to check it out. Glad the design is well received. Thanks for letting me know about Gameloop. It's quite interesting although not exactly the same direction I intend for Playnamics.

This is fantastic, please keep us updated with the progress!

What is the ETA on activity feeds and blogs?

Really happy you like it! Initial activity feeds will launch next week with basic news/blogs the week after. Trying to get done as much as possible before Pax Prime since I'll be headed there and won't get much work done during that week.

[TSCtsk]

Your site is pretty.  I hope you don't mind, but I linked it from a site I use for game Devs...http://news.powerupgames.io/  I think it could be really helpful to this community.

[AleHitti]

Hey, I created a profile for our game SUPER III, but while doing so I found an issue. I can't seem to be able to add our official website, even when clicking the "Add Website" Link on my game's site.

Also, the YouTube link shows up on my page even though I didn't add any. Maybe hide it if there isn't anything in the YouTube field?

Pretty cool site though! Keep it up!

[intradox]

Thanks for all the feedback so far. I'm sorry for being so slow with updates and replies. Got sick this week and still recovering.

I went ahead and pushed the blogs feature live. Hopefully I did not overlook anything but at this time they allow the developer of a game group to publish an article.
Here is a demo of a blog article: http://www.playnamics.com/game/minecraft/post/minecraft-snapshot-14w33c
Here is a demo of the blog section for a game group: http://www.playnamics.com/game/minecraft/blog

This weekend I'm planning on adding the following features
- Link to game's subreddit (user request)
- Add other developers. If you are working with others you can invite them to be a developer of the game group. They can do everything apart from deleting the game group or changing ownership. (user request)
- Email Notification to all game group members of article update
- Will add Playnamics.com/news where blog articles from across the community are listed.

Future Features
- Searching. Some developers were requesting for me to add more advance searching/filtering of game groups. This is a top priority going forward
- Add external RSS feeds to game blogs. Basically if you blog to tumblr, steam, or wordpress blog the site will report a snippet of that post to your Playnamics blog. It will check  the external RSS maybe something like every hour.
- Allow members of a game group to submit game media
- Improve Opengraph/sharing. If you share most of the urls right now, not much meta/data is included. I'll improve it so that game banners, icons, article images, etc. are embedded in the shares on twitter, facebook, etc. (user request)
- Moving game group domains from http://www.playnamics.com/game/<subdomain> TO http://<subdomain>.playnamics.com  *Will also look into allowing groups to mask domain such as http://castlestory.playnamics.com can become http://community.castlestory.net

Let me know if you find bugs and if there are any features you would like to see. Thanks again!

[Dewfreak83]

Awesome - keep up the good work. Are you a one-man-shop?

[intradox]

Awesome - keep up the good work. Are you a one-man-shop?

Yup, right now it's just me on all fronts (design, development, sys admin, support, etc.). I've recently integrated ZenDesk to hopefully improve my response time and organization on the support department.

Glad you like it!

[Chris Koźmik]

Well, I kind of like it, at least it's the most to my liking compared to the competitors.


Important:
- finances - I don't trust you unless you make money out of it I don't want to invest in this portal only to see it bankrupt one day. I think your ultimate goal should be to turn in into a games-web-shop (there are few of these).
- community - it should be like that, you have a community, they hang out on playnamics to find games, then they find my game and try it (or read blog, or wait for an announcements it's released, etc). Your focus on developers is not the best choice (well,  it's nice and everything, but in the end we want players).
- serching for games (TAGS!) - it's important, very important. For example I look for strategies, simulations and RPG and I simply see no point to have the other genres to be ever displayed to me. Go for niches. Let people declare in which niche they are. Then show the interesting (to them) projects only.

Bugs & problems:
Oh boy, there is a lot of these I wonder, instead of fixing these maybe use some standarized components? It feels as if you coded it all by hand (oddities, bugs, non standard behaviours).

BTW: I'm unable to add my facebook which is https://www.facebook.com/pages/Europe-1300/752036018176665 (not everyone have the short name)

[Dewfreak83]

I don't trust you unless you make money out of it I don't want to invest in this portal only to see it bankrupt one day. I think your ultimate goal should be to turn in into a games-web-shop (there are few of these).

I'm not so sure the "investment" is all that heavy?   

I hope you are able to be prosperous off this eventually too... but perhaps there are other ways than a games-web-shop...

[Chris Koźmik]

I'm not so sure the "investment" is all that heavy?   

If you made a blog on that site and update it for like 2 years and then one day it went down it is a loss of a heavy investment.

[intradox]

Well, I kind of like it, at least it's the most to my liking compared to the competitors.


Important:
- finances - I don't trust you unless you make money out of it I don't want to invest in this portal only to see it bankrupt one day. I think your ultimate goal should be to turn in into a games-web-shop (there are few of these).
- community - it should be like that, you have a community, they hang out on playnamics to find games, then they find my game and try it (or read blog, or wait for an announcements it's released, etc). Your focus on developers is not the best choice (well,  it's nice and everything, but in the end we want players).
- serching for games (TAGS!) - it's important, very important. For example I look for strategies, simulations and RPG and I simply see no point to have the other genres to be ever displayed to me. Go for niches. Let people declare in which niche they are. Then show the interesting (to them) projects only.

Bugs & problems:
Oh boy, there is a lot of these I wonder, instead of fixing these maybe use some standarized components? It feels as if you coded it all by hand (oddities, bugs, non standard behaviours).

BTW: I'm unable to add my facebook which is https://www.facebook.com/pages/Europe-1300/752036018176665 (not everyone have the short name)

Thanks for taking the time to checkout Playnamics. You have some valid concerns and I would be happy to address them.

Re: Finances
Thus far, I've been working on building up the features and the last core feature is the activity stream. Think of it as something like Facebook/Tumblr. Once that's complete I am planning to offer internal ad spots for developers to promote their game. At this time, there are no plans to host and sell games as part of the concept for Playnamics is to bring together the games across 3rd party marketplaces and I think itch.io & Humblebundle handle payments extremely well. There are a few other revenue streams I am exploring and they include something revolving around allowing gamers to donate any amount of money to a developer via Bitcoin/Creditcard/Dogecoin and then receiving a "Donator" status in the corresponding game group. I feel this would be extremely useful for free and open-source games. Payment would probably be via Stripe in the beginning and then Paypal down the line.

Comunity
Playnamics is the typical chicken-and-egg problem and I decided to first get some games listed and go after gamers once the activity streams are live. Obviously the platform has much less use when there is little growth opportunity but this will hopefully become less of an issue.

Searching
Improvement on the current searching is a priority. I plan on providing numerous filters for a gamer to use in order to explore and find games of interest. If I understand you correctly, you would like gamers to be able to tag genres of interest to them on their profile and by default, only those types of games would appear?

Bugs & Problems
The facebook link is most likely due to me using some strict regex. I'll try to loosen them. As for the other bugs, do you mean styling/web components or some break backend bugs? The site is built with PHP using Laravel Framework.

I'm not so sure the "investment" is all that heavy?  

If you made a blog on that site and update it for like 2 years and then one day it went down it is a loss of a heavy investment.

Very valid concern. All the blog posts are saved in HTML so you could copy the source. This obviously becomes a problem with anything more than 5 or 10 posts. Would allowing the export of all blog posts be helpful? If so, let me know on a format that would be preferred. I don't mind to offer an XML download of all blog posts. I'm working on allowing RSS feeds for the blogs: http://playnamics.com/game/minecraft/blog/rss

Thanks everyone for the continued feedback. It's extremely helpful to hear all views and opinions.

[oodavid]

Left you some feedback yesterday

Looks great, I wouldn't worry about moneys just yet, do it properly and it'll cost you about as much as running a blog

[Scylla]

Whenever I try to make my game public:
http://www.playnamics.com/game/trouble/

I get this error:

Whoops, looks like something went wrong.

The URL lead to this link:
http://www.playnamics.com/game/trouble/dashboard/privacy

[intradox]

Whenever I try to make my game public:
http://www.playnamics.com/game/trouble/

I get this error:

Whoops, looks like something went wrong.

The URL lead to this link:
http://www.playnamics.com/game/trouble/dashboard/privacy

Wow sorry. Just pushed some new code, should be fixed now. Thanks for letting me know!

[Bada Im]

Oh, it looks very simple and cool.

[Mittens]

This site seems really professional, great work!

One feature I would like to request is a bulk uploader for screenshots.
When creating a new page for an existing games it's foreseeable that a developer would have a regular set of screenshots they would like to add all at once.

[Chris Koźmik]

The facebook link is most likely due to me using some strict regex. I'll try to loosen them. As for the other bugs, do you mean styling/web components or some break backend bugs? The site is built with PHP using Laravel Framework.

BAckend. Like you can't upoload a screenshot of the same filename that your game's avatar/picture.

[Griffith]

Great idea, I registered and i promise I'll use it later. Hopefully it takes off