Great Games Experiment

[leunas]

GameDev.net and GarageGames are proud to announce a contest for a brand new site dedicated to bringing developers, gamers, and publishers together with great games: GreatGamesExperiment.com. To create your account and get started head over to www.GreatGamesExperiment.com and use the promo code "GameDevGGE".

GarageGames is going beyond development tools to try to change the industry using the entire community of indie gamers. Great games deserve to be played, regardless of budget or bureaucracy. No one company or part of the community can do it alone. Gamers, developers, and publishers must unite to bring every essential component of the indie game process together.

Contest, Categories, Prizes

Here's a link to the contest categories and prizes, which include an iPod Nano and 2 free passes to the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco!

If you're reading this the first round of the contest has already started, but it ends on January 29th. GGE will be having a new contest every week leading up to a two week contest after its full release to the public on March 4th, so there will be plenty of chances to win increasingly great prizes.

Developers Wanted

Why are we giving away so much free stuff to a limited group of people? GGE is a community site, and therefore requires active community participation to thrive. That is why it is being released to developers before anyone else. Having a large initial user base comprised mostly of developers and hardcore indie gamers will help to ensure that GGE will indeed result in a site that is dedicated to being the catalyst that drives the video game industry into the next generation of gaming.

Promote, Network, Discover, Download, Play

The goal of GGE is to be an all-in-one community for everything a lover of great games could want from a site. Promote your game; network with other developers and gamers; discover new games and old favorites; download free games and demos, or make yours available to others; play games and share your passion with an active community created for that very purpose.

Click here for more information about the Great Games Experiment.


www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=433465

[leunas]

The Great Games Experiment Wants You

The Great Games Experiment is a social networking site created by the folks at Garage Games for the purpose of bringing together gamers, developers, and publishers into one cohesive community setting and seeing what wonderful things come of it. Think of it as Myspace for gamers. You can create a profile, list your favorite games, upload images, write game reviews, and even sign up for a developers account and share your own creations with the community.

GGE is currently in the beta testing stages, slowly inviting more and more gamers to come connect, create, and maybe even win some cool beta contest swag. They've now officially extended the invitation to Kotaku readers, apparently having run out of civilized, well-behaved candidates. If you hit the link below you'll hit the home page with referral code kotakugg already filled in. Sign up and start building your presence. I just hope they are prepared for you people. Oh, and be sure to add KotakuFahey to your friend list, or I will be very sad. Michael Fahey

The Great Games Experiment Kotaku Sign-Up

Article:
www.kotaku.com/gaming/garage-games/the-great-games-experiment-wants-you-235127.php

[leunas]

Great Games Experiment Goes Open Beta



Make It Big In Games blog has been quiet for a couple of months because most of my time has been spent working on our social networking site, Great Games Experiment (GGE). I have also been working on some new games, but that is fodder for future posts.

Great Games Experiment is a social networking site built around games.
What is social networking for games? Here are just some of the features.

For Gamers

• Most importantly you can find and play games you have never heard of. Find new games based on your preferences for games you have rated in the past. There are already over 500 free games (over 2,800 ((edit 3,000)) game profiles) posted on GGE.
  
• Create your own Gamer profile with surprisingly powerful drag and drop Ajax tools and GGE mark-up.
  
• Post game profiles for games that you like or help others that have already submitted a game profile.
  
• Rate and review games.
  
• Create your gamer friends network with extremely powerful “white-list” friend management tools.
  
• Personally meet the developers of your favorite games.
  
• Participate in the development of new games or Beta test games in development.
  
• Create groups of gamer friends with similar interests or for your tribe, clan, or team.
  
• Publish your gaming interests to your blog, or favorite social networking site through badges.
  

For Developers

Since the MBG blog is mainly aimed at developers, you might want to know how GGE can help you. Since my background is in development, GGE was really created with developers in mind. I have noticed over the years, that making a game is only half the battle. Getting people to notice your creation is even harder. Getting a large number of people interested in looking at your game can be extremely difficult. Sure, you can put up a blog, and maybe ten people will visit it (no, your Grandmother and Aunt don’t count). You can buy Google Adwords, but I can assure you they will not pay back. You can SEO the crap out of your website and, at best get a couple hundred visits per month. But, if we can band together and make a site that is useful to Gamers, we can bring hundreds of thousands or even millions of people within reach of your game.

Having Indie Games listed right next to the Big Games on consoles, hand helds, and PC’s can get people take a look and try them out. We weren’t sure this would be the case, thus the word “experiment” in the name, but it is working. Already small games such as Forces are getting attention they would just not have gotten without GGE. HermitWorks Entertainment is using GGE as a major platform for the launch of their game Space Trader. Gameslol has posted a great blog post about how he sees GGE helping Indie game makers.

One indie game maker and blogger has written off GGE with a scathing and derisive “MySpace meets games… I don’t get it” post, saying that everything an Indie game maker needs to market their game is available on the Internet. This guy didn’t get MySpace. He doesn’t use it. Hey, 60,000,000 users can’t all be wrong. You don’t need to use it to understand it. Sure, all the tools are available on the Internet to build your audience. It happens every day that you hear about some new site creating a huge and growing audience, but will your site do that?

Nope.

Many A-list bloggers such as Conversion Rater and Read Write Web have been predicting that niche social sites will be a big deal, and I agree with them. For more of a Developer take on it, Marek Bronstring had some great insite. Once basic human needs, such as getting laid, are taken care of on sites like MySpace and Facebook, social features work well for hobbies and targeted interests of users. So far, even in closed, invite-only Alpha state, we are finding huge interest in our efforts. We already have over 3,000 game listing and are nearing 8,000 users. Our Alexa rating is already dipped below 20,000, and our page views are growing exponentially.

Here are a few more things that GGe can help you with if you are a developer:

• Collect a willing audience that wants to hear about the release of your games.
  
• Create a private group to discuss your game ideas or present prototypes.
  
• Find programmers, artists, designers, or others to complete your development team.
  
• Find Beta testers.
  
• Promote your game on game profile pages and in Groups.
  
• Promote your game through Badges posted in blogs and on other social networking sites.
  

makeitbigingames.com/blog/?p=38

[leunas]

GreatGamesExperiment.com Unveiled to Public

Eugene, OR, March 2, 2007 -- GreatGamesExperiment.com, a social networking site centered around gaming, is pleased to announce its public beta release.

"Getting games made is only half of the problem. Finding an audience once you have sweat out two or three years of development is extremely difficult," says Great Games Experiment creator Jeff Tunnell. "Getting a lot of 'eyeballs' to look at your game is important, and social networking sites are a method of allowing a community to create its own content and momentum. Having indie games presented side by side with commercial games should get more recognition for the indies."

By providing a free resource for developers to network and promote their own games, users have an opportunity to play games that can not be found on other aggregation sites. Along with indie games, GreatGamesExperiement.com hosts a variety games ranging from free Flash games to old classics and mainstream commercial titles.

With the ability to promote, network, discover, download, and play over 2,800 games (and growing), the Great Games Experiment provides a forum for games from any era or platform.

"GreatGamesExperiment is the first site I've come across that doesn't limit what kinds of games can be added. It isn't just a Flash games site, an indie site, or a site promoting console games: it's a one-stop resource for the entire gaming world. The social aspects of the community allow me to narrow the huge amount of gaming choices by seeing what my friends and other like-minded community members are playing," says GarageGames Marketing Director Eric Fritz.

Ratings, recommendations, and popularity statistics for each game ensures that the cream of the digital crop rises to the top in dynamic fashion. Tags, friendships, and comments supply a more personalized means of distinguishing the exact types of game a user wants to play. The games themselves can be downloaded from their individual game pages, and many are even available to play instantly in your browser. Personalized gamer badges let others know what games users are playing, and can be added to blogs, forums, and social networking sites by embedding the provided html code. All of these features add up to a centralized location for a large audience with a specific focus on the gaming industry.

The Great Games Experiment has already made a positive impact for game developers in its closed beta stage, claims indie developer Adam Bielinski:

"When I made Forces, I definitely did not think it would gain anywhere near the recognition it has received. Only because of site's like... GGE (GreatGamesExperiment.com) has it gotten this popular."

GreatGamesExperiment.com is entirely free, and requires no obligation beyond a valid email address to become a member.

GarageGames: GarageGames, the company behind GreatGamesExperiment.com, is located in Eugene, Oregon and on the web at www.garagegames.com. As the makers of Torque Game Builder, Torque Game Engine, and Torque Game Engine Advanced, they have been providing game development tools and technology at an affordable price since 2000. The Torque Game Engine was the original technology behind the Tribes series of games, and has been used since to develop countless games on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Xbox 360, notable among which is GarageGames' own Marble Blast series of games.




www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=437777