An idea: Split game and review feeds on IFDB?

[otistdog]

I was looking at IFDB’s front page, and it occurred to me that the rate of review posts is so high that new games are usually on the front page for less than a day.

Reviews are great, and IFDB is certainly set up to encourage them, but spreading awareness of new games is at least as important as spreading awareness of the reactions to them. It might be nice to have a separate feed of the five or so most recently-submitted games on the front page as a feed separate from the reviews; that way they might linger a week or more on the front page.

Game news announcements could be on the same feed as the games themselves. Competition pages could be, as well, though it might be useful to have the most recent competition be on the front page at all times, as a way of bringing attention to them (and the games in them), as well.

Care to share your opinion?

[fos1]

Splitting the reviews and new game presentation on the front pages would seem to be a good idea. Possible allow the new games to be retained longer by default.

[manonamora (M.)]

Yeah I’ve been thinking about this too (mainly cause I’ve been dumping my reviews recently - sorry). Keeping New Release and Game News together would be fine tho.
The reviews def need a separate box.

Same with having a separate list for Recommendation Lists!
There are so few of them on the site, and they usually are just a little blip on the news…

With competition pages very often being set at the same time of adding games to the IFDB, I’m honestly ambivalent about it.

[manonamora (M.)]

For reference, the VNDB separate it too:

Released, Reviews, and other Discussions…
(I do prefer the portrait formatting of the IFDB)

[mathbrush (Brian Rushton)]

If IFDB did split reviews and games, would people prefer side-by-side (on desktop, at least), or ‘stacked’? And if they were vertically stacked, would you prefer to have games first or reviews first?

If there was a change to add a game-only feed, it would be nice to have an option that displayed cover art for the game feed.

For my personal opinion, I feel like I’d need to see it first to see how it feels; it could end up being really cluttered to have both games and reviews or make it hard to find one or the other. I wonder if someone could do a mockup? I might try messing around with some html to see what it would look like.

[manonamora (M.)]

@mathbrush

If IFDB did split reviews and games, would people prefer side-by-side (on desktop, at least), or ‘stacked’?

Side-by-side. Games left - Reviews Middle - Menu Left

@mathbrush

it would be nice to have an option that displayed cover art for the game feed.

It would be nice, but it may make the page a bit heavier to load no?

@mathbrush

I wonder if someone could do a mockup?

I had messed with it like a few days ago with the Inspect Tool and I didn’t think about saving it…
But I also had:

• the Polls and the Recommended List next to one another,
• the New to IF? above the Menu list
• reorganised the side menu to be ordered by [Games / Recommendations / Polls / Competition]

EDIT:
ok a few min of messing again:

It would look better when filled properly obv

EDIT 2:
Also saw this in the source code:

[dfabulich (Dan Fabulich)]

How would this look on mobile?

[ramstrong (Harry Hardjono)]

@otistdog

new games are usually on the front page for less than a day.

New games/reviews should be up for at least a week to allow busy people to catch up.

[manonamora (M.)]

I think stacked for mobile, or it’d get too cramped
Something like:

• New Releases
• New Reviews
• New Rec Lists
• New Polls

?

[pinkunz]

Ìch send weekyy digest by email. (Thx again @Warrigal for poining out seedcomp making te highlights recentl). They curate what’s ther, due to how bigitch is, but ifdbd wouldn’t have that problemm.

Tl;dr: I could see people wanting ti subscribe to aroughly weekly amd/or monthly ifdb newsletter, that icludes all new games and top reviewsp; a digest in their inbox. (Auto-generated, not necesarilky hand written, tbc.)

[manonamora (M.)]

@pinkunz

Ìch send weekyy digest by email. (Thx again @Warrigal for poining out seedcomp making te highlights recentl). They curate what’s ther, due to how bigitch is, but ifdbd wouldn’t have that problemm.

Tl;dr: I could see people wanting ti subscribe to aroughly weekly amd/or monthly ifdb newsletter, that icludes all new games and top reviewsp; a digest in their inbox.

Transcription for those wanting

I’d send weekly digests by email. (Thanks again [Garry] for pointing out SeedComp! making the highlights recently [on the itch.io jam digest]). [Itch.io] curate what’s there, due to how big it is, but the IFDB wouldn’t have that problem.

TLDR: I could see people wanting to subscribe to a roughly weekly and/or monthly IFDB newsletter, that includes all new games and top reviews: a diges in their inbox. (Auto-generated, not necessarily hand-written, tbc)

That’s a neat idea! Might be a bit complicated during Comp season (esp the IFComp) to list all new works (thought they could send the comp page instead of the separate listing). It does seem like a nice way to hightlight what’s happening in the community
Might even be more accessible to peeps who can’t use RSS feeds (for a reason or another)

[pinkunz]

Thnk you for helpng. Hard tovtype. Sincerely appreciat thar.

Also heps gamesc released outof comp with litle fanfair.

Ferkung just released a seecomp game they startd for last years comp. (Snce its bases on a seed frm last year, they dont want it in 2024 seedcomp.)

“I um, made a weird zzt world and it was fun”
After the Accident by ferkung
-Ferkung

Having a separate feed on hme page as well as a digestemail would both help such gamsc not get lost.

After the Accident by ferkung

(Cograts on finshing. Were very proud of you!!)

Plase give Ferkungg wwll deserved par on thr back!

[manonamora (M.)]

No worries

Transcript

Also it helps games released outside of the competition periods, giving them a little fanfare.
Ferkung just released a SeedComp! game they started for last year’s comp (since it’s based on seeds from last year, they don’t want it in the 2024 edition of the SeedComp!)/

[Quote link]
A separate feed on the home page, as well as the digest email, would both help [giving the game attention]
[link]
(Congrats on finishing. We’re very proud of you!!)
Please give @ferkung well a deserved pat on the back!

[Jade (Javier Garza)]

I like the things in the way they are now.

[pinkunz]

Nothinb wrong with thhat.

Sometimds no change is te safest change…

[dfabulich (Dan Fabulich)]

I spent a bit of time over the weekend thinking about this.

One confusing thing about a separate “games” box and “reviews” box on the home page is that the home page today includes all kinds of stuff, not just games and reviews.

• Site announcements
• New game listings
• New reviews
• New polls
• New recommended lists
• New competition listings
• Game news (“Add a News Item” on a game page)
• Competition news (“Add a News Item” on a competition page)

As it stands, all of those things can appear at the very top of the home page, at least for a little while. But if we split them out into separate sections, then polls, lists, and competitions will never be visible at the top of the home page.

It’d be even more stark on mobile, where we can really only fit one section at a time on the screen. In that case, we’d only show new games at the top of the screen. Many users might not even realize that there’s a “New reviews” section further down the page.

This kinda makes me think that it would be better to leave the top of the home page “New on IFDB” as it is, and just add in a separate pair of boxes for New Games and Reviews below that. We could also add in new boxes for Competitions and Lists. (We already have a separate box for polls.)

So the site might look like this, divided into rows:

• Welcome to IFDB! (collapsible)
• New on IFDB
• Games / Reviews: One box containing only new games, another box containing only the newest reviews. On mobile, we’d show Games first and Reviews second.
• Competitions / Vote!: A Competitions box showing new competition pages, followed by the polls box, as it is today. (Maybe rename the box to “Polls”)
• Recommended Lists / “New to IF?”: A new box showing new Lists, plus the New to IF? box.

In order to help users discover the other sections, there could be a list of links at the top of the page after the collapsible “Welcome” section.

Games | Reviews | Competitions | Polls | Recommended Lists | New to IF?

What do you think?

EDIT: Also, in my initial attempt to split games and reviews into separate side-by-side boxes, I found that they’re very cramped in there if we include snippets of descriptions/reviews.

I think the only way to fix that would be to get rid of the side bar. Most of those links aren’t needed, or could be added in elsewhere on the page, like this:

• Find/Browse/Contribute: All of these links would move into their respective boxes, e.g. Competition search/browse/add would appear in the “Competitions” box.
• Personalize: This box would go away completely; you can click on Profile/Settings in the header.
• Reviewer Trophy Room: Convert to a box in the page
• In the Database: Convert to a box in the page
• IF Links: Convert to a box in the page
• Competition Links: Add to the Competition box

… and stop linking to clubs entirely.

[dfabulich (Dan Fabulich)]

I did some work on this this week, and now, I think I want to poll folks on what I should do.

As I mentioned, the “New on IFDB” section today has eight kinds of things:

• Site announcements
• New game listings
• New reviews
• New polls
• New recommended lists
• New competition listings
• Game news (“Add a News Item” on a game page)
• Competition news (“Add a News Item” on a competition page)

I can see three options for what to do with this.

1. Get rid of “New on IFDB” and replace it with individual sections

   In the screenshot below, there are ten sections: Games, Reviews, Polls, Competitions, Lists, “IFDB Recommends…”, Top Reviewers, New to IF?, Database Stats, IF Links.

   

   (Truth be told, I think we would still need a little “New on IFDB” section when there’s recent site announcements to show.)

   But, besides that, there’s a problem: in this screenshot, there’s no way for a poll, list, or competition to appear at the top of the home page. Even if you just created a poll, you’d have to hope that somebody scrolls wayyyyy down to the Polls section to see what you did.

2. Bring back a “New on IFDB” section, and repeat games and reviews in their respective sections

   In the screenshot below, there’s a “New on IFDB” that works basically the same way as the old version, but in two columns, so we can fit eight news items on it. In this example, they’re all reviews, so the home page is repeating the eight newest reviews, once in “New on IFDB” and then again in the “Reviews” section.

   That seems silly, doesn’t it?

   

3. Bring back a “New on IFDB” section and hide reviews/games that have already appeared in “New on IFDB”

   In the screenshot below, we’re showing sixteen unique reviews: eight of them in “New on IFDB,” and then the next newest eight reviews in the Reviews section.

   That means that the “Reviews” section doesn’t contain any of the newest reviews! We’ve renamed the sections to “More Games” and “More Reviews” in the hopes that it makes the situation 1% clearer.

   But that’s a weird name for the “Games” section, especially since, in this example, there doesn’t happen to be any new games in the “New on IFDB,” so the newest game in the “More Games” section is the newest game overall.

   

Those are the only three options I can think of, and I don’t like any of them.

• Option 1 sucks because new polls/competitions/lists will never get their 15 minutes of visibility.

• Option 2 sucks because it means repeating all the newest games/reviews twice on the page.

• Option 3 sucks because it’s just plain confusing that the “Reviews” section doesn’t contain all of the newest reviews. Calling it “More Reviews” helps a little, but calling it “More Games” is downright weird when “New on IFDB” doesn’t contain any games.

  (I guess we technically could do an Option 3b where the section is either called “Games” or “More Games” depending on whether or not there’s a game in “New on IFDB,” but that seems even weirder!)

So, what do you think we should do?

• Option 1: Remove “New on IFDB”, pushing new polls/competitions/lists way down the page
• Option 2: Repeat reviews in “New on IFDB” and “Reviews”
• Option 3: Show “New on IFDB” and with unique reviews in “More Games” and “More Reviews”
• Option 4: Never mind, just leave “New on IFDB” alone, but make it a lot bigger
• I’ve got a better idea, and I’ll write it below.

[Dannii]

Honestly the amount of text there in all the options is overwhelming. I just wouldn’t read it.

I have no idea how feasible it would be, but I’d be much more like to want to read it if it was more social-media-y. Such as including game cover art, and showing reviews and ratings together with the game listings.

But I’m still probably the wrong person to be giving my opinion. Even if IFDB was more like that I probably wouldn’t spend much time on the front page…

[bg]

@dfabulich

1. Get rid of “New on IFDB” and replace it with individual sections

[…]

(Truth be told, I think we would still need a little “New on IFDB” section when there’s recent site announcements to show.)

But, besides that, there’s a problem: in this screenshot, there’s no way for a poll, list, or competition to appear at the top of the home page. Even if you just created a poll, you’d have to hope that somebody scrolls wayyyyy down to the Polls section to see what you did.

I don’t know if this would be the best option, but Option 1B might be to have separate game and review sections, but increase the likelihood that people will scroll down to see the polls, etc., by making the games and reviews sections smaller:

• You could cut down on the size of the individual items by shortening the preview snippets that go with them.

• You could show fewer items.

• Optionally, you could make the sections expandable in case someone wants to see more games, more reviews, etc.

(I’m not sure this would be better than the original “New on IFDB” section.)

Also: I’m not sure if this is just a side effect of putting the games and reviews in columns side-by-side, or if it’s something else, but in the screenshot, each preview snippet looks bigger and potentially more overwhelming than before. Having a wider list and/or shortening the preview text might make it look less busy.

Maybe it also looks busier because the control panel is gone.

So here’s option 4B: Bring back the “New on IFDB” section, but keep the smaller column to the right where the control panel used to be. The control panel doesn’t need to be there, but maybe the other things that used to be in that column could get moved up, or some of the other little sections that don’t need to be huge–like “New to IF?” or maybe even polls or competitions (without the preview text, to make it look less busy)–could go there.

[manonamora (M.)]

Out of all the options, I honestly prefer the first one:

• Separating each section makes the most sense – especially when you’re in heavy-reviewing-periods (for the new releases/new game pages) or when a comp just ended (for reviews publishing outside of it).
• Having links to different game order from the front page is also really nice!
  • Especially the Unreviewed. I’d potentially have also Unrated?
• Also pushing forward polls with recent votes is very nice (we get to see old polls pop-up again).
  • I know it’s already there, but I wanted to mention it!
• And having the Rec lists next to the IFDB recommends makes a ton of sense.

Some stuff I’d change from that first option:

• I’d still keep New on IFDB for site announcements or competition listing of recently ended comps (as like a 1-2 days sticky header above the rest).
• The headers of each section are too small compared to what’s in there. I’d increase the font size to make it more obvious.
  • Also add an icon next to Add New Listing and Create New Poll/List to make it more obvious
• I’d switch the order of Unreviewed and Search in the Games section list (or remove the Search since there’s the search bar just right above)
• I’d switch the order of competitions listing and polls.
• Polls being the only think in a <li> list formatting when the rest isn’t doesn’t make much sense imo. I’d have them as single lines like the rest of the page listing comp/games/reviews…
• I’d remove the mini blurb/description of the competition listings to have more listed
  • (because there are a few times a year where 3+ competitions/jams end around the same time)
• Also agree with @Dannii on the too much text on the page. Simplifying it by reducing the amount of text for the blurb/summary/review would help there.
  • Maybe just one line (or just the listing as is).
  • I’d even replace the blurb with the game’s cover art + add the engine listed. Like:
    
    • If there isn’t a cover art, I’d either leave it as is, or have a placeholder (star? IFDB logo?)
  • For the reviews, I’d have:
    • Reviewers reviews Game (date added)
    • Rating (if there) - Review title
    • Read review link

I think it’s something that the VNDB does quite nicely, with listing new game titles only or the reviewer + title:

@dfabulich

in this screenshot, there’s no way for a poll, list, or competition to appear at the top of the home page. Even if you just created a poll, you’d have to hope that somebody scrolls wayyyyy down to the Polls section to see what you did.

When a bunch of games or reviews are being added to the IFDB, listing of competitions, polls and lists disappear super quickly too. This option at least will display recent competitions/lists on the main page for much longer.
Also having the link towards those section right at the top of the page does help.
Possible option:

• have a [*] icon next to Competition/Poll/Lists on the top links if there’s been new CPLs since the user last visited the site?

Some extra questions:
Will the items listed in the Database Stat be clickable? and send the users to a list of that item?