How useful will it be... | GameGum - Free Flash Games

Okay, I'm asking all Flash developers here to leave their opinions.

How useful do you think it would be to have a component which creates a tiny little bar at the bottom of a Flash application, which allows players to leave organized comments and ratings on your Flash application?

Some other features I had in mind for said system include the following:

- User registration/login for keeping track of game played time.
- Buddylist/IM system for logged-in users which work in a non-obtrusive manner as far as the game is concerned.
- World-wide ranking system for all games on the developer network for said components.
- The ability to optionally work as a Flash application exchange. For each view your game gets, a small ticker on someone else's game will display a link to the location of yours.
- Additional APIs for in-game highscore lists.
- Additional APIs for a type of achievement system, similar to the XBox Live Accomplishment system.

If you think this could be useful, let me know. Otherwise, flame away. Either way, I'll probably end up moving on this idea, as I already developed the greater half of it.

... Sounds nothing like GameGum.

GameGum is not a Flash component. Nor does it have a standardized method of game critique.

No offense intended towards GameGum at all with this post, of course. GameGum is nice, but this would be a nice little addition to anyone's game who decides to post on GameGum, or anywhere else for that matter.

Also, GameGum does not offer a Flash application exchange. As a matter of fact, it doesn't do a thing I mentioned above. One-five star rating is NOT a global ranking system, nor is it even comparable to one. While it may help people find out what other players liked, it doesn't really have a ranking system as far as "This game is rated #8 of 103,495,223 titles."

GameGum may have an API, but it doesn't have anywhere near the functionality I mentioned. It has it's own database, and works for only... guess what? GameGum. :p

This would be more of a "wherever you want it, shove it" type deal with a central database. So whether it be on GameGum, Kongregate, Newgrounds, Flashportal, you name it... all the data is still accessible.

I see your point now, and I think its doable, but you were wrong on a few things. You can see toplists on GameGum based on ranking, views, and favorites. The API can be as full featured as we or the authors want, so I'm not sure which advantages you are speaking of in terms of recording data and statistics, because we can gather as much as the developer wants. Also we do have a standard of game critique through the use of ratings, favorites, comments, and implied by views and friend counts. We believe in giving users the freedom to critique in the comments rather than require a standardized system such as "Music" ratings, etc, as they can be confining and not well representative of whether or not the game is enjoyable.

One problem with your system is adoption. Without widespread adoption it is not useful, and widespread adoption will be hard considering the requirements by sponsoring companies, the difficulty of integration, and the extensive amount of games already published which dont use the system and that will not be upgraded to use it.

Of course, every technology has its advantages and disadvantages, so I encourage you to try it and if you would like help from our end in any way I would consider ideas.

I hope so...