I am very confused by this long standing problem for my game Dragon Ball Finale.
It is nearly always in 3rd place in terms of how many players are on at once.
But, even though the other game's that have spots 1, 2, 4, and 5 in terms of players have popularity's roughly reflecting that (#5 probably is 10th place in popularity, Naruto GOA is 1st in both (SOMEHOW <_< *suspicious*)), Finale suffers at THIRTY SIXTH place in popularity.
I have long wondered how this is possible. So, how and why? And what can I do to improve it?
Since the default search for games shows by popularity, it really hurts my potential to gain new players because they are unwilling to go all the way to page 3 to see my game. So I need to know whats up and how to fix it I guess.
I also have a loosely related seperate question: I just put a banner up for my game. Does that mean the banner will automatically show up at the top of the byond website now at certain times? That should help popularity...Maybe.
ID:133231
 Jan 18 2009, 12:07 pm
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"If your game isn't marked a BYOND favorite, it will never show up above them, even if you have more players favoriting them."
What? I don't get that statement. Your saying that its not players favoriting my game that will make it more popular? ITs "byond favorites"? What is this "byond favorites" you speak of and how does a game get on that? | |
[link] :
Lummox JR wrote: BYOND favorites are the games that are favorites in our banner guilds. I.e. if such a game has a banner, it has a chance of showing up in the banners up at the top of the page. Besides the Big Five, our banner guilds include some other guilds that have decent membership and consistent themes, such as Single-Player Games (Foomer), Flick's Board Game Bazaar, Dungeon Crawlers, BYOND Fantasy (Gakumerasara), BYOND Arcade (Airjoe), and a few others. Edit: I've been a bit slow there. | |
Actually from looking at the search results it seems DBF is currently sitting at #101 on the overall list, on the top of page 5.
To clarify why that is, the current popularity sort works as follows:
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I didn't know screen shots effected rank, what about videos? You should publicly post this information somewhere =P
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Falacy wrote:
I didn't know screen shots effected rank, what about videos? You should publicly post this information somewhere =P More accurately, screenshots affect search result order. The rank itself is based solely on members putting the game in their favorites. But this has been posted in the BYOND blog; I mentioned it a short while back. I can see how it'd be easy to miss though. Videos don't yet affect search results except that you can look for entries that have them. The reason they don't is that there's no bozo filter in place and we don't really have a good way of cross-referencing with our YouTube group to tell which ones are the best of the lot. I've seen a couple of entries link to music videos for no apparent reason, instead of showing a video of the gameplay. If we can figure out a good way to weed out the chaff or at least know which ones are the best, that'll give us a basis to change the search. It's worth adding that none of the search foo is set in stone. We've made changes over time to try to improve the quality of the results. I think by and large our efforts in that have been successful so far, but we're always open to suggestions that will improve it even more. As ever the goal is to put BYOND's best face forward and make quality games more prominent. Lummox JR | |
Lummox JR wrote:
Videos don't yet affect search results except that you can look for entries that have them. The reason they don't is that there's no bozo filter in place and we don't really have a good way of cross-referencing with our YouTube group to tell which ones are the best of the lot. I've seen a couple of entries link to music videos for no apparent reason, instead of showing a video of the gameplay. Whats to stop people from posting random screen shots that aren't of their game? or even porn? | |
Bogus screen shots = suppressed hub entry, and then they get no listing at all. (That goes even more for porn of course.) Videos are just a bit harder to keep track of, I think.
Lummox JR | |
So, in order to make Finale more popular, I have to somehow get it included in prestigious guilds?
How does one go about doing that? I see no guild listing on this website. I'm on a quest to at least get Finale into the top 20, because popularity 101 is pretty bad. Finale I am sure could have a lot more players. But these statistics I just made up say that 70% of byond players do not scroll past the first page of results to find games. | |
Jeff8500 wrote:
It's up to the major guilds to decide that, you can't really do much. I see. How did these guilds get their reputation as "major" anyway? If I were to start a guild for instance, how do I get its reputation up, so that if I were to include my game in it, it would help out its popularity? I need all that information so I can start working on my game's popularity. | |
You can't really get your guild listed as major. The main genres of BYOND were made into official guilds by the BYOND staff, who gave each guild a head.
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Yeah, the 5 guilds listed under the Community dropdown represent the 5 main banner guilds. These are overseen by BYOND, who have placed a Guildmaster in charge of each to administer the guilds on their behalf. There are a few other official guilds, such as the Art Society and Audiophiles, but I don't believe they are in the habit of listing.
In the case of your game, BYOND Anime is the most appropriate banner guild for you. | |
Not only those 5 count.
Others guilds that matter are BYOND Fantasy, Single-Player Games(Foomer), and some others mentioned here([link]). | |
Dragonn wrote:
So, in order to make Finale more popular, I have to somehow get it included in prestigious guilds? I know of only two current banner guilds where DBF is appropriate: BYOND Anime and BYOND: Dragonball Z (run by Javster). In both guilds your game is already listed, but not as a favorite. How does one go about doing that? I see no guild listing on this website. The banner guilds are listed in the pager when you look at games, so that should give you some idea of where to look when submitting games or trying to promote them. I'm on a quest to at least get Finale into the top 20, because popularity 101 is pretty bad. Finale I am sure could have a lot more players. But these statistics I just made up say that 70% of byond players do not scroll past the first page of results to find games. Bear in mind, since your game is high in the actual member rankings, it's going to be heavily featured in the "Players also like" section of many popular BYOND games. It also shows up in the first page of the games listings for the banner guilds that include it. I'm not sure how many more players you'd get from a first-page listing in the general search, since anyone specifically interested in Dragonball is already going to see it come up near the top of a search. Lummox JR | |
If you want to get featured in the anime guild, please learn to adhere to the VERY reasonable create the game from scratch requirements we have. Also, having ripped off the Naruto GOA hub icon is not a good first step at joining the ranks as a respected member of the Anime community.
Once you have frontpage benefits you are privy to a lot of protection on the content you create, frontpaged games are basically games of quality that are not ripped in any way. Unfortunately your game as it is is a Zeta rip, so I find it is fair that it should be listed below the games that were made painstakingly from scratch, dont you? Edit: after further review (10 seconds), I ironically found a series of graphics I drew for Dragonball Gekisen In this particular game. *facepalm* | |
Yea. By zeta rip I hope you mean graphics only. Because every bit of code is original.
But I see the points you mention. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do about original icons, I honestly don't know how the rest of you get people to make original icons for you. I doubt you made all those icons for GOA just on your own. And that is not a subliminal question either, I seriously just don't know how you convince people to do it. I have been gradually replacing known ripped icons with supposed "original" ones given to me (Its probably half and half), but as for the character icons, in my opinion, its no longer worth the effort to replace them all. I have many original character icons for certain races, but many are also ripped. Honestly I have never cared enough about the graphics of a game to care what is ripped and what isn't. | |
On a more serious note, all entries are based on how many people (or just BYOND members, I'm not sure) have the game favorited on their member page. They're displayed, in ranking, by this:
BYOND Favorite-marked games will display above all others.
A game with screenshots will be displayed above all others, but below BYOND Favorite-marked games.
I'm guessing it's similar for BYOND Favorite-marked games that have screenshots or not, too.
So, yeah. If your game isn't marked a BYOND favorite, it will never show up above them, even if you have more players favoriting them. If it doesn't have screenshots, it's in even worse shape.
I don't particularly like either being a factor, but hey, that's how it is.