GameTap 1.7
December 11th, 2006 by xamountThis week promises to be pretty big for GameTap. We kick things off with today’s release of GameTap version 1.7.
With this release we focused on a number of primarily usability-based enhancements. We intend to detail out a good majority of them in individual design-path posts, but in the meantime here’s the list:
My Favorites Subrings — The ring that previously held just your favorite games has been expanded to include a subring of all the games you’ve downloaded AND a subring of your 20 most recently visited games (across sessions!).
GameTap Picks Subrings — Until today, this too was just a single list of games. Now we’ll have a dedicated subring of new games, the week’s theme, and others that can change from week to week.
Coming Soon Infocards – While we’ve always had a basic list of Coming Soon games over in GameTap TV, we can now provide even more information via actionable game Infocards. Add them to your favorites (and exert parental controls) before they’re playable.
GameTap Home – We made the posters more easily clickable, enhanced the button messaging and visuals, and redesigned the Challenge!/Leaderboard ticker.
Game Types — Games are no longer limited to one-per-genre. If a game is puzzle-y AND arcade-y AND a Challenge! game, then you’ll find it in all three Game Types subrings (as our catalog evolves to take full advantage).
Search — We removed the browse buttons (they were often mistaken for search filters), added some search tips, and defaulted the ring to show ALL games right off the bat.
Finally, there’s a bunch of other small-ish (but fun from a design perspective) good stuff: a redesigned Infocard close button, a warning form on clicking off to a pdf manual, better button labels and messaging when attempting to leave a game in-progress, a glassy (non-flat) Edit Controllers button, better display of estimated time remaining download info, direct links from My GameTap Leaderboards rank to game-specific buddies leaderboards, sort memory in My GameTap Leaderboards, better display of ratings in Personal & Family Filters, and a few other minor fixes here and there.
I’m pretty pumped about these changes, and I can’t wait to talk about how we came up with some of them. Any time my favorite software/game/OS/etc. gets updated, it’s fun to just get in there and mess around with it all (even before I figure out how it improves my experience). That said, get in there, get to messin’, and let us know what you think!