Angled Whiteboards

We just flipped a switch behind the scenes that seems kinda minor on the surface. But we think that it has the potential to dramatically improve the experience of chatting in a Challenge! game lobby. That switch? The one over by Andy’s desk that reads PROVIDE CHAT HISTORY EVERY TIME SOMEONE ENTERS THE ROOM. (It’s bright orange — but pretty heavy and slathered in industrial gear grease. Sorta looks like this.)

Why did we just now flip the switch? To be honest, in all the hubbub of getting online multiplayer games and contender status and chat lobbies up and running, I’m not quite sure we even realized that it wasn’t working that way. After all, when you’re busy messing around and developing a feature like chat, it sure can seem like there’s a lot of hustle and bustle and [fake, often unpublishable] conversation happening. Even once we launched the Challenge! games, the lobbies were full of folks hanging out, setting up Galaga stand-offs, smack-talking, and just shooting the breeze.

But then the dust settled, and we noticed the social effects of not having a chat history. Unless a very fast and furious conversation was in progress, every time a person entered the chat room they were confronted with a blank slate. And then they were on the hook to kick things off. The result? Everyone ended up in the undesirable role of first-to-speak. Not a conducive setup for instigating chat.

Now that we’ve flipped the switch, it’s different. You enter a chat lobby and automatically see the last 20 lines of conversation. You can get a feel for the flow of the room. You no longer get the sense that everyone’s counting on YOU to get the party started. This is our theory, at least. Folks are going to have to get accustomed to the change and maybe even relearn how the chat lobbies operate. We’re going to be closely watching to see the effects of this change, but our initial assumption is that it will be nothing but positive. So look for us online — and feel free to leave messages for us to test it out. The conversation in Street Fighter Alpha 3 is going to be flowing non-stop, but grafitti up something in Zoo Keeper and we’re sure to see it.

From the Suggestion Box

The GameTap catalog has been growing by leaps and bounds, especially with newer (read BIGGER) Windows games. So, it’s no surprise the number-one-most-requested-feature in the Suggestion Box over the last few months has been to let users see all games they’d downloaded (whether or not they were dubbed ‘Favorites’). Well, on Tuesday we released 1.7, adding a Downloaded subcategory to My Favorites.

If you want to get in quick and play something you’ve already downloaded, just visit the “Downloaded” section of My Favorites. Everything local on your machine is displayed there, subject to Parental Control and Personal filters, of course.

Feedback from our customers include:

“I made a suggestion a while back about having a downloaded game menu. no doubt many others did too, but thank you for listening …. or rather reading what the users want.”

“Thank you for adding the “Downloaded” tab to the Favorites ring, that was EXACTLY the kind of thing I was looking for in my previous suggestion. Thanks again for listening!! “

There are even more enhancements coming soon to My Favorites. Keep your eyes peeled, and rest assured that they’re all coming from the Suggestion Box to you. And, thanks for asking!

Ta da! First we released a new version of GameTap. Now, the new games and videos are rolling out two full days early this week thanks to the open public beta release of some tiny game called Myst Online: Uru Live.

For real though, we’re psyched about finally being able to put Myst Online out there and have GameTap subscribers start to put it through its paces. I got in there earlier today and it was teeming with folks. So bang on it and give us feedback — here, in the GameTap suggestion box, or in the forums on the sparkly new website.

On the other hand, if you’re up for an adventure game geared towards, um, solo play, you’ll have to play Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Yes, the classic Infocom text-only game that you scratch-n-sniffed your way through back in the ’80s is finally available for your late-night amusement. I’m pretty sure I still have the 3d glasses and comic that came with the original game… I’ll rent ‘em out if you want.

New Games:

• Myst Online: Uru Live BETA
  
• Freddi Fish 5: The Case of the Creature of Coral Cove
  
• Frostbite
• Grell & Falla
  
• Leather Goddesses of Phobos
• Mig-29 Soviet Fighter
  
• Psycho Soldier
• Putt-Putt Enters the Race
• Three Wonders

Now with Challenge! multiplayer support:

• Tempest
• Space Invaders

New on GameTap TV:

• Retrospectives: The Rebirth of Myst Online
  
• Sam & Max: A Painstaking Search
  
• GameTap Tracks: Gomez
• Quick Hit: Barenaked Ladies
  
• SeaLab 2021: Stimutacs
• Sam & Max: We Drop At Dawn
• GameTap News: Rogue Warrior

One of the fun parts of our job is keeping up with all the Internet GameTap chatter. We’ve stumbled across a number of reviews (or rants!) that inspire us, give us new enhancement ideas, or even point us in the direction of fun games in our catalog (with over 700 games and growing, there are bound to be a few gems we haven’t played). So in the vein of that last review dinah linked up, we’re starting a regular series pointing out some of the things the community is saying about GameTap, our games, etc.

From the last week:

• batzradio kicks off a helpful GameTap megathread on the Something Awful forums.
• roushimsx follows up and lists three games that immediately jumped to the top of my to-play pile. Dude knows how to sell a game.
• Eleri talks about the importance of Myst Online: Uru Live.
• dystopia productions knows how to prioritize his life and budget.
• Orlando’s digging Second Sight and has over 200 favorites!
• David Ginn is eagerly anticipating Myst Online: Uru Live’s international launch.
• Christian sussed out one of our untranslated Japanese Mega Drive Games (and successfully talked me into giving it a shot).
• Hoosier Hunter is giving Andi and fam the gift of a year’s subscription. Very nice!

And a couple of slightly older reviews:

• bapenguin gives us a nice thumbs up. This last release should address his desire to see recent games across multiple sessions.
• Julian “rabbit” Murdoch tells the story of the perfect GameTap experience. This write-up lit the halls over here — it completely nails what we’re aiming for.

(See a conversation about GameTap happening out there in the wild? Have we missed anything in the last week? Let us know!)

This 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!

The very first Street Fighter game made its way into the catalog this week. Now there’s a fun trip down 7th grade arcade birthday party lane. I’m fairly sure that my friends and I were at least partially responsible for the big-fat-wackable-buttons to dinky-little-normal-buttons cabinet revision. Especially when Sean tried bashing them with a hammer in a failed bid at defeating Sagat.

Also in this week: Firefighter: In the Line of Duty. I gave this one a shot just this morning (unlike the novelty arcade game Brave Firefighters, I was not required to don my firefighter gear and plug in my rarely-used vibrating USB firehose.). Best part of the game? The character names you get to choose from: Blade Jackson, Hotrod Stein, Spitfire Li, Smokestack Williams, Brushfire Miller, and Savior McDunnis. Savior Mcdunnis! Needless to say, I played as Savior and was promptly given one of the two allowable firefighter implements: the axe. Very nice. Savior comes in swinging.

Big week for GameTap TV too: new Sam and Max machinima, a Space Ghost with Christmas crooner Dee Snider, and a holiday-themed Computer Lab (featuring an animated Twisted Sister?! Dee Snider’s everywhere!).

Oh, and don’t miss this week’s classic Sealab 2021. You want the mustache on or off? Too bad…

New Games:

• Firefighter: In the Line of Duty
• Pajama Sam 3: You Are What You Eat From Your Head to Your Feet
  
• Patrician II
• Prehistoric Isle in 1930
• Putt-Putt and Pep’s Balloon-O-Rama
• Second Sight
• Street Fighter

Now with Challenge! multiplayer support:

• Stakes Winner 2

New on GameTap TV:

• Sam & Max: Trainspotting
• Space Ghost: Dee Snider
• GameTap Tracks: Damone
• GameTap News: Next Gen Wars
• Quick Hit: Teddy Geiger
• SeaLab 2021: In the Closet
• Sam & Max: That Darn Gator