Angled Whiteboards

From the Suggestion Box

A number of folks have requested that we offer the ability to subscribe to GameTap with a PayPal account.  We listened; now you can (or your friends can! yeah, tell your friends!).  We’ll continue to incorporate even more ways to make it easy to go Gold — pretty sure we’re already in negotiations with PurchasePartner, BuyBuddy, and AcquireAssociate.

When we introduced 3.5’s enhanced download manager (back in December), we knew that people would appreciate the additional level of control. But we also knew that there might be a slight bit of controversy surrounding our decision to make the download manager work in a Last In, First Out (LIFO) manner — meaning, when you are downloading a game, any subsequent downloads replace the existing download and push it further down the queue.

We chose LIFO for a couple of reasons. Because a large chunk of our gameplay is initiated from the web, we wanted to make sure that when someone clicked the Play button, they weren’t launching the player and sticking the game in a queue. Play should mean play. We also wanted to keep in mind the user who starts up a DiRT download, realizes that it might take a minute or two (ha), and decides to get a quick game of Joust in.

When 3.5 hit beta we started getting some feedback about our decision. “Why can’t the download queue work the other way?” “Now I have to think too hard about my download order.” Others were less frustrated with the addition but mentioned that they wouldn’t mind at least having the option to switch to FIFO when they needed it. So we did some experimentation. We worked through a global setting that simply switched everything from LIFO to FIFO — the messaging was too weird, and we couldn’t control it as easily and dynamically on the web. So 3.5 went out with LIFO. And we waited to see whether non-beta users would notice.

Of course non-beta users noticed! In fact, we came very close to including the discussed two-button option in a January update, but were concerned that having a button that said “Download Now” and another that said “Add to Queue” was a) too difficult to fit into the allocated download button area:

And b) had the potential to confuse things for large majority of users (borne out in usability testing) who don’t even realize there IS a download manager.

But then I ended up having an IM conversation with longtime beta tester and moderator macnbc. And he did it. He cracked the code:

So as of the Player update that went out a week or so ago, we’ve got a FIFO v LIFO setting in the Download Options dialog. Advanced users (like the ones who made it to the end of this post) can switch it on to enable the option of FIFO downloading on each and every Infocard. Another bonus of this implementation is that we’ve got plenty of room to explain the setting in the Download Options dialog — putting less of a messaging burden on the buttons themselves (and letting us get away with the slightly less obvious “Queue It” button label:

This isn’t the first time we’ve received help from our community in terms of design, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Thanks again, guys!

Announcing the first of a regular GameTap event - Monday Leaderboard Challenges! We’ll choose a different leaderboard game every week and the 10 people who have the best scores at midnight on Monday (that’s eastern time) will win a prize. Winners will be posted in the GameTap forums on Thursday.

This week, Bubble Bobble is the game to play.

Do you have what it takes? Post those scores!
Read the official announcement.

From the Suggestion Box

Another from the “we hear ya, why didn’t we do this right away?” category. Now, in concert with our get a year of GameTap for only $59.95 deal, you can change your subscription plan right from your profile page at the click of a button. Switch back and forth from monthly to yearly (or whatever cool deal we might have) whenever you want.

Oh, and one other new thing on the web. Now you can also cancel online. Need to suspend your subscription? No problem. Your TapID remains intact, so you can still post in the forums and play any of the free games - even post to leaderboards and play in online challenge mode. So, for all you nellies who said you wouldn’t sign up until you could cancel online, we’ve gotcha covered. What are you waiting for?

From the Suggestion Box

Earlier this year, we added “Gotta Getta Game” (also known by some as the Magnificent and All Powerful Wheel of Destiny) to the Search ring in the Deluxe Player. It’s fun - whole blogs and forum threads have sprung up about the wheel. Well, a lot of you wanted to spin any ring, any time. And so, we introduce the Wheel’s little cousin, Alt-W.

That’s right, take a random spin around any ring in the vault. Invoke the magic. Find your destiny.

Something we’ve seen in the suggestion box since the day we launched (and in blog posts and forums all over) was a request to make our opening splash video in the Deluxe Player a little more quiet. In 1.8, we let you bypass the intro video with the ESC key.

Today, we bring you a new, quiet intro.

Open the tap. Squeak. Play.