Another Friday another Round-Up.

Got some huge new features to talk about this week as well as an awesome blog post from a game developer.

This week James Marsden shows GGE some love with his _futurism blog post. James talks about his game Prism and how GGE has opened up the game to a much wider audience. GGE is a great place to expose your game to a huge audience for free.

New Features:

Forums
The forums are finally live. Now everyone can talk about the gaming issues they want to talk about. They also replaced the old posting method for groups making it much easier for clans and other groups to communicate with their members. Check out the forum blog post to learn all the cool things the forums can do!

Play Now Feature
Click the Play Now icon on the game image to jump into the action! We’ve added this play now icon to all games that have playable content on GGE. So if you see the icon, no need to click through that pesky game page anymore. Who’s got time to read when you can play now? You can always check out the game page later.

Feel free to let us know what you would like to see in the next Friday Round-Up and we’ll do our best to integrate it into the mix.

That’s it for this “Round-Up”. Catch us next Friday for new GGE features and featured blogs.

We have heard your cries and now your prayers have finally been answered: the forums are now live!

The forums are tightly integrated with GGE and replace the old group discussion modules as well as provide a new place for general discussion and feedback. You can send messages, give kudos, and invite friends from inside a thread; no need to view the user’s profile first. Of course you can easily view their profile if you wish, check out all of their posts, or mute them if they are getting on your nerves!

Full GGE Code is supported in posts so you can easily link to games, groups, and users.You can also embed your XBOX Live gamertag, show YouTube videos and more. Another great feature of these forums is that they are tag-based, just like GGE. If you have spent any time browsing games on GGE, then you will already be familiar with tag-based browsing. The tags allow you to easily search up the topics you care to read about.

So, go ahead, have fun, and be sure to post bugs and suggestions in the Feedback category.

Ah, imperatives. Nothing gets people moving (or clicking) like a good command. A graphic commanding you to PLAY NOW is even harder to ignore. The Games section of the Great Games Experiment now has a Play Now button that overlays the game image for every immediately playable game, allowing you to bypass the game page itself and hop right into playing games on your browser.

We want GGE to be a one stop source for information on games, including descriptions, reviews, and comments, but we also want users to have the ability to simply play games. I’m already at the stage where I automatically hit the Play Now button for every new game that looks interesting. How can I not? I’m just doing what the button tells me.


Play Now games that I’m playing now:

Dirt Bike

Diesel and Death

QWERTY Warriors

Apparently I’ve been feeling nostalgic for Excite Bike.

Cheers,
Dylan

Introducing the Friday Round-Up. Every Friday we’re going to be showcasing blogs that people have written pertaining to the Great Games Experiment.
We’re looking for people that have posted blogs about GGE and trust us, we have ways of finding them. We aren’t looking for anything specific, just blogs expressing your thoughts and feelings about the site in general. What you like, what you don’t like, what you would like to see, how you are using the Great Games Experiment to promote your games. We want to hear everything.

The Friday Wrap-Up will also include new information on the site, including but not limited to: new site features, updates, cool people, etc.

Also wanted to throw out that we’re looking for dedicated people to run subsections in the game categories. We still need people to head the casual, core, educational, and indie sections. If you think you’ve got what it takes to run one of these sections, let me know and we’ll consider you. =) Send me a message from my profile page, Dr Wiley.

Finally, to kick it off, here’s the new cool stuff for this “Friday Round-Up”.

EgoAnt Productions has created a page on their site using game badges of games they have made for clients and EgoAnt.com exclusives. Check out their game page. Also found a nice little blog post from Michael Battle “footloosemoose”. You can read about his experiences at his blog site. Or better yet visit their profiles on GGE and tell them how awesome they are! EgoAnt - footloosemoose

As for the new site features and updates - You can now tag games and edit your gamer badge. Just head to your account page and click “my played games”. Here you can tag games as well as remove games that you may have “accidentally” marked as played, we know you’re just embarrassed. After tagging games you can customize your gamer badge through a tag and change the title of your gamer badge.

There has also been the addition of platform icons. Head over to the games page and you’ll notice the awesome little icons under each game. Easiest way to see which games are on which platform. In addition, clicking on one of those icons will show you other games that are tagged with the same platform. Very handy when building your collection of Amiga or Atari Lynx games.

Feel free to let us know what you would like to see in the Friday Round-Up and we’ll do our best to integrate it into the mix.

I guess that’s it for this “Round-Up”. We’ll be back next Friday with all new good stuff. Stay tuned.

The Great Games Experiment has finally been released for public consumption today. What does the official release mean? No more promo codes, no more limited beta invites, and no more purposeful containment of the beast that is GGE. The front page has changed to allow direct access into the site, even if you’re not a member. We’re nearing 3,000 games, and it’s time to allow the world to have access to all that the Great Games Experiment has to offer.

New to the site? In a nutshell, GGE is a social networking site for games, gamers, and developers. By providing a free resource for developers to network and promote their own games, users have an opportunity to play games that can not be found on other aggregation sites. Along with indie games, GGE hosts games ranging from free Flash games to old classics and mainstream commercial titles.

Ratings, recommendations, and popularity statistics for each game ensures that the cream of the digital crop rises to the top in dynamic fashion. Tags, friendships, and comments supply a more personalized means of distinguishing the exact types of game a user wants to play. The games themselves can be downloaded from their individual game pages, and many are even available to play instantly in your browser. Personalized gamer badges let others know what games users are playing, and can be added to blogs, forums, and social networking sites by embedding the provided html code. All of these features add up to a centralized location for a large audience with a specific focus on the gaming industry.

That’s a pretty big nutshell, but then again, the Great Games Experiment is a pretty big nut.