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.