You may now notice that when you click “Play Now” for any given game, that you are taken to a view that looks different than before.

The new “Play Now” view, gives you a much more comprehensive look at the game you are playing.

Rate the game right while you’re playing it! Also included are quick links to the game related pages.

Notice the inclusion of our new Recommendation Engine. This provides to you a list of a few related games others enjoyed based on our calculations. Stay tuned for improvements!

So I’ve been quiet for a little while… this is mainly because I’ve been working on revitalizing and amping up a major piece of the Great Games Experiment — the games! There are two main pieces to this puzzle– tagging and gamelists.

Much like how you can tag your personal network (friends) on GGE, you can do the same with games that you’ve played. The functionality is quite similar and will take you a long way with GGE features both current and on the way. Right now, this is awesome for the use of quickly creating a gamelist. You may recognize the concept of the gamelist as what was formerly the “Gamelist Module”. These modules were slick additions for your profile, which you, in the past, used to crank out a quick and dirty list of games. Well, the concept remains, but the interface has drastically changed.

Read more about Steppin’ It Up with Game Tagging and Gamelists!

Describing it as “a little bit gamer social network, and a little bit (indie) rock ‘n’ roll,” the PC Gamer article explores what makes the Great Games Experiment tick in a page-long feature. An overview of site-specific features is given, as are comparisons to other game-related collaboration sites. The article ends with questions about what GGE could mean for the future of community-driven gaming and game development.

Space Trader, a popular GGE game, receives the royal treatment in the magazine with a screenshot of the game in action, as well as a lengthy quote from one of its developers, Phillip Daigle.

To see the article for yourself, check out the May issue of PC Gamer, available now in newsstands.

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

For you the user, a large part of your experience on GreatGamesExperiment.com consists of building and customizing a profile page that best fits and describes you, your game, or your group. After all, half the fun of a social networking site is defining how you would like yourself to be presented to the audience at hand. We all know how boring straight up black text on a white background can be, so I want to present the toolbox that we have made available (and are currently expanding) to you, the user.

While developing GreatGamesExperiment.com, one thing the team has needed to focus on is security for you — the user. With the design and continual enhancement of profile creation tools, we are continually shooting to provide you with an equal balance of a comprehensive toolbox and safe experience for site users. Safety and security concerns arise when the community is allowed to insert their own code to embed items that are hosted off-site on a third party server. Through this juxtaposition of freedom and safety for users in our world [wide web] of user created content, we need to constantly be sensitive to the wants of the community, as well as the protection of individuals visiting and taking part in the experiment.

This is where GGE Code and The Widget Whitelist come in.

Read more about GGE Code and The Widget Whitelist

In the past week we’ve started getting featured editors to run different sections of GGE. Jay Barnson and one my of favorite game submitters Bjorn are among the first elite few who will run sections of the site.

Bjorn who is known around the site for putting up some of the coolest free games will **surprise surprise** be heading up the free games section. You can check out his featured game at the newly remodeled free games feature. The first game that he’s put up is GraviTron, since he recommends it I suggest everyone check it out because it’s gotta be good. Oh, and I’ve mentioned this before but he’s got a section in his profile titled, “My periodically changing game recommendation!”, which is updated hmmm, periodically, with awesome stuff I might add. Go look at it.

Next up we’ve got Jay Barnson. He’ll be heading up the RPG front. Jay Barnson is the self proclaimed (or maybe this nickname was given to him, I really don’t know) “Rampant Coyote”, dashing secret agent by day (so he says), but by evening pursues his dream of being an indie game developer. He’s worked on several hit mainstream games, such as Twisted Metal, Warhawk, Jet Moto, and some games that he’d rather forget about. Jay is the founder of Rampant Games.

As GGE gets bigger and bigger we’ll be getting in touch with people that are extremely active on the site. So keep it up and maybe we’ll hit you up with moderator abilities (you know you want them).

Bye duders,
Dr. Wiley