I opened this and stared at it like an idiot for a minute. Am I behind the times to expect something on the main page of a site that says what it actually is?
Clicking through the tiny About link I found at the bottom of the page, this appears to be a platform for monetizing web-based games, at least some of which are WebGL-based (which I found out after clicking through one of them and being told, once again, that Chromium isn't interested).
So... new Newgrounds. Except with microtransactions. Unless I missed something?
It looks like a re-branding of Turbulenz platform (that has been around for a while, actually started as custom executable plugin, then moved onto JS+WebGL).
It's basically game-as-service platform where you get a game engine for free (it was recently open sourced), and if you decide to host your game on their servers, you pay them 30% of revenue fees.
This ga.me site looks like a new frontend for the end-users for accessing games published on this platform.
Here is a "sell" page for developers with more info about platform features:
I think your just used to browsing one too many SaaS startup websites. Not every website needs a introduction and breakdown of features, especially for a game site where its target audience already knows what they are looking at.
That's not really what I usually look at, and I believe most sites will at least tell you what you're seeing (particularly when their presentation is just a gallery of thumbnails).
Anyway, given the other questions already posted in this thread, I'd say it's warranted and constructive criticism for whoever might be running this.
This was exactly my reaction. For a site that "just launched", I find it amusing that it doesn't explain what it is.
Although I'm not sure if the problem is the lack of an about page or something about the layout. Other websites such as steamstore, origin and gamejolt also don't have any information about their service on the front page (gog.com is an exception to this).
Basically all of these games try to get you to make in-app purchases, which is a huge turn-off for me.
Honestly, I find these in-app purchasing platforms to be completely against the spirit of game development. I totally support a game developer's right to make money off their work, but the way these games aim to do that is so unethical.
Remember how fun games used to be before they were perverted by the greedy in-app purchasing tactics? I'm sure there weren't many games making a million dollars a day like Candy Crush, but with a classic game like Civilization you come to respect the genius of Sid Meiers. What's more important to you, a million dollars a day or the respect and admiration of the gaming community? It seems like an insatiable appetite for wealth, driven by the example of successful in-app purchasing games like Candy Crush, has been instilled in the game development community.
One more thing - when your performance in a game depends largely on how much money you spend on it, the value of actually being good at the game is basically nothing. How am I to know that the top players in the world didn't just drop a couple grand on the power ups and gold and whatever other virtual shit they try to peddle. In games like Civilization, the only way to win at the deity level was to be a bad ass motherfucker who doesn't take shit from any other civ - if Civilization was invented today, you would be converting your real money into virtual gold during those economic crunch times in a war campaign.
Back in the day, it took a genius to make a financially successful game. Nowadays, it just takes an in-app purchasing API. I hope people stop paying the people who game human emotions for personal profit and start paying the geniuses who make great games.
There's no information in this post, the website doesn't refer to itself as an 'online game console', the website doesn't have much info either.
It just looks like a regular flash game website like newgrounds, miniclip, kongregate, except that it's using webgl instead of flash. What exactly makes it an 'online game console'? Why is this notable?
While the site loaded up fine on iOS, and it even seemed like the UI was nicely formatted; not one of the games I tried would play.
Some complained about lack of WebGL, some just said "couldn't open that link" when I pushed play.
I was confused because it seemed like the error was saying that the game I picked needs something iOS doesn't have and not that every game on the site wouldn't run.
Right. What I was getting at is that your menu system worked fine and made no suggestion that none of the games would work for me without me clicking into each game and pushing play to see the error.
How am I supposed to know all your games run on the same engine?
Unique visual style. Many very sharp edges on front page.
Try to post comment. "you need an email". input email. "post failed, you've not validated you're email"
Validation email is from turbulenz. Slightly confusing.
I like the feed by each game
When Ben replied to a comment of mine I got 4 notifications, but as far as I could determine it was only one reply.
There is no requirement to use the Turbulenz Engine to publish a game on ga.me. You can use whatever engine you want.
(Obviously you would need to use the relevant API hooks if you wanted to use any of the ga.me web services, for example, IAP, userdata, multiplayer, play information. But this is all modular.)
You can't close all the annoying popup messages in the top left corner (like the finish making account). That's really annoying, especially while trying to play a game. The ones I could close didn't seem to expire on their own.
Looks like it is built on Turbulenz (https://turbulenz.com/), an html5 game engine that went open source last year. It is a quality engine at this stage and a well done site.
Is there a reason this doesn't work for me in Chromium and suggests I download Chrome? Is there a relevant difference between the two, or is it just not set up to recognize and accept Chromium?
Same for me (Firefox 27.1, Ubuntu 12.04). The game loads, then nothing at all happen. Doesn't react to clicks, keyboard, anything. Some game complains when out of focus, I click on the canvas, then nothing.
Clicking through the tiny About link I found at the bottom of the page, this appears to be a platform for monetizing web-based games, at least some of which are WebGL-based (which I found out after clicking through one of them and being told, once again, that Chromium isn't interested).
So... new Newgrounds. Except with microtransactions. Unless I missed something?