Hi fellow Hunters,
I think I have been looking forward to this launch since forever.
Being interested in games in 2017 is both a blessing and a curse. There’s a lot to choose from, but staying informed requires a lot of you. I scroll the upcoming games section on Steam. I follow developers on social media. I visit campaign sites for all the games. I consume heaps of game journalism and yet I feel like there’s so many things that pass me by.
So many missed oppertunities to get excited. To feel that joy of anticipation we experienced as kids.
Furthermore as a game developer, I wish it was easier for me to stay connected with my audience before launch. To build hype and interest for what I’m making.
I wanted something that fixed all of these issues and then some.
Something that would allow me to feel like I’m on top of new and upcoming game releases.
Not just on steam but across a wide range of platforms.
Something that would let me get excited about new games, maybe even lead me to try new and different things.
Something that would make it easier for game developers to pool interest for their games.
So after more than a year's work we're introducing Arcade Trail. For a lack of a better phrase, it's a crowdsourced game discovery and curation platform. It aims to make game discovery easy and fun, allowing both players and game creators to celebrate past, present and future games.
It helps you to get excited about new titles, and gives you an overview of what’s on the horizon, or what you’ve missed lately.
It helps you collect and curate your own game collection and it allows everyone to contribute media, meta-data and conversation, collectively creating the largest crowdsourced database of video game content. It’s kind of like if Wikipedia and Product Hunt had a baby and that baby turned out to be a gamer.
I wrote about the launch here ✏️ https://medium.com/@flarup/launc... and you can obviously sign up and give it a try over at 🕹 http://arcadetrail.com
Let me know if you have any questions or comments. We'd love to hear it. ❤️
@flarup I tried it out, told my friends about it, they added their game, nothing happened. I can see the game page if I go to the direct link, but can't find the game in any other way... Is something broken? Or am I not getting how this works?
@horea4 does the game have a release timeframe? The front page is organized into today, tomorrow, rest of the month and the subsequent months followed by vaguer 'later this year' and 'unannounced' sections at the bottom.
Search is currently indexing every hour so may take a little while for it to become searchable, but you should still see it added in the appropriate release section and in the profiles of those who added it / owns it.
Can you link the game? Then I'll take a look 😊
@flarup The game is set to release in 2018, for which there is a section I see, but it only has 2 games. The game is here https://arcadetrail.com/games/se... but I'm sure there should be more games planned for release in 2018.
@horea4 That's interesting! Let me look into it. Our backend is taking a beating because of all of the traffic, so it could be related to that. It should be in that section (and yes, there should also be more games in that section). Game looks great!
@cm0nt0y4 Mobile platforms are supported, it's just that very few people have submitted those games yet. If you have any interesting titles on your mind, then please do submit them. (you can choose platform when you submit the game. Just start writing the name of the platform and It'll autosuggest)
Kind of like "Product Hunt for games" and looks quite similar to Gamamia which eventually shut down (cc @mdeiters@lachlanjc).
Nice work, @flarup. I like how you show the graphics of the most upvoted game in each week.
@rrhoover@mdeiters@lachlanjc Hah, yes! With a few notable differences though. I remember tweeting you back before Product Hunt introduced the games section and we talked about what was missing in that space. Arcade Trail started sometime back then. As much as I love PH, that missing space hasn't (for me) been filled by the introduction of PH for Games. (lots of reasons why)
But the two biggest differences I would highlight is:
1. Arcade Trail is as much about the future as it is about the launch day. It's based around a timeline design because we want people to get invested in games long before they launch. Highlighting that anticipation and pooling their interest around something that is in development. When you upvote future games you get notified when they launch. Similarly we have some ideas of also looking backwards in the timeline. For instance we currently track when games go on sale, and are able to show people that. (particularly if they've shown interest in that title before).
2. All of the content on Arcade Trail is editable by everyone. Submission of Games, Media, Meta-data - everything. The idea (hope) is that people will come together to pool their interest, hunt down articles and fresh-off-the-press screenshots and trailers. In that sense, it's more like Wikipedia.
I think there's a few other ideas in there that make it different from PH, but ultimately we're just trying to create something that we really want to exist. I wasn't aware of Gamamia, but seemed like they had a sole focus on Indie Games? I love that, but the point of Arcade Trail (among other things) is to eliminate FOMO when it comes to new games. Ideally we also want to move people from genre to genre, or from AAA to Indie So we're trying to stay broad.
The honest truth is that we're going into this with all ❤️'s, lots of ideas but no specific plan. There's no current revenue model (we have ideas, but nothing solid) so it's entirely possible that this too will fail. Right now, we just want to see if we can make it an interesting place you want to visit when you're looking for something games, past, present and future.
Very good idea, indie games discoverability seems to be just as plagued as mobile apps discoverability. With a lot of people getting into game development recently and with big publishers controlling a lot of the industry, it's really hard for small studios to get discovered/noticed/funded.
I have a friend who started a small indie studio about a year ago, they've had really great feedback on the game from users, but they have no chance of launching a good game in a sane amount of time if they don't get noticed. And like everything else right now, you either have a really strong social presence or you have a lot of money to spend on conferences.
So anyway, congrats on the platform, it's definitely needed as long as everyone has a fair chance at getting discovered.
@horea4 Absolutely – a more level playing field when it comes to releasing is one of the reasons we've designed the site the way we have. With this setup every game has an equal chance of getting exposure on launch day.
Since the Nintendo Switch launched I've been wondering if something like this exists. I've been finding it really difficult to discover upcoming games, and there's no obvious way for me to keep informed of updates.
I've recently been getting into Indie Games on Xbox One too, but let's face it, discovery on the Microsoft Store sucks 😬 Hopefully Arcade Trail can fill the gap! 🎮
@marsh931 We hope so. I'm also a happy Switch owner and I sat the other day and added a bunch of upcoming titles for the Switch that already has dates. As everyone my next big love on that platform is going to be https://arcadetrail.com/games/ma...
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