Missed Gems

Discussion in 'Site Feedback and News' started by writingsama, Apr 2, 2012.

  1. writingsama

    writingsama Well-Known Member

    Dec 4, 2008
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    The smaller devs seem to be having a lot of trouble even with really great games lately.

    I think we should consider a 'missed gems' section (on the front page), or something, that highlights lower-budget but worthwhile games. It may not even need to have full reviews, just play for an hour and put it up with a short discussion.
     
  2. retr0spective

    retr0spective Well-Known Member

    May 24, 2011
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    Riverside, CA
    In the meantime, perhaps we can open up the subject for discussion here. I would certainly like to hear about some of the missed gems you and others know of.
     
  3. Echoseven

    Echoseven Moderator
    Staff Member Patreon Silver Patreon Gold Patreon Bronze

    Jul 19, 2011
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    The red Skittle
    The Site Feedback sub-forum is not exactly the most appropriate place for such discussion. There is any number of threads about hidden gems in the General forum and even an awesome thread about free must-haves in the Freebies forum.
     
  4. Eli

    Eli ᕕ┌◕ᗜ◕┐ᕗ
    Staff Member Patreon Silver Patreon Gold

    I don't think you understand the time requirement this demands. We post about as many games as we have the writer bandwidth to post about. This is inevitably going to amount to "missed" games, but I feel we do a pretty good job of writing about everything that seems remotely interesting and/or gets a any sort of traction in the forums.

    When the app launches, the "hot games" functionality will provide a very clear window into this. At the end of the day, the front page is curated content that we think our readers (and forum community) will be interested in. If a game can't get enough interest in the forums to appear on our radar, chances are it isn't very interesting anyway. This isn't always the case, of course.

    A big problem a lot of the smaller developers seem to be having is coming up with new game ideas and other innovative concepts that haven't been seen before. At this stage in the game, you need something more than some sort of physics-centric three star puzzler for anyone to really get excited. Most (all?) of the games we intentionally pass up are ignored because it's just not that interesting to post the countless "It's just like __________ except for __________!" that we see on a near-daily basis.

    As far a discussion for these games, that's what these two forums are for-

    http://forums.toucharcade.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2
    http://forums.toucharcade.com/forumdisplay.php?f=19
     
  5. retr0spective

    retr0spective Well-Known Member

    May 24, 2011
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    17
    18
    Riverside, CA
    Greetings,

    My apologies and thank you for the freebie thread. I have the TA Forum plugged into the Pulse News Reader app so I jumped right into to the discussion without checking to see what forum it was in.

    Eli, just to offer some feedback from a disinterested reader's perspective, I keep several iphone gaming websites syndicated within the Pulse App which allows me to read news, reviews, and new releases concurrently as they are published. I very quickly chose to put the TA site at the very top of the list because the material is not only among the most current, but also the most consistently reliable in terms of rating, recommendation, and reader engagement. I don't feel that the coverage is lacking in this respect although curiosity would have me wonder about some of the lesser known titles and possibly access some of them without having to wade through thousands of App listing. In my experience, however, I often find that in most cases if a game has not been featured on the main site it is probably not worth the investment of time and/or money. I appreciate the service that you and your team provide for gamers like myself through your excellent site. Thank you!
     
  6. Eli

    Eli ᕕ┌◕ᗜ◕┐ᕗ
    Staff Member Patreon Silver Patreon Gold

    Yeah, there are very, very few situations I can think of where great games have appeared on our radar on any level that didn't eventually wind up getting some coverage either via some sort of news post, a roundup, or podcast discussion. Really the only way that ever happens if we find something we think is cool, then as part of the due diligence process we find things that might be shady. For instance, if a game looks cool, but it's a clone or has something else weird going on with it or the developer behind it that leaves us with a questionable/bad taste in our proverbial mouths.

    In that kind of situation, I think most people would agree that they don't want to see obvious clones and other weird things popping up on TouchArcade.

    But, as mentioned, we do skip a lot of highly derivative titles these days just because I really don't believe there are that many people out there who are really that interested in "witty" spins on Angry Birds and other very formulaic game types that have been done to death on the App Store. Things like three star-earning physics puzzlers, match threes, etc. I wouldn't really describe any of those as "hidden gems" though.

    Also, you guys can always send in tips to us via [email protected], you don't have to be a game's developer to email us and be like "Hey I just stumbled across this, it's really cool, you should check it out."
     

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