I've said before that I wish people could be rewarded for making games. My articles has several games that a beginner should create. Taking that as a start, it would be nice if every time an user makes one of the games in the list that user would get 100 points, plus a tag that shows the game was made and finished. There is 10 games on my list. So if someone finished all 10 games that user would get 1000 points, plus 500 bonus points, and a tag that said "Certified Game Developer" or [insert better title here]. Also, when users participate in contests, they get points for that as well and a tag showing they fully participated in the contest by submitting a finished game. It would be almost like SO in that if I looked at Servant of the Lord's profile, I would see the following tags: Marketplace Seller, Crossbones+, Pong, Worm, Breakout, Missile Command, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Tetris, Pac Man, Ikari Warriors, Super Mario, Certified Game Developer, and Ninja and Pirates Contest.

I agree, gamedev.net is really lacklustre on the actual game development side of things, I mean just look at tigsource (dev logs), it has so many projects going on at once that continuously get updated and some kickstarted! Very rarely on gdnet do I see actual game dev and I know the staff and regulars here want to make this site into a more game centric area, rather than just technical discussion about component based entity system for the nth time.

I would say have a look at tigsource and take some stuff away from it, like ease of creating a new project (It's just a thread), ability to change percentage complete and everyone always just posts with 'awesome!' or 'good progress.' to help motivate the dev. That preview you posted Michael looks promising, but it all depends on how people would see that and by see I mean would it be 'last updated equals being first on a list' or purely popular? Or something else?

I also hope instead of just a buy game button you will also have a beta test button or just download, to be used by the developer if they so wish. How would you handle multiple OSs?

I second that - share almost everything you wrote.

I like the simplicity of forums. Its a tried and proved model, everybody knows how a forum works - you don't need people to understand a new concept or model, thats why I suggested the one-thread-per-game. Since there is already a page being created for the project, great, but the forum thread is needed also to make it more live and accessible. The page could be a more formal display. On the thread people could post new screenshots, ask for suggestions, post pieces of code, get feedback, etc. And as Michael said, it is addressed already (every project created gets a thread of its own), so I'm happy with the proposed model. We have to wait and see/try it :).

And since there is a thread, it address another concern I had and you also mentioned, about the visibility of the project (last updated is the top? newest? etc). The last post on the forum would make the thread the topmost, so the most active projects would always stay on top (of the forum). For the project listing, I would suggest something similar, to promote active projects, and also a second listing for new projects (newly updated for the projects created on the last 30 days or something).

I think this would promote game development a lot, and in all platforms. Seems like a good thing coming up.

Guys, I really appreciate this feedback and I'm hoping I can keep a small group of participators when I finish enough to at least release it so we can really do something awesome. I know we stick to the more cerebral article side a lot these days but there is a ton of room to do really awesome things with projects.

What's funny about the idea of getting points for doing stuff.. I did have this idea a while back:

[attachment=16996:GDNet Challenges.pdf]

Very rarely on gdnet do I see actual game dev and I know the staff and regulars here want to make this site into a more game centric area, rather than just technical discussion about component based entity system for the nth time.

Agreed.. that's something we got away from for a bit. As far as CES discussion, I started posting all those articles with the idea that another area of improvement is that we need *depth* on topics rather than just scratching the surface. I'd rather have 30 articles on one small facet of game development and be known for that than 30 unrelated articles.

What's funny about the idea of getting points for doing stuff.. I did have this idea a while back:

I think this is going to take a while to get right.. I'm thinking it might be better to get *something* up with a basic set of features and keep iterating over it with feedback. What do you guys think?

Also, the idea of challenges originally was to have the community propose what is point-worthy.. kind of like a mini-competition of sorts where participation is rewarded by a community member who moderates the challenge.

Yeah, I favor a minimalist set of features and then let people use it and see where the crowd leads to...

I think this is going to take a while to get right.. I'm thinking it might be better to get *something* up with a basic set of features and keep iterating over it with feedback. What do you guys think?

If you implemented that as it is, I'd think you'd have more feedback than minutes in the day.

EDIT: For clarity, I mean positive feedback.

Alright then.. I'm going to target a minimum feature set and go from there.

Btw, this type of stuff does go on here in "Your Announcements"..

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/641816-new-indie-dev-blog-for-survive-an-open-world-zombie-survival-fps/