What Do You Think Of The New M.I.High?

MyAdventureGame - What do you think of our new Alpha site? (Game Player, #3)

• Greetings Researchers & Readers: _About These Questions_ It has been far too long since we've posted on this wonderful service! We've got a new series of questions related to the newest version (4.0) of our web site, and really hope you guys can help us out. Hopefully these questions/tasks will be fun! Oh, and no fair answering identical questions ? feel free to answer different, but not the same! _About The MyAdventureGame.com Project _ MyAdventureGame.com is a website dedicated to playing, creating, and sharing Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style games. The people behind MyAdventureGame.com (us) created the site as a hobby and to have a fun learning experience. Because of this, we have no real budget or anything like that, which is directly reflected in the questions' $-to-time ratios. But, we hope to make up it for fun. The current live website has some more information if you're interested. _About The New Version _ Being never satisfied, we've decided to complete redo the entire website - from giving it a slightly cleaner interface to using an industrial strength 3-tier ASP.NET web application (in our humble opinion). Currently, we're in the Alpha stages, which we define as having enough functionality to determine if the design/interface will work. Expect broken links and errors, but don't worry about reporting them unless we specifically request in the Question. _And Finally, The Questions_ For this question, we'd like you to tell us what you think of the new Game-Playing web page. To do this, you'll need to play a few games. Ugh, such a challenge, we know. You don't have to beat the games (although, it may be personally rewarding, giving you a nice warm feeling of accomplishment if you do). Some games utilize inventory items -- it is important that you check out a game with this. It's also important that you see how it works on the current site too. We've provided links to games that utilize inventory items. How does the game play experience differ from the current game player to the new? Do you find the separate game window (styled much differently) helpful? What do you think of the way Inventory is handled in the Current vs. New? What do you think of putting the "Back Button" in the drop down menu? Do you use the Back function often? Did you encounter any ugly asp.net server errors (this portion should be mostly error free)? ? so we just asked a whole bunch of questions, but we're just trying to explain what we're thinking. You don't have to explicitly answer each question, but try to have your response answer what we're generally asking. _Links_ Current Site: http://www.MyAdventureGame.com Alpha Site: http://Mag.Papadimoulis.com Wal-Mart Game (Current): http://www.myadventuregame.com/preview.asp?G=253Wal-Mart Game (Alpha): http://mag.papadimoulis.com/games/game.aspx?253 Finals Week (Current): http://www.myadventuregame.com/preview.asp?G=8 Finals Week (Alpha): http://mag.papadimoulis.com/games/game.aspx?8 The Black Hand (Current): http://www.myadventuregame.com/preview.asp?g=327 The Black Hand (Alpha): http://mag.papadimoulis.com/games/game.aspx?327 Note: Black hand written by GA's own easterangel-ga! (Question #105275) _Closing_ Please accept our apologies for the novella of a question. But, understand that we want to be as concise as possible, and explain exactly what we're looking for, and try to make sense of why we're asking such atypical questions. Also, we really appreciate your help. Everyone on this site has been very helpful in the past, so thanks in advance! Sincerely, The MyAdventureGame.com Team

• Answer:

  Hi myadventuregame-ga, Thanks for the question. As I said in the other question I answered, first let me just say that I had a really enjoyable time answering these questions. I will be coming back to your site again. I played all three of the games you linked (Wal*Mart Game, Finals Week, and the Black Hand). There are features in the current game player that I preferred to the Alpha version and vice versa. SEPARATE GAME WINDOW: I like the idea of it, but in order for this to be successful, the back button needs to be improved. As it presently stands, playing was easier in the current versions. See my comments below in the "back button" section. INVENTORY: Current version, I really wasn't enthralled with this. Having to click on "My inventory" every time I wanted to use or see an item was a bit annoying. I much preferred the way you have it set up in the Alpha version where it's always visible. However, I think there are a couple of things you could do to improve this. For starters, right now, once a player acquires enough items, the window lengthens and one has to arrow or mouse over to see all of the inventory. If you could manage it, I think it would be easier on players to display the items in rows so that they're more visible. Like vorfeed-ga, I also found it superfluous to have to pick the item and then click again on the link to get me to the next page. BACK BUTTON FEATURE: I'm not a gamer really and I tend to make lots of judgment errors in these things, so I used this a lot. While I think the addition of a "Back Button" in your Alpha versions was a good move, for functionality, the Current version has it beat. Current version: clicking the back button took me fewer moves and was more intuitive. Alpha version: It took me a minute or two to realize where the back button was hidden. So you may want to make that more visible. I would move it (as vorfeed-ga suggested) to the other side of the screen. The other problem I had with it, was that it took me two clicks every time I needed to go back. No server errors or dead links that I found. STRATEGY: Went to the links you provided and played around with several of the games. Thanks again. If you need additional information or if my comments weren't clear, please ask for clarification and I'll do my best to assist you. Regards, luciaphile-ga