WHAT IS GAM PAG?

So. Despite the various topics, articles and information that is written on the site people still get confused about some aspects of game submission. Mostly it's the features presented, but sometimes, especially in the case of new-comers to the site, it's the actual procedure of submitting a game and how, exactly, it works.

That is what this article will cover. And hey, I figure I might as well write it since I'm currently manning the Submission Queue. Why not, eh? I mean, obviously three different topics just aren't enough, so one more couldn't possibly hurt!


NO FORUM POSTS?!
Unlike most other RM-based sites, we don't do the ol' forum topic shtick for game advertising. We're a little classier a site than that and believe that each and every game deserves its own special place on the site. Its own page. The downside of this is that there's a hell of a lot of games on the site and those who interact in the forums aren't having your game shoved in their faces at all times, which is a pity. However, the upside more than makes up for that fact.

Each game page has special features that developers can make use of in order to not only reach out to their audience, but interact with them in a more closed-off section. Game pages allow for various pages of content and most of those allow for comments from the peanut gallery.

With a game page you get access to:
- Comments from the public
- The ability to imbed twitter
- Pages automatically set-up for image showing, media additions, reviews, on-site downloads, blogging and the like.
- Information is easily set out and allows for devs to add a list of contributors, show if the game is episodic (and how many episodes are completed), genre tagging, dates, download amounts, subscriber amounts and various other smaller factoids.
- The ability to add different downloads to the pages and tag them as tester only or public.
- Newest additions have some time spent on the front page and in select areas of the Community page.
- Buzz feature which calculates when your game is receiving a lot of attention and bumps it up on the front page.
- CSS to customise your page.

There are other features but we'll go through those when we go through the process of actually submitting a game. Needless to say, there is a lot more to gain from having a game page than a forum topic, if only because there's a lot more versatility and information given.


SIGN ME UP! WAIT, HOW DO IS SIGN UP?!
It's easy to get your page started. All you need are a few small details:
- A game with at least some content
- An account
- The ability to follow directions

First you want to click a particular button on the page. Don't worry, it's present in every area of the site. You'll notice that there is a black bar at the top of the page, no matter where you go. It has a few options there, but for this you'll need to just use two - the first and most relevant at the moment is Submit Game. You can find this option by hovering over the Submissions title in the bar.



Clicking that will take you to a new area of the site. This is where you fill in details about your game. It's where the magic happens (well, insomuch as there is magic in making a game page. AHEM)



You are probably wondering why I'm showing the above snippet. This is because it's something people sometimes miss, especially the links that are there for people to actually click on and read if they don't know what they're doing... and according to my Tales of a Queue Keeper topic, quite a few do not know what they're doing. (If you want to check out the links, both are part of the three linked in the above section.)

"Images? Accepted? What does this mean?!" you may be asking. Don't worry, we'll get to that shortly. Let's take a close look at the rest of the form, first.



The next part is pretty easy once you know what each part means. Of course, as with most sites, a red asterisk means that those fields are required information, so you can skip non-asterisked areas, but I'll be going over each step for the sake of making this article actually have new information. Yey.

Name is pretty self-explanatory. This is the name of your game. You'll want to spell it correctly - there's been a few instances of the names being spelt wrong, which is fairly embarrassing. Thankfully, you can edit this information at any time - something we'll get in to a bit later.

Short Description is also quite self-explanatory. It's a small blurb about your game and will show up in various places like on the Full Game list or your Manage Games option.

Friendly URL is something that most people don't understand and often skip, mainly because it's optional and they don't understand it. Basically, it allows you to create a custom URL for your game as well as the default, basically giving you a secondary link for your page. Instead of a link leading back to /rpgmaker.net/games/number of game/ you can have a customised URL that will lead back to your gamepage but read something like, for example, http://rpgmaker.net/g/seerdell (for my game, Seer Dell). As you can see, this allows for offsite linking to be a bit more personal to your game, and after you submit your game page a small line will appear below this field with the link to your custom URL. Like so:


The next part is the one that falls most to the laziness or did-not-read-ism-ness of game submitters. Unfortunately, it's also a key aspect of getting your game accepted to the site, so pay attention.



It's really quite self-explanatory. This is where you add the description of your game. It is required that you add at least 2 paragraphs of writing - one of those on plot, if plot your game has - for a total of 500 characters/letters minimum.

Things that are not acceptable:
- holding down space or a letter and just using that to fill in the 500 letters required.
- a list of features with one sentence about the plot of your 10 hour epic RPG
- badly written descriptions (we have a thread to help with that.)

You can find more information about what is and isn't acceptable in these two links.

Once you have finished that, you've a bunch of smaller bits and bobs to fill in - some optional, some not.



Firstly is if you have a commercial game you want to place on the site. This allows you to tag the game as commercial. That said, you do need to read the terms and conditions so you know your rights when it comes to us hosting, and any download you host on the game page must be free for people to play. 100% free, that is, none of this 'pay to get a password to unlock the file' or 'do these surveys to reach the download' bullshit. No hoops, just a download for playsies.

If you are not making a commercial game, feel free to skip this and jump to the next part which is...



This is useful for when you want to have a game not shown to the public. You can choose to just hide your profile. Granted, it still needs to go through the queue in order to be added to the site completely - ticking this off once you've finished setting up your page won't do jack if it hasn't been accepted - but it will allow you to keep your game hidden from the public eye until you choose to show it off.



This area allows for more specific information to be shown about the game.

Engine is required and will show up on your game page as a link to the engine page. There's a long list of different engines in the drop-down list, but if yours isn't there you can PM kentona and ask politely to have it added. In the meantime you can use the Custom or Other choices instead.

Status is the current status of your game. Is it Complete? In Progress? On Hiatus or Cancelled? Pick one of those choices and it will show up on the game page in either green (Completed) or red (cancelled/hiatus) text. In Progress won't show up, indicating that the game is ongoing.

Is Episodic? is pretty self explanatory. Is your game part of a series of games? Then tick the box. If it isn't, then feel free to leave it alone and ignore the next two fields.

Episodes Completed allows you to input a number for how many episodes of the series are finished.

Total Number of Total Episodes is pretty simple. How many episodes are in the series?

When both Episodes Completed and Total Number of Episodes are filled in, it looks like this on your game page:




Tags are important and a required part of the page, despite missing that pesky red asterisk. You must have at least one genre tag and only a few (five or less) total tags - this includes the genre tags.

To add a tag, just tick the buttons that best suit your game description. Genre tags will show up as a link on your game page, allowing fast searching of similar game types for players.



If your game is completed OR you have a target date for completing your game, you can input that in this spot. Fairly self explanatory.

If you want to see how your page looks to the public, press Preview. This will open a new tab instance to show you the page. It'll look quite bare since you've not yet added images or messed with CSS (a thing you can do shortly), but it gives you a good idea of what your page currently looks like and how the information you input is shown on the page.

When you are happy with what you have done, you can click submit. If there are any issues, red text will appear telling you basically what you need to fix. The next step, once your game has been submitted, is to add images, because without those your page will not go through to the submission queue. Remember what it said at the top of the page? 3 in-game images required? Yes, that's the next step!



When you click Submit you will be automatically sent to this page. It is a little different to the last page in a few ways. To start off with, it has links in the top right, a different header and some extra bits and bobs you can do down the page, but it is essentially the same.

As you can see, there is a link in the top left called Manage Games.




You can access this page by hovering over your account name on the black bar and clicking that link. It will take you to a page filled with a list of your games, and allow you to edit various information there, as well as giving you a run-down on where your games stand in relation to the site (Pending, Accepted or Denied). You can also see the state of the game on the detail Management page itself, to the right of the screen, just below the three icons.

Those icons each provide a specific function, and more are added once your game gets accepted to the site.

Details will take you back to this page, allowing you to change the different details of the game.

Public Profile will take you to the game page as it will appear to viewers once it is accepted.

Images will take you to the page that allows you to add images to your game page. We'll cover that momentarily.



The change that has been added to the details page is right at the very bottom. The first is a drop-down choice list. You can choose to add custom CSS to your page or pick from some pre-made CSS choices, however, the choice there (Media Pages) is current experimental and might not fit your page very well, so check both out before you make a choice. broken so please don't use it. If you do, I'll have to deny your game and ask that you change it to normal.

There are some rules to CSS customisation - basically don't mess with the core components of the site (that is, the basic functions must still be there for all to see - the different headings, the star ratings and such.)

The custom header will be put in the place of the default header at the top of your public page. You need to put in a viable image link in the field in order for it to work. I recommend using your Locker and uploading the image there, then pasting the link in this slot if you want more than a small snap shot and text.

Below that is a Twitter box embedder, which allows you to add a twitter feed onto your game page. Useful for those who use twitter.

Hitting Update will save your changes.

So, now you need to add images to your page in order for it to even be added to the queue. Click on the Images icon in the top-right and you'll be redirected to a page where you can add and edit images.



Hitting Add Image will bring up a new page with a Browse button and Submit button. Use the browse button to find the image file you want to upload. Image files should be png, bmp, gif or jpg files.

The site will then upload the image and host it in connection with the page. Once added you will be redirected to the image page, but this time it will look a little different.



You see a small image example, a description (if you add one), the date the image was added, the date the image was updated, whether the image is being shown, whether it is a home page image or feedback image and some actions you can take with the image.

Delete is self explanatory. Edit will take you to another page where you can edit the image in a few ways.



On that page you can add a description to the image which will show up on the image's page, underneath it (this is a good way to give credit for artwork, fanart, logos and the like).

You can also change the image by uploading another in its place (note that if you use the same name for one image as you did for another, it will be replaced, so try to give different names to each image).

Use as main image will allow that image to be shown on other pages like the Full Game List, as reference to your game, and will have it show up in the header if no header image was added on the Details page.

Use as a homepage image lets you pick certain images to be shown on your gamepage. You can only have four shown there, so make sure to pick good ones!

Actively seeking feedback will hide this image and show it in the Development portal so that feedback can be given for it.

Hitting Submit will take you back to the previous page.

Once three images are added to your profile and the relevant details have been added in the Details page, your game will be sent to the Submission Queue. If accepted you will have more options for game page additions unlocked!



The first three are the basic choices you have access to when you first create your game profile. The others, though, open new doors~

Blog lets you create blog updates. It's pretty simple to figure out but hey, we've come this far. Might was well go the whole hog! Clicking it will take you to a page where you can see details about your blogs, add new blogs, edit existing ones or delete ones. Simple enough. When you click on either Edit or Create new Blog you will be taken to the below page.



It's really pretty standard for the most part. Add a title for your blog, and the body of it. Then choose a category. Ah, that's the tricky part~

Blogs will fall into one of five categories: Announcement, Game Design, Misc, Progress Report or Request. They're pretty self-explanatory, but just for the sake of completion.
Announcement - Informs subscribers and viewers about something like a new download or a bug fix or completion.
Game Design - Talk about the game, it's various design aspects and the like.
Misc - A catch-all category for blogs that don't fit in the others.
Progress Report - Inform your audience about what progress you've made and how the game is coming along.
Request - Need help? Ask for it. Requests have the added bonus of automatically showing up in the Help Me area of the forums.

Mark as draft allows you to write a bit, save it as a draft and come back later to finish it off (something I should really be doing with this article but who has time for that?! Hahahahahaaaa... orz ) This won't be seen by the public.

Preview allows you to see what it would look like on the game page and Submit will save it to the game page for the public to see and respond to.



Next up in the new options are Pages. Clicking on that icon will take you to the Page area. Pages allow you to create custom pages on the game profile which you can use for various information like Character Bios, World History, Walkthroughs, Referrals and the like.

When you reach that area you'll be presented with some information - Page name, date of creation, Main placement (yes/no), Devs only (yes/no) and actions (edit/delete/add new).

Adding a new page or editing an existing one will take you to this page:



Again, you can choose the name of the page. Self explanatory.

Primary allows you to choose whether the page is shown on the game page navigation menu or not. You can make hidden game pages that cannot be seen by any who do not have the link, if you so desire, allowing for hidden bonus content.

The body is, again, self explanatory.

Sort order lets you choose where in the list of link on the gamepage you want this page to be set. Adding a number will change where it is placed.

You can also choose whether you want to allow people to be able to post comments on that page or not.

Lastly, you can make a page that only fellow developers or testers can see, useful for adding test notes.

As always, hitting preview will let you see the page in action and hitting submit will save the page details.



Next up - Downloads. Pretty simple, actually. Add a download to the game page. Up to 400MBs only in size. You can add more than one download and you can edit certain bits of information for each download.



Name - A name by any other rose would... I got that wrong, didn't I? Oh well. Giving it a name beyond Download is a good idea, so that you at least know which download it is.

You can either pick a file to upload onto the site, or if you already have it hosted somewhere, link to that. This will allow a button to be placed on your game page that people can click and get access to your game with.

You can also mark downloads as only for testers to see, giving them access to alpha or beta builds.

And the description is useful for notes.

Another note about downloads is that you can link your Dropbox account to the site and add a download through that just by clicking the relevant link on the Download information page. There you can also change which is the main download if you have more than one.



Media is an odd little beast as others can add media to your game page, but so can you. When other add it, it has to go through the submission queue, however if you add media to your own game page it bypasses the queue.

It is a lot like a blog in set-up, really.



Pretty simple. Add a title for your media, add the body and pick a category. Easy.

This area is primarily for video, images (fanart and promo art and the like) and music. I can be used for other fan appreciation stuff, though, but that's mainly what it's deemed useful for and the categories support that.

Concept Art, Fan Art, General Art and Promo Art are pretty self explanatory.
General Audio, General Music and Soundtrack are also pretty easily identified.
General Video, Let's Play, Let's Try and Trailer are, once again, fairly simple to guess uses for.
Miscellaneous is the catch-all for the things that don't fit quite well.



Second last is the User area. This lets you add people to your page who may be a part of your game dev team or just people who have helped you out in various ways.



Username is the name of the account tied to that person on this site. Make sure you put the correct name in or you'll get a message saying that you couldn't add that person.

Posistion lets you assign a default position for them, and depending on that position they can have some power over the game page and affects how much Makerscore they get from the game. Lead and Developer can both mess with the game page, with Lead getting the biggest cut and having the most power over the page.
Tester allows you access to anything marked for testers to see and they can see the page when it is hidden (if it has been accepted to the site).
Other allows you to add a custom title to the person in question. It adds a touch of personalisation.

You can see the users added to the game page on the Detail section of the public profile of the game page, in a list with their custom and default positions listed.




The last icon is the Share Game section and it basically just gives you links for embedding and sharing your game around.




And those are the basics of creating a game page and what the various options you have will do. If you want any more information or have questions, ask in the comment section below and I'll see about adding them to this article.

Hopefully it was educational and comes in useful in the future.