Expand game feature


Expanding a game’s icon


As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to tell your players what the game is about just from a little icon and name on the games page, for example Booga Booga, no one knew what this game was and lost a lot of attention because of the game’s icon at first until people saw it grow and read what the game was about, and it turned out the game was amazing. And this would show the users the little more information they need to see if the game is worth it and see what it is about.

Currently when you hover over a game’s icon you don’t really see a lot of information as shown in the image below


My idea is having a “Expand” Button, which would make it easier for the user to look more about the game at a faster rate and improve the user experience. This could include having;

  • A scrolling screen of the description
  • The last time the game was updated

The current issue for the game page, it doesn’t show much information and people often can get confused what the game is really about from the thumbnail, this will make users dislike the users game because they didn’t read the description and just show the thumbnail, which means the game will be put down more (If the user expected different) This will save the users much time to go back and from the game to see the description and seeing what the game is really about.

All of these features would improve the experience showing the user more information on a smaller screen which will save the user time, for example they might have bad internet and the other page might take a while to load, they can just use the Quick play access!

This feature could work by having a expand button / icon on the games icon / Underneath and the icon would expand within a animated style on the x axis or it could work by hovering over the icon, but I feel this would annoy the users when they put their mouse over a game to go to the next game, so this isn’t really the best way of doing this.

10 Likes

I disagree.
If they want to find out more information about a game, they should click on it.

I don’t see how showing the description with the icon would help, because the outcome will still be the same.
Even if there was a way to view the description directly through the game’s page, I can still completely ignore it and press the Play button.

A description won’t help with your game’s performance, your gameplay will.
If players are having trouble understanding your game, you can fix that by including a tutorial; don’t expect everyone to read the description.

10 Likes

Maybe the thumbnail is not accurate enough then? If you’re choosing a thumbnail to attract players instead of showing what you’re game is about then you’re misleading players. If they dislike your game because they wanted to play the sort of game that the thumbnail represented instead then that sounds entirely reasonable.

The people who don’t read the description don’t want to read at all; they just want to play. Adding something for them to read on the Games page doesn’t help them because they aren’t going to read it.


If we want to appeal to users who don’t want to read, then why don’t we show more pictures? Let’s look at what Steam does; they’re great at this!

Images and Gfys

https://gfycat.com/BriefBowedCalf

7 Likes

The page for the game is for people interested in the game, and the page for all the top games is for people interested in looking for games.

Having the thumbnail, player count, and rating ratio seems perfect to me.

The thumbnail and name of the game should attract players and give a general idea of the game setting, they can click to go further.

I hover over games when trying to decide which to click, I wouldn’t want a long menu to scroll down when I do that.

Generally speaking, thumbnails are used cause people to notice your game. They are meant to be very simple because much like what @B_rcode said, people should click on your game for information. The sole purpose of a description is so you can say that the game is about. If someone doesn’t want to spend the extra minute or so reading it, then that’s on that person. Thus, I disagree as I feel like Roblox doesn’t need such a feature.

This actually sounds like a really useful idea. While it is easy to blame the user, in the end it means modern users – who expect convenience – will just not play as many new games.

As mentioned, some concern should be taken for how much info is provided. Perhaps 1-2 tweet’s worth of data might be a fair amount.

This might also have important implications for mobile/console.

4 Likes