Racketboy

Every now and then I receive an invitation to review a gaming product or website in return for some goodies or some cash to pay the bills. Each time I do my best to point out the enjoyable aspects of the product as well as what needs work.

This time around I will be taking a look at Excessively Free Games, a site that is devoted to online Flash-based games. As many of my readers are aware, there are quite a few sites like this (I guess the first few made some money and others are trying to get in on the action). But don’t tune me out just yet. I intend to turn this review into a good business lesson for both the people at Excessively Free Games and anybody else that wants to start up one of these sites.

Anyway, When I first was invited to review the site, I was hoping to find something new and different. While I was pleased to see an interesting section for emulated NES games, I was disappointed that all the other content seemed pretty generic and uninviting.

Not only is most of the site filled with games that can be found on just about any other Flash games site, but everything just seems to be thrown up with hopes that visitors will just wander around and play everything instead of leading us to something worthwhile.

Instead of simply criticizing the site and blowing it off, I thought I would share some thoughts from my business experience that can be applied to this site or any others in order to turn it into a successful venture…

Don’t Try To Do It All. The Newsgrounds and a few others has already taken the place of the one-stop-shop for Flash games, and unless you have some tremendous resources, you aren’t going to beat them. Not only do these big sites have a MUCH better selection of games, they have developers submitting their freshest work on a constant basis in addition to a killer site design and interface.

Choose a Strong Niche. In order to set yourself apart, you need to focus on a single niche that a certain group of gamers is passionate about. Maybe that niche will be emulated NES and SNES games (although good luck staying under Nintendo’s radar with that one) or maybe just shootemup games like Alien Hominid or Ikaruga. If you specialize in one category or genre, you will be more likely to attract fans of that niche and not push them away with all the other clutter. Check out the article “The Long Tail” and the book that expands on the topic for more analysis of the topic of niches.

Stay Relavant. On a similar note, one thing I noticed about Excessively Free Games and many other Flash game sites is they have categories like “Retro” or Arcade”, but include games that aren’t retro or arcade. As somebody that enjoys retro arcade games, I don’t like to click on a category and find non-relevant content. Relevancy is something that is often overlooked, but is actually very important to users.

Create a Compelling Interface. To keep users coming back, you need to create an interface that is unique and/or simple. Don’t just throw everything up and hope for the best and make us click more than we have to. Just this past weekend a project known as Wiicade was recently announced. Wiicade intends to be a flash game site optimized for the Nintendo Wii’s Opera web browser. Because it may be the only Flash game site gears towards Wii users, it will probably get a lot of traffic (It’s already been featured on Digg and Joystiq) and repeat users. Bottom line is that you have to be different. Create a reason that gamers should choose you instead of the other guys. If you would like to learn more about these concepts, I suggest reading two other books: Purple Cow and Blue Ocean Strategy.

Use Various Delivery Methods. With technology that is now commonplace in the web community, it is easy to get visitors to return to your site and find new games. You could almost treat you game library like a blog — adding a new game every few days or once a week. Adding an RSS feed or email updates option would allow visitors to be notified when a new game is available. You could also allow comments to be added to games so you could get feedback to your users. This is all common knowledge in the Web 2.0/Blogging communities, but I haven’t seen any Flash game sites utilizing these features.

Create a Memorable Brand While there have been numerous books written on the topic of building brands, I’ll keep this point to a couple of ideas relevant to a small gaming site. First of all, don’t use a generic name. Try to develop a creative name and spend a little cash to hire a college-age, but talented graphic designer to develop a logo and theme. Also, don’t rely on trademark characters such as Mario, Link, or Sonic to represent your site and take up your header. Every amateur gaming site takes this approach. Again, try to be different. While this article at ProBlogger is geared towards blogs, many of the concepts can be applied to other kinds of sites.

Use Advertising Intelligently. Obviously, your site needs to make money. As fun as it is to have a gaming site, I realize that we all have bills to pay. However, if you don’t use your advertising tactfully, you will quickly give the impression that your site is cheap. Instead of slapping a bunch of Adsense ads on the page to surround each game, put just a couple in a subtle, yet effective spots (learn how to position them) and mix them in with some attractive affiliate links to your favorite gaming products or stores. You may also want to work out a deal with smaller gaming businesses to work out a small advertising deal. For more ideas on monetizing your site without depending on Adsense, check out this article at ProPlogger.

Overall, Excessively Free Games is good enough to burn through some extra time if you are bored, but so are a lot of other sites. Other nitpick include having to click though an extra page to open a popup window for the game and certain pages displaying wrong in Firefox (see example)

I do invite you to take a look at the site and let me know if there are some games that you especially liked and/or if you have additional ideas on how to make a more compelling Flash games site.

This post is sponsored by Excessively Free Games and ReviewMe.com