Whew. A lot has happened this year!
We’ve become the most visited site for playing indie games. That’s somewhat insane considering we only allow free games, which is really a small slice of the indie gaming pie. It’s amazing because these are generally games from beginner developers and hobbyists, small jam games from full-time devs, and generally just games created for the love of it!
We hit over 1 million unique users in a month. That number has since gone up quite a bit.
We launched Game Jolt Jams and opened it up to the community. Many amazing jams have been run through it.
We launched Fireside (what is this thing anyway?)
We ran a jam with the biggest YouTuber there is, producing almost 800 games, which makes it one of the biggest non-recurring game jams ever.
What Have You Done for Me?
Despite all of these accomplishments, you may have noticed that development of the main site has been a bit stagnant. The site hasn’t changed much in 5 years. It looks almost the same as it did when Game Jolt first launched. There haven’t been any new features on the site for almost a year. “Why has this happened!?” you plea.
Well, it’s pretty simple, actually. We’re working on a new Game Jolt. The next Game Jolt (maybe we’ll finally be able to get rid of that beta tag)! #gamejoltnext!
The current site is rooted in a handful of ideas I had about 10 years ago. But it’s not everything I had imagined. I never got around to building out all the features I envisioned. The existing site looks like it was designed 5 years ago…because it was. We’ve gotten pretty far with it, but it’s time to bring Game Jolt into the modern era of web development.
This year, I actually made a pretty detailed prototype of the new site using some new technologies that I had been messing around with. I liked it so much that I decided I wanted to move the whole site over to this new Game Jolt, but I knew it would take a lot of work to build it out into production-ready code. I would have to recode even the tiniest things from the current site from scratch.
I knew I wanted to work on the new Game Jolt, but I had a lot of feature requests and bug reports piling up. If I were to build these features into the current site, I would then have to duplicate the effort for the new site. This would double the development time. So, instead, I decided to freeze development of Game Jolt’s current feature set.
What’s the Big Idea?
The new Game Jolt is a response to all of the feature requests we’ve gotten, as well as all the ideas—old and new—that I haven’t had time to implement. Starting from scratch gives us a much better base from which to move quickly and efficiently with new development. Because of the way it’s implemented, the new codebase will also solve a lot of problems and annoyances that people have brought up over time (like chat loading slowly, commenting causing the page to refresh, etc.)
The real beginning of the new Game Jolt came with the creation of Game Jolt Jams. We had been running jams for over 4 years, and a long time ago I decided I wanted to eventually open up the system for everyone to use. I figured this would be a good time to do it, and at the same time I could build out a huge library of code to use in the new site. So that’s what I did! Game Jolt Jams produced a lot of the foundation that I would eventually use to build the new Game Jolt. It’s one of the reasons Jams took so long to build. Everything was done from scratch. Every decision had to be rethought. Nothing was fast or easy. But it was worth it.
So, a new Game Jolt is coming, and every last bit is completely rebuilt from scratch. What does this mean for you?
Change Can Suck!
I know that redesigns can be scary for regular users of a service. You’re used to the way things have been for the past few years, and it can be a shock to have the carpet pulled out from under you.
I want to let you know that I’m understanding of that and I’ll be doing everything I can to ensure a happy migration. Yes, the new Game Jolt will look different (and, we think, better), but it will still have all of the same features you’re used to. Things may shift around a little here and there but the first push won’t actually make too many modifications to the current site. The first priority is to rebuild it using a nicer framework, making it easier to implement more changes in the future. After that is when the real fun begins.
Staying Updated Doesn’t Suck!
I’ll be doing periodic posts to update you all with what I’m working on. I’m shooting for weekly posts, but it may end up being more often than that. My goal is to have the new site 100% complete in a couple of months. I’m working full-time on it now and I can’t wait to show off some of the new features in the coming weeks!
We’ll talk again soon. In the meantime, stay indie…
or else! (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
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