We've made a lot of improvements to The Game Crafter this year, and I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on everything we've done. We've moved so fast, that some of you may have missed some of the changes along the way.
Shopping
- A much more streamlined checkout process.
- Guest checkouts.
- Login via Facebook.
- Better organized game pages to help you make a more informed decision.
- Better searching and sorting features for both games and game pieces.
- Better receipt management.
- Insight into your position in our production process.
- Game reviews.
- The "What's Hot" list so you can see what other shoppers are buying.
- Related games, so you can see what other games you might like to buy.
- Game taxonomy, so you can get a sense of whether a game is right for you.
- Crafter points allow you to earn discounts on future purchases.
- Staff picks, so you can see what games we think are good.
- More shipping options.
- Better game publishing policies to ensure fewer unfinished games make it into the shop.
- Decreased prices on game parts, and bulk pricing on game parts.
- The ability to add or remove shipping insurance.
Selling
- Featured placement.
- Better insights into who you're selling to.
- Better reporting.
- Sales notifications.
- Payout via shop credit in addition to PayPal.
- Promotion tools for your web site.
- Promotion via our Facebook page.
- Crafter points allow you to promote your games.
- Integration of social media tools directly on game pages.
- Better looking game pages to help you sell more games.
- Profit sharing increased from 50% to 70%.
Game Design, Publishing, and Production
- Playing card design wizard.
- A streamlined game publishing interface.
- Bulk image uploading.
- Folder imports to ease deck creation.
- Randomized decks for collectable and trading card games.
- Much greater accuracy on cutting.
- Hex and square cards.
- Improved TGC Game box, plus a box top sticker to decorate it.
- Custom printed tuck boxes.
- Custom printed medium game boxes.
- Quad-fold game boards.
- Many new game parts.
- Spinner Mats.
- Bulk discounts on both parts and games.
- The ability to replace images in all games and components with a single upload.
- Drag and drop file management.
- YouTube video embedding directly in game pages.
- Board Game Geek integration in game pages.
- Set a quantity for all printable components.
- Use custom backs on every card in a deck if you want to, in addition to deck-wide backs.
- The ability to make your game completely private, viewable, buyable, and published live to the shop.
- Buy your own games without packaging if you want to reduce cost of prototypes.
Community
- Our blog aimed at keeping you better informed.
- Cross promotion of our blog's content to RSS, email, Twitter, and Facebook so you can stay informed wherever is most convenient to you.
- A large number of new video tutorials.
- Integrated website chat.
- The Hall of Fame.
- Game design contests.
- Crafter points for doing good deeds in the community.
- Sponsored game designer tables at conventions and trade shows.
- Showcased game designers from TGC community at our GenCon booth!
- Game designer profile interviews.
- An API so developers can create tools the community can use.
Phew, that's a big list! Don't worry, we're not done yet. Our goal is to give you a complete spectrum of tools so that you can build the games you want to play, and so you can find games you want to buy. See you in 2012!
