What's the best way to present games on a website?

As a player what I want from a game description is to see myself playing the game and enjoying it. Similarly I'd think a a publisher would want to see buyers buying the game, and they would see that if they can see what would attract players.

A game description that works for me is one that gives me a sense of how a particular moment of particularly fun play is. And from a graphic standpoint, what I most want to see is to see a picture of the game in progress.

I suppose something like "push-your-luck" might work in a quick desccription to a publisher, but it is a bit insular and doesn't quite get the gamer me into the game's mindset. Engage me.

As is, none of the games catch my interest other than a brief admiration for the artwork on the Pleasant Dreams game.

I've read a bunch about and worked on sellsheets for products and the one point they emphasize with those is that you want the potential buyer to be excited to repeat some buzzphrase that encapsulates your game. "I just saw this crazy card game, where you are a kid trying really hard to fall asleep but everything in your room is scaring the bejeezus out of you." Or such.

Rewriting it to sound less boring should be top of the list :)

The images on the LS page are obviously awkward being so wide. You're using wordpress so there's roughly 1 trillion slider and gallery plugins and it would be helpful to use one.

I think your overview should focus more on the experience. You're stating what players will DO, but that isn't "fun". Describe the 'feel' of the game and the emotional state you want the players to feel their in. Just a thought.

Not sure what your background is but I do a lot of work with Wordpress and if you need any advice or help with technical issues regarding your site feel free to ask here or in a private message. Good luck at FIG, I'm in the Boston suburb area but I'm not going to be able to attend this year, even though it sounds fun.

My opinion is that your games should be front and center, which means you need to have your front page be all about the games. A big picture of the game, that sellsheet you talked about, and then a link to more info.

If you haven't already, I would check out strikingly.com They're a new web design company, but they do awesome single page websites. I'm using them currently, and it's beautiful with next to no work to create. Make a different 1-pager for each game, a third for a home page, and you're done! Give it a look.

Just to see what one looks like at a beginning stage (I'm not done putting my site together yet), here's what strikingly can look like for a board game company. Again, in the future, I would link the pictures of games to a unique 1-page for each game. pair-a-dicegames.com

Very similar. In fact I might go as far as to say that, without having seen how the website building works for squarespace, that they are essentially the same, and any major differences are in how the user customizes the content.

Later...:
So I went onto square space and checked it out, and it seems that site works pretty well. Awesome capabilities. The biggest difference is that strikingly is literally a single page you scroll around on, squarespace allows multiple pages you can transfer around on. My solution for strikingly would be to create several different "sites", and link them so that it works the same from the user end.

In the end I think it's a matter of preference, so it probably doesn't matter too much. I am a little biased and partial to strikingly because the CEO has an offer to meet him for coffee when you sign up, so I personally met him--pretty cool! But that shouldn't influence what sites you like. =P

Yeah, I set up the website literally last week, and the 'Pre-Order' thing will eventually take you to a Kickstarter campaign for the game, but our game is a probably a few months away from being ready for Kickstarter. It's an external link that can take you anywhere, though, so I'm planning on linking it to a product page (also via strikingly) for the game for now (and by the end of the weekend), that will have a newsletter sign up for the product.

Again, with these ultra simple site builders, squarespace, strikingly, wordpress, etc, it's more about how creatively you use them to get what you want than what they offer as features. You can make anything work, it just takes a bit of work-around. ;) Let me know when you have a new site up! I'd love to take a look and see what you've done.