Think about your typical Game Website. There are forums. Maybe some downloadable content. If you’re lucky, you can submit something of your own. But by in large, they target the new user, because they’re trying to make another sale.
If we were to give a one-word description of what we want to develop here at Klei, a top candidate would be community . Our goal with Eets is to not only make the game itself fun (see our Eets Level Philosophy), but also find ways where people could extend the fun of Eets outside of the game as well. We feel that the only way for an independant developer like us can do well in the long run is to build the trust of people like you, and find ways to allow you to enjoy a community in a game that doesn’t involve huge budgets and doesn’t require massive time commitments by our players.
Our old community design, in all its (un)glory.
Our first step toward our vision is to create “Eets Community“. When we launched, we provided your standard discussion forums plus a way to download new Eets levels to play with in Eets. However, just having those things there didn’t satisfy our desire to make an awesome community site. Generic Game Company X also has discussion forums and free, downloadable content. We want to do so much more.
Enter Web 2.0, and lots of late, late, (and I mean late!) nights.
It began with not only allowing players to submit their own Eets puzzles, but letting them rate and comment on them as well. That followed with using Flickr (for sharing miscellaneous Eets pictures) and YouTube for viewing replays of neat Eets puzzle solutions. Finally, in addition to revamping the uggggly forums (which stuck out like a sore thumb within our website), we also allowed registered Eets players to send Goodies to one another! With goodies, players can quickly and easily compliment each other on the things they’ve done, whether it’s helping someone solve a tricky Eets Puzzle, making an awesome puzzle, and so forth.
A recent review of a user submitted level.
However, at Klei we’re cursed as perfectionists, and we’re never satisfied. I spend a lot of time on the community, enjoying the different things you can do there, but at the same time I see all the things that we can do even better. We’re listening to the feedback and suggestions fans have given us, plus we’re still open for more ways to improve the site. Not only that, I feel that we’ve only scratched the surface in offering Web 2.0 functionality to our website; look for it to gradually get better, fun, and more interactive as time goes on.
So! Poke around, and tell us what you think! And while you’re at it, why don’t you give us a goodie here and here? 