The flash arcade market is an extremely competitive one, with thousands of arcade webmaster battling it out for visitors. While its true that the potential audience for your arcade website is vast, its becoming increasingly important for you to ensure your arcade provides more reasons for your visitors to stick around rather than checking out a competitor.
The first step in doing this is to consider the script which you are using and ask yourself the following questions:
1) Is is a popular/heavily used arcade script?
To find this out, simply search Google for such keywords as “free flash arcade”, “arcade games” etc; and take a look at random results from the first few pages returned. Are those sites running on scripts which you recognize? How many of them are using the same script as you?
Another method of answering this question is to see whether your arcade script has a copyright message in the footer, such as “powered by phpArcadeScript“, “Copyright FlashGameScript” etc. If your does, then its likely that others using the same script will still have their intact; so simply search for those terms in Google too, in order to get a more specific idea of just how many other sites are out there using the same arcade script as you.
You might wonder why this is important; well look at it this way… if a visitor is bouncing around from arcade site to arcade site, and each of them is identical, why would they suddenly stop and make themselves at home when they land on yours?
The next question you should be asking yourself is:
2) What does the bare-basic installation of my arcade script offer?
What you really need to be looking at here is how many games are included with your arcade script by default. Most scripts typically only come bundled with 100-300 games. While you may think that this is enough; bare in mind that if you’re opting to stick with only having those games, then a lot of other arcade webmasters will most likely have made the same choice. So now, not only does poor Mr. Arcade Visitor have to sift through a load of identical sites, but he has to suffer from an identical lineup of games to play too.
If so far all you have done is purchased your arcade script and installed it, i’m guessing you’re starting to understand my point here. Right now, your arcade is just the same as all the rest, so where is the appeal? Remember back to those Google results and the first site you clicked on - why would a visitor choose to stick around at your site rather than stick around at that one?
Well, we’re about to start answering that question now…
Bring on the games!
Arcade websites are, fundamentally, about just one thing - arcade games. If someone is visiting an arcade, thats what they’re expecting to see. We’ve already established that the “bottom line” selection included with your script is not enough, so your first step should be considering investing in an arcade game pack.
A lot of arcade script developers offer bundle options with their script; where you pay an extra amount on top of the price of the script in order to get a package which includes more games. In my personal opinion, a lot of these bundles are set at extortionate prices so its usually better to go elsewhere for your content.
Always be sure to buy a gamepack which comes with either an installer or a full database; as if you’re buying thousands of flash games, you don’t want to then spend hours on end adding each of them by hand.
The benefit of vastly increasing the number of games your arcade offers is obvious. Not only will your visitors have a greater selection of flash games to choose from, but they also give your arcade more pages, pages which search engine spiders can pick up on. If you stick with your basic 100 games, then places like Google can only index a maximum of 100 or so pages. If you have 3000 games, then thats 3000 pages they can index, greatly increasing your search engine presence.
Bring on the games - again!
Again? Well, buying a gamepack is all well and good, and will undoubtedly raise your arcade site from the echelons of potential obscurity, but its not likely that you’ll be the only person who has thought to boost their content with that pack. So now, instead of your site being the same as thousands of others, its the same as hundreds of others instead. This is where your content fine-tuning comes into play.
Sticking with flash games for now, you have two main options. Firstly, you could go on the lookout for another arcade gamepack. While in theory this is a good idea, in practice it often doesn’t turn out so well. You have to appreciate that there are not a massive amount of flash games available in good old internet land; and that most gamepack compilers use a similar range of sources - so two different gamepacks will most likely contain a lot of duplicates; and as such you’ll have to spend hours weeding them out to avoid having the same games repeated multiple times on your site.
The second option, is to do it by hand. This method won’t help you if you want to add hundreds of new games per day, but it will probably be more beneficial that doing that anyway. Adding a handful of new games by hand every week enables you to go out there and personally choose new games yourself; which increases the chances that you’ll have a selection of games that the majority of your competitors don’t. Once again, the benefits are evident as not only does this give visitors an extra reason to both stay on your site and recommend it their friends; but it will also help to have unique pages for the search engines to index.
GameSubmissions.com offer an invaluable service for arcade webmasters; notifying you a newly available games on their site which you can upload to your own arcade. They send through about 5-10 new titles every few weeks; and all their games come with full descriptions and details. The majority of the time these games are completely unique (as in you won’t find them in many bulk gamepacks, if at all) and whats more, its completely free.
Video killed the competitor!
Theres no question that in terms of media sharing, video has risen to the top in recent years. You just have to look at the success of sites such as youtube and dailymotion to realize that. So, its safe to say assume that your arcade visitors will most likely share an interest in viewing entertaining videos as well as playing flash games.
Some of the arcade scripts on the market have anticipated this, and have built in support for video files as well as game files - so what better way to add a whole new dimension to your arcade by making the most of this feature and building up video content too?
The same principles of enhancing flash game content apply to videos; the best step to take is to acquire a video pack at first, and then add to that over time. Fortunately the risk of duplicates when buying multiple video packs is much less than with game packs, so this gives you an extra option when it comes to boosting this side of your content.
Additionally, many scripts like phpArcadeScript also have the ability for you to add embed codes like the ones found on youtube - this not only saves bandwidth for you, but also opens up the range of videos available to you for adding to your arcade. And, of course, there are a few databases comprised of embedded video codes available for purchase, usually at a lower cost than packs of locally hosted videos.
So hopefully by now you’re on your way to strengthening your arcades content and offering a vast and diverse array of content for your visitors to digest. In the next installment of this guide we’ll be looking at how the visual aspect of your arcade can make or break your ability to keep visitors coming back; as well as some of the lesser-utilized and more unique ways of diversifying what you have to offer.
