Hey Gamebuinians,
Sorunome and I are working on a new game archive (original topic here). We stumbled upon a disagreement on how things should work, so we chose to let you decide:
Options 1 : Categories (folder-like)
Each game belongs to one or several categories. Categories are organized in a folder-like structure, and you can browse categories like folder. Example of categories :
- Games
--- Action
--- Puzzle
- Utils
- Misc
You would have two pages to find games :
a "recent games" when you can sort games using different criterias like date updated, number of downloads, etc.
a "browse archive" page where you can browse categories like folders to find games. Something like http://www.ticalc.org/pub/
Option 2 : Tags
You can add different tags to your game. For example your game could have the tags "action" "platform" and "RPG". There is no folder like structure this time.
There would be only one page to browse games, where you could both sort using different criterias (like date updated, number of downloads) and only check a few tags you are looking for.
For example, you could look for the 10 most downloaded "puzzle" or "platform" games, or the 50 last "action" games.
There would be a list of tags available to avoid abuses. User could request the addition of new tags.
My personal opinion is that if we use folder-like structure, it would be confusing because we are not used to files being in several folders at the same time. Tags would allow to have only one unified page to browse game, and would allow the use of more advanced filters.