Greetings Researchers & Readers:

[easterangel -- please give some one else a shot to answer this -- but
your comments would be much appreciated!]

I'm putting the final touches on a website that's getting ready to
launch called MyAdventureGame.com and was hoping to get some feedback.
  I want some one to log on the the site and make a game, and describe
their experience.

Now, this is a $10 "question," so I'd like to see some reasonable
effort put in to the "answer."  If your up for the challenge, please
adhere to the following instructions.

(1) Spend a few minutes understanding how games on the website work. 
To do this, please play a game or two by clicking on PLAY A GAME, and
then click on the specific category, then select a game from there.

(2) Make a game. This game should have around 15 pages and should
actually be entertaining.  It doesn't have to be a blockbuster, but it
should entertain me for the few minutes that it takes to play.  This
is the tough part -- please do not answer this question if you are not
willing to make a small entertaining game.  The game doesn't need to
be funny, but it should be creative. Also, very important ***do NOT
make advanced game***   The reason I want you to make a game is so I
can get feedback on the EZ-Game Editor.

(3) Once the game has been made, publish the game.

(4) Please tell me your: 
  -gender 
  -age group(Under 18, 18-24, 25-31, 32-38, 39-45, over 45)  
  -your experience with Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-Books (never heard
of, heard of but never read, read (past tense) occasionally, read
(past tense) frequently).

(5) Comemnt, comment, comment! Critique, compalin, complement,
whatever!
 
I'm very interested in hearing what you think about the site as far as
the playing and game making interface.  I really want to know what you
think of the EZ-Edit.  There is deliberately no help section, I'm
hoping the site is self-explanatory.
 
And of course, comments about anything pertaining to the site are
GREATLY appreciated.  However, if you have a comment about a
particular game, please leave the comment directly on that game (as
the game's author would love to see it).

Also, feel free to leave a comment on the MyAdventureGame.com message
board.

Thanks!
- Alex Papadimoulis
alexp@halogenstudios.com

---

Request for Question Clarification by jon-ga on 31 May 2002 13:53 PDT

I was looking forward to this and had even started answering your
question. When I came to create my game I had to register, so I filled
in my details. When I click Create My Account,
http://www.myadventuregame.com/newuser.asp is giving me an HTTP 500
Internal Server Error. If you can tell me why this is, or if it's
going to get fixed, I'd love to answer this question.

[Please ignore my request for clarification - the error is fixed. Read
below to see what went wrong.]

Hello, and thanks for this fun question!

The first thing I notice is that eye-catching logo - very nice. First
I'm going to play a game, to get used to the site and to see more
about what kind of game I should make. I'll try 'Adventures in Lisa
Land'. I like how I can get a preview of the game and read comments
about it before I play.

That was fun. Now I feel ready to create a game. I register, with
problems (as seen in my clarification). The problem was the format I
used for my date of birth. Being British, I put my day before the
month, foolishly ignoring the MM/DD/YY. Maybe you could add a pleasant
message to let people who don't quite read everything know that
they've entered the date in the wrong format, rather than just a scary
internal server error.

I'm making my game. Nice, easy to use button system. Those handy
yellow messages are useful for checking the function of any button or
link. As I'm loving Big Brother in the UK at the moment, I decided to
make a Big Brother game. It's a lot of brain work making a game, but
I'm enjoying it. And the system is very easy to use.

Well I'm done and published. It's no masterpiece by any standards, but
I had fun making it.

Now for your queries. I am male and 18 years old. I have read a few
'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure' books in the past, and enjoyed them.
You're right about not requiring a help section. I found everything to
be self-explanatory.

I will be visiting this site again when I have more time to make a
longer (and better!) game. I hope my Big Brother game was ok for you.

Thanks for this question! If you'd like to hear about anything else,
please don't hesitate to ask for a clarification of my answer.

Best wishes,
jon-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by jon-ga on 31 May 2002 14:58 PDT

I tried clicking on 'Add To Your Website' to get the link for my game,
but it didn't seem to work. I clicked through the site to find it and
copied this link. I guess it is correct.

http://www.myadventuregame.com/preview.asp?g=183

Don't laugh - it was my first go!

---

Request for Answer Clarification by halogenstudios-ga on 01 Jun 2002 22:50 PDT

Hello jon-ga:

Thank you very much for your answer.  It has met all of the
requirements -- I was certainly entertained by your Big Brother game!

You mentioned in your answer that I could ask for clarification to get
some more details from you -- and this is precicely what I am doing. 
I am working right now to come up with a few short questions specific
to your experience on MyAdventureGame.com.  I should have these within
a few days.  These questions, are of course purely optional -- and
your responses would be much appreciated as they will really help fine
tune the website.

Please let me know by responding to this via an answer clarification
or email.  I can do one of the following:
 (1) send the short questionaire to you via email (using the address
you used in the New User form)
 (2) post the questions on GoogleAnswers in another answer
clarification
 or (3) no more questions.

Thanks again, and I look forward to hearing from you again.

-- Alex
alexp@halogenstudios.com

---

Clarification of Answer by jon-ga on 02 Jun 2002 03:01 PDT

Hi Alex, thank you for your comments. I'd be happy to answer those
additional questions for you. I think it's easier all round if you
send them to the email address I provided on the form. I look forward
to receiving them, and I'll respond as soon as I get chance.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by halogenstudios-ga on 05 Jun 2002 20:20 PDT

Hello Jon,

I suppose this isn't really a clarification, more of a response to
your comment.

In order to edit your game once it's published, you will need to
unpublish it by clicking on the [unpublish] link.

I see this is definately something that will need to be made more
clear.  Thanks!

---

Clarification of Answer by jon-ga on 06 Jun 2002 03:46 PDT

Aha, thanks. That's something I didn't notice.

jon-ga has answered the question to my satisfaction.  Thanks jon-ga!

I'm in the middle of creating a rather silly game for my Anthony
Hopkins fan forum. :-) Forgive me for going beyond the 15 pages you
asked for, and of course feel free to ignore my comments entirely.

The game creation process is a LOT more fun that I thought I would be.
However, I'm not sure how self-explanatory it is. I have been figuring
it out, but I know a lot of less savvy people (people I've been
helping navigate my forum, in fact) who I'm sure would have trouble.

The biggest problem I saw was that the "link to existing page" doesn't
work; it's just an iteration of the "new link" button. That made it
difficult for me to figure out how to make a link to an existing page,
but I finally realized that after creating a link I could edit BOTH
the text and its destination.

It's taking me a bit of trial and error to get comfortable with the
creation and editing, but at this point, my biggest problem is
figuring out how I'm going to structure this thing. :-)

I'm female, 42, and have never read a "choose your own adventure" book
(beyond looking at one to see what it was like).

I should have added that I'm getting frustrated trying to edit links
-- the space to type them seems to be limited to the size of the
*original* link (that is, the number of characters). I can't type a
more detailed answer because I run out of room.

Greetings mara-ga:

First and foremost, thank you very much for taking the time to look at
the website.  Just to let you know, you will actually be able to
seamlessly integrate your game into your website using an IFRAME --
that is what the [Add To Webpage] button will eventually instruct you
to do.  Stay tuned for that!

Your comments are truly appreciated!

In response to your comment about the "link to existing page" -- it
turns out the pop up help was in fact from the "new link" button,
which may have added to the confusion.  The proper pop-up text for
"link to existing page" is:
  The Link To Existing Page button will create a new 
  link but will not link it to any page.  You will 
  need to [edit] the link and select a page this new 
  link will go to.

I hope that makes some more sense.

In your second comment, you mentioned the link field seemed to short. 
You were very right -- this was definately a bug in the new EZ-Edit. 
The field has now been increased to 225 Characters (from 50).  That
should give you *plenty* of room for your answer.

I am very excited to play the game that you wrote and will look at it
as soon as you get it finished!  If you have any other suggests to
make the site easier to use, make it more appealing, or any comments
whatsover, please let me know!

Thank you so much,
Alex P
alexp@halogenstudios.com

Alex, I'm just logging to apologize for not making any progress on my
game over the  weekend. If you've read what I did so far, perhaps you
can understand the complex possibilities it offers from a fan's point
of view (or maybe not, since it's all pretty silly <g>), and I find
it's really demanding an amount of creativity on my part. Plus, I was
actually a bit embarassed about the whole thing -- so I was most
gratified to see your positive comment this morning. :-)

Maybe you can answer a question. I'm assuming I won't be able to edit
it further after I publish; is that correct? This is the type of thing
I can forsee players making suggestions for, and it would be so much
fun to incoporate other people's ideas for new "branches."

Plus, of course, I could get a preliminary version published quickly
without having to worry about making it perfect.

At any rate, I will definitely get back to it today. Thanks again for
the positive comment.

That was something I found - I realised there was a small mistake in
my published game, but sadly there is no way to fix it. It would be
good if published games could be edited.