Categories are now visible on http://www.textadventures.co.uk.

I've split "Latest additions" into two sections:

- "Newest Games" shows you the latest games that have been categorised and aren't in the Sandpit.
- "Latest Uploads" shows everything.

When you click "Browse Games" it will default to "All categorised" games, which excludes the Sandpit.

There's also a new "Browse by category" section on the front page.

Currently, a game can only be assigned to a category by a moderator. When you upload a game, it will initially be placed in "Uncategorised".

Please let me know if you disagree with the category of any of the games, and I'll have a look and change it if necessary.

Also please let me know if you have suggestions for any other categories. There should already be some games that would fit into the category, so don't just suggest a type of game you'd like to see - I won't be adding empty categories.

Any suggestions, comments or questions, please post here to let me know...

That seems like a really good idea.

Although I wasn't sure what 'sandpit' actually meant

It's a euphemism...

Awesome! It looks great Alex. Its good to know that something I have done has actually made a (small) impact on something on the net.
Congratulations Alex.

The "Sandpit" is just the nice sounding name where all the crap games are dumped.

And who categorized my game "Assasinating Dr. Froth" as a comedy?

Thana

The sandpit category isn't very nice to authors...

Not only that, it's highly subjective. I've seen some games with good reviews and four stars in the sandpit category, and alledgedly that's for what you think is "crap?"

Those reviews and ratings were posted by 8 year old fanboys who got bad reviews for their games, so went and posted 5 star ratings for games made by authors equaly crap.

And the term Sandpit was deemed by Alex to be the nicest way to put that a game is bad.

Considering some of the "reviews" (for want of a better word) you've posted there, Thanatos, you should be the last person pointing fingers.

Thanatos wrote:Those reviews and ratings were posted by 8 year old fanboys who got bad reviews for their games, so went and posted 5 star ratings for games made by authors equaly crap.

And the term Sandpit was deemed by Alex to be the nicest way to put that a game is bad.

CJ592 is a decently regarded author. (GAMER also improves when he makes a knockoff of somebody else's game.)

The thing is, having a category for "crap" games sounds like Alex is insulting the author. I'd get rid of the sandpit category, or name it something nicer so it's not officially for "crap". Suggestions:

Experimental
Amateur
Authoring Exercize
etc. Something like those would be good.

It's certainly depressing when you look at the figures on the main site:

Uncategorised (1)
Adult (4)
Comedy (8)
Educational (1)
Fantasy (7)
Multi-player (1)
Mystery (17)
RPG (8)
Romance (1)
Sci-Fi (5)
Sandpit (141)

I make that a grand total of 194 games of which a whopping 141 are deemed crap/sandpit. Would Quest really lose anything if the 141 dismal efforts were just deleted off the site altogether?

Where is the horror section. Surly I did not get stuck in the sandbox.

davidw wrote:It's certainly depressing when you look at the figures on the main site:

Uncategorised (1)
Adult (4)
Comedy (8)
Educational (1)
Fantasy (7)
Multi-player (1)
Mystery (17)
RPG (8)
Romance (1)
Sci-Fi (5)
Sandpit (141)

I make that a grand total of 194 games of which a whopping 141 are deemed crap/sandpit. Would Quest really lose anything if the 141 dismal efforts were just deleted off the site altogether?

I think it'd be better if we deleted the category all together, and moved them somewhere else. The Sandpit category is mean, and one person's opinions can be different than others. It's a bad idea to have a category for your least favorite games. Someone else could find them to be good -- as the old saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treaure -- and the author of the game could be offended if Alex deems their game sandpit.

Alex does none of the Categorizing - I, and the other mods, do. The trash is only treasure to the author of it.

The sandpit category doesn't mean it's a "crap" game all the time. It is also meant for experimental games. However, what davidw has pointed out (and many agree with this idea) is that most of the games actually are just bad.
So to get rid of the "bad" category, you'll just have to assume all the games are bad and they are selected for other special categories.

Bad comedy
Bad adult
Bad Educational

and so on

The sandpit category at least gives some kind of warning to the player. Although I am pretty sure I saw some games floating in non-sandpit categories that should have been in the sandpit. I am one of the mods and I tried not to re-rate games but now that I know another certain "mod" is out there categorizing games, I should probably have another look.

Trust my judgement