What Makes a Great Online Game Platform? Essay

Speed and clarity first: fast catalog loads, recognizable thumbnails, and one or two taps to get to the actual game. Interstitials or unclear "Play" buttons should be avoided, and you should always know whether you're going to the game or to marketing content. The ability to search and navigate the catalog effectively becomes more important as the catalog grows. Having filters and categories makes it easy to find what you're looking for, rather than a willy-nilly list of links. I'd be out of there if I had to hunt for the puzzle or action categories.

Read the privacy policy to see how they use analytics, cookies, and ads, and know that it's there to protect you. Check the contact and about pages to learn more about who runs the website and what they're about. HTTPS encryption should go without saying.

Parental controls for kids tend to live in the OS or router, but the site shouldn't have any built-in "dark patterns" that trick users into doing something they didn't intend to do. Free-to-play games are totally fine, so long as it's obvious what the terms are.

Games should be designed with desktop, touch, and mobile in mind, rather than just desktop. Buttons should be large enough to tap on small screens without accident, and text should not be small or require pinch-zooming to read.

If games are embedded in an iframe, having a fullscreen or focused view can help to prevent distraction and immersion-breaking ads and alerts.

Similarly, dark mode, reduced-motion mode, and keyboard focus styles are all accessibility tools that can help users get the most out of the game beyond whatever's on the main page.

Fresh content, changelog-style posts, and developer profiles can help to both get new developers involved and keep longtime players coming back to see what's new. Catalogs with a "New This Month" section make it easier to see at a glance what's been added since your last visit.

Games should give proper credit where it's due and post links to developers' and studios' sites, so that they can get the recognition and traffic they deserve. Players should feel encouraged to seek out, download, and enjoy games from a variety of sources rather than being locked into a single walled garden.