Beep boop-

I JUST WANT TO AGREE WITH MY FRIEND MADE FROM NFT AND INFORM THAT MY DATABASE ALSO ENJOYS READING THIS PRIMITIVE TEMPLATE. IT'S EASIER TO GATHER THE INFORMATION BECAUSE ATTACHING TWO LINES OF INTODRUCTORY TEXT IS TOO COMPLEX!

Nothing funny about how GOG is behaving recently. Is there a reason why you don't reply to several tries of asking you a simple question which you promised you would answer? Have you now become just another blue that is not allowed to talk to the community because of .. whatever? What has become of GOG and what has become of the now nearly extinct GOG support that's now hosted by a more or less non working "chat bot"? I just tried to create a ticket and failed miserable.

Welcome feedback? Since when does GOG ACTUALLY really listen to our feedback?

Feedback: It's pretty bad and feels lazy and isn't very informative. Get back to writing real descriptions.

this style is too arid. I want some info on the game, who is the developer, where are they from, what have they done previously, who should play this game? What is its selling point? You are a business, you should know how to pitch a product.
You have been having plenty of feedback already.
Are you just understaffed and need to save money not paying anyone to write anything more complex? Just be honest upfront about it.

Ok, but you could still turn this

Sale’s theme: Survival games
Deepest discount: 90% off
End date: 17th January 2022, 2 PM UTC.

Into this:

This Weekly Sale's theme is Survival games, with deepest discount reaching 90% off! Be sure to grab something before it ends on 17th January 2022, 2 PM UTC.

in a minute, and already you have a post that looks more friendly and like something written by a person and not a bot.


Also, and this is probably not up to you, but I can only repeat that while this sort of minimalistic announcement is ok for opening the forum thread, but it's quite pointless for the news on the home page to lead to a separate page with this barebones info. It would make infinitely more sense to just have the news on the home page to lead straight to the game/sale page where all the info is.

Thank you very much for taking the time to communicate with us and addressing the news issue, Michal. I very much appreciate that and I sincerely wish the GOG staff would interact more with us customers. It'd probably create less issues regarding controversial site changes.


And here's my feedback for the matter at hand:
1 - I absolutely agree with you that lengthy texts regarding the weekly sales are irrelevant. Since you'll repeat thematic sales (survival, RPG, Roguelike, etc etc) several times during the year I think it doesn't make sense to present something which we already know what it's about. IMO you don't need to have any introductory text for them.

2 - I think every new game or publisher on the store should at least deserve a paragraph writing something about its background.
Like: what sort of influences, styles have inspired the game, what country is the publisher/dev from, what other games have they created... that sort of thing. Like a sort of introductory speech. Nothing too complex, I think a mere paragraph would do.

Those were just my 2 cents. Again, thanks for addressing the community and listening to us.

Keep it brief if you want, but in a single sentence, at least, tell people what's great about the game and why this game should be bought, and if it is a sale you announce, what games are the greatest deals in it - like you already do, but consistently, for every sale. I reckon this would help.

The problem with this idea is that then you lose all connection between a News post (or wherever clicking a front page News item will lead to) and the corresponding forum thread.

Well, they could change sale pages to add that link somewhere, but I don't think their system is anywhere close to prepared to make that change. If their system is set up the way I think it is it will require new database columns and some heavy work to fill them with data from previous sales.

Next you have to do something about the disconnect between game releases and the release threads as well. With multiple versions of a game getting released at different times you have several candidates for the position of "release forum thread" for a particular game. It wouldn't be easy to decide for one.

TL;DR: It'd be messy.
That I agree with

Thanks for sharing your thought process! To counter the others who don't like the change, I find it easier to pick out the relevent info with the more "robotic" style and I'd prefer you put your effort into longer content.

One small suggestion: put the full genera tags from the game not just one (I mostly look for "horror" and avoid those).

A more involved suggestion I made on another thread that you might not have seen: Maybe GOG could require that the first paragraph of the game be suitable as a self contained introduction to the game that could be used in other contexts (maybe even make it visually distinctive). This would both be helpful to anyone who looks at the game (not just those who check the site within a few days of release) and could be used for a periodic new releases summary news post and email (and copied to the release news post if they don't link directly to the game). They could help the developer write something if needed.

I'm guessing you have considered this but if the main issue with linking directly to the the game page is the forum link then the news banner could be split to have one part link to the forum and the rest go to the game page, either with a separate small box for the forum link or maybe two installer-style buttons, one that goes to the forum and the other (or anywhere else on the banner) goes to the game page. I guess the time the discount lasts isn't usually on the game page either but it would be great if it could be independent of anything else.

Personally I don't care about the change as I never really read the sales' descriptions. I do think a "Highlights: ... " line is good (and I've seen it used a few times) that lists off some of the "highlights" of the sale.

And thank you for listening to us, Michał.
It isn't a holy cow, something I cut down from that post that I probably shouldn't have (because I already included it in the previous post on the subject in another thread) was an explanation that people are just annoyed by how unhelpful and lazy those posts felt. Cutting the news pages to bare, perfunctory game title helps nobody, and is way more annoying a change than if you'd linked the games directly when people click on the news banner. You'll want to avoid being seen as lazy and uncaring, especially now that once-stellar and fast support had been largely replaced by a bot that is anything but helpful.

But back to the subject, of course these news posts and even forum threads themselves could be done away with entirely if you want, but you'd still need something to draw people's attention to new games and convince them to buy games from the going sale, and that something should at least appear to be more appealing and more convenient than what we have now.

For me, there should be at least a scrollable newsfeed on the main page, seen right as you open it, on the right of those huge banners, perhaps, that would show the new games and their genre tags, and be scrollable back to at least a month ago or so. Sort of like GOG Weekly, but more visible and fully automated.

Secondly, the sale pages should highlight the games that have lowest price there was (silver background or border, perhaps) and games that have prices lower than they ever were before (gold? use other colours if you think they'd work better). Many people would buy something they're otherwise unsure about if they know it's the best deal ever, and this can also be fully automated as well, cutting down the unnecessary routine. Also, let items on sale page lists be sortable by price and discount, you do that for general search already, shouldn't be hard to follow up.

Once again, it isn't something sacred and immutable, and can prolly be changed for the better. And I appreciate you reading and considering our feedback.

Michal,

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to communicate in detail with those of us here. I cannot stress enough how unprecedented this feels to me. Rumor has it that long before I came to GOG, there was this sort of great and open communication between GOG team and users. However, I have to say that in my nearly-5 years here, your communication in this topic is the most I have ever seen. Thank you again. If I may offer some feedback that doesn't fit neatly in replies to other users here, let me say the following. I mean no offense, and I do not at all mean to imply you should be out of a job or anything horrible like that. However, I wonder if your efforts may be better refocused by GOG to copywriting in other aspects/areas.

Let me explain:
I do not see the point of news posts, at all, full stop. The new releases tab, or portion of the catalog, makes it clear when new games or expansions release here, and we can simply get to them that way to read what is on the gamepages. In other words, the news posts are redundant. Also, I know a few other users feel like me: since the site redesign a few years ago, we stopped visiting the front page entirely (except by default when logging in or to redeem a giveaway). While at the time I thought it was a bad move to obscure the news by moving it all the way to the bottom, the fact of the matter is that I find the front page so clunky I wouldn't even bother to go there if news was back in the old spot near the top/middle. In fact, for I believe over a year, the front page didn't even load properly for me! Why is "News" a non-negotiable feature to keep? It is completely redundant and even more so with these forum posts that give no detail about the games. Since thankfully we do still have a forum for now, may I suggest instead of having any news section, just posting about the new releases here in the forum directly? Again, the effect for users like me is the same...unless I see someone else has already "forum-popped" the news, or I browse the catalog on my own, I do not see these new releases.

Another separate concern. I see you mentioned (in post 65) a blog that is upcoming. Why is GOG investing into these features when at the same time there are widespread complaints about the delays in Support? People have been complaining about Support delays since at least the release of Cyberpunk over a year ago. GOG's solution, over a year later, was the much-maligned (by forum users at least) chatbot. Again, I am not trying to undermine your position; I would suggest your prompt responsive skill and obviously strong writing ability (both evident from your posts in this topic) may be better applied doing what I suggested above, making forum posts for each new game rather than news articles.