We've been using "The rapid development solution with a tiny footprint." for a while now. Thanks Kjell for coming up with that one!
I'm leaning towards something more like this now:
"The minimalistic game engine."
I like the word minimalistic because it sets the users expectations right. If they come here expecting a Unreal/Unity game engine (the opposite of minimalistic) they will be disappointed.
Or maybe "The minimalistic game development solution."
Any ideas? Put your suggestions here so we can vote for them
Maybe you should precise that it's a 3D game engine. That's why I started with ZGE. That and the fact that you didn't need a super computer to display something (unity...)
Fun idea!
While being minimalistic, it's still very powerful and flexible. Perhaps this should be reflected somehow. Not sure how though, I guess this will make it a bit long.
I like the development solution part though, since it's more than just a game engine.
Any more suggestions? Come on, I know we have creative people here
The reason I want to give this some thought is that it can be important when attracting new users. From my own experience, if I visit the homepage of a product I know nothing about beforehand I spend maybe 20 seconds deciding whether to bother downloading it or not. The tagline is part of the initial impression and should summarize the core essence of the product.
We should also edit the text of the start page of zgameeditor.org with more emphasis of the core features. Any suggestions of such text is welcomed too!
JM2C "minimalistic" can evoke "it allows minimal things"... which is probably not true. In the list of game engines at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines) ZGE is characterized as "A lightweight game engine and IDE." Of course it is questionable what does the "lightweight" exactly mean, but it sounds me better than "minimalistic".
What can also attract is "cross-platform" (?). Putting "3D" there could be too much... for a short sentence.
I mean something like: "The lightweight, cross-platform game development technology." or maybe "The lightweight, cross-platform game engine and development environment."
Must admit that I quite like the original tagline. Minimalist could be taken to mean the download size, the filesize output or the number of features. Possibly not the most flattering term. Light-weight is somewhat better. Maybe "compact" is closer to what you are after?
"The compact 3d editor for expansive game design"
...which has a certain balance to it between the words compact and expansive...
As others have stated, there should be more mention under the tagline of the Android and Oyua support. This is one on the main reasons I started a project with it. There should also be mention of its ease of use and modularity.
I have mainly been creating 2d games over the last couple of years using Construct2 and Gamemaker, with the occasional dabble in Unity and more recently Godot. I had checked out the ZGE site a few times before, but was somewhat put off by the "Create games that have a redistributable size of only 64kb or less using procedural content" as the first line. I initially had read that as if your game had to be under 64kb, like a demoscene type forced limitation.
Now that I have started learning it, of course I have realised that there is no such size limitation and while you can do all your sprites and modelling procedurally, it does handle imported meshes quite well, as long as you don't go overboard!
It is actually not really any harder to use than Gamemaker and the main thing that will throw people that are used to something like Unity is the lack of a 3d layout editor.
Good discussion. I agree the front page of ZGameEditor could contain a video. Perhaps if we can just cut together some highlights from the existing videos to show off main features. And we should update the text with more clear description on what ZGE is (cross-platform, the 64kb limit is not enforced etc.)
"A lightweight game engine and IDE." - quite good. I wonder who came up with that one, I don't remember anyone here updating that wiki?
Calling veteran users Kjell and Jph: I'm sure you have opinions too?
VilleK wrote:I agree the front page of ZGameEditor could contain a video. And we should update the text with more clear description on what ZGE is.
A new-user friendly landing page is a good option when your software isn't omnipresent. Examples of this approach are the Processing, Construct and Stencyl websites. But for instance Unity and ( to a lesser extend ) Game Maker don't have to do this because most of their visitors are already familiar-with / users-of their software, so they can focus on that group instead.
VilleK wrote:"A lightweight game engine and IDE." - quite good. I wonder who came up with that one.
I think that works as a description, not as a tagline / slogan. Besides, Game and Editor are part of the name, so those elements are already implicitly implied.
VilleK wrote:Calling veteran users: I'm sure you have opinions too?
Kjell wrote:A new-user friendly landing page is a good option when your software isn't omnipresent. Examples of this approach are the Processing, Construct and Stencyl websites. But for instance Unity and ( to a lesser extend ) Game Maker don't have to do this because most of their visitors are already familiar-with / users-of their software, so they can focus on that group instead.
The reason I want to go over this now is that when we announce 3.1 version and try to market it via various channels (opengl.org news feed etc.) it will likely mean a lot of hits on the zgameeditor index page by users with no previous knowledge of the product. So I want it to be friendly and give a good image of what ZGE is at a 5-second glance, to increase the rate of first time visitors that decide to download and evaluate ZGE.
Processing.org page is nice and also realistic what can be achieved without hiring professional web designers.
So far I suggest for zgameeditor.org landing page:
- Rewrite text, including tagline
- Display the twitter-feed from @ZGameEditor on to attract more twitter-followers.
- A intro video
- Possibly upgrade wiki-software and pick other skin if we find one that looks better
Fun to hear you want to get ready for the next big release and try to draw some attention. ZGE really deserves it! For me, it pretty much made game development fun again. (Not that I didn't like making games, but this made it much more enjoyable.)
Perhaps that is something to add to a tagline.
To mix and match, I'd say something like "The lightweight, yet powerful, cross-platform game dev environment."
