2017 has been a crazy ride so far, with the closing of TalkArcades, and Copacet as well as FlashGameDistribution it’s been a tough year. With the overall number of ArcadeWebsites seeming to decrease slowly and the quality going down what is there to be expected in 2018 and where can we go from here?
Our thoughts are that the industry is going to have a rapid change a lot of the scripts are going to be closing down shop as well as a lot of website portals. 2017 has taught us that the old way of doing things simply isn’t worth it anymore and that there is going to be some serious changes if we plan to strive and do well in the coming years.
Primarily as much as many would disagree Flash is dying and will likely be largely irrelevant in 2018. For the arcade sites that only have flash games, many users are going to struggle to enable flash to continue playing those old games. However, those who are embracing HTML5 & WebGL games you’re going to be in the sweet spot.
What Should I Focus On In 2018 As A Website Owner?
Look for exciting and new HTML 5 games there are going to be more platforms we believe next year to aid in this hunt. In addition, you should have a mobile-first approach. Start thinking more about mobile gamers and keep your sites loading quickly.
You should also be focusing on your revenue strategy, you don’t want to hammer users with ads but also need to be making money. Try diversifying your games and site and look for new ways to expand. Expanding into various platforms such as the Apple & Google Play Store would help tremendously and put you ahead of the curve.
The design is another issue websites are moving to a more modern and minimalistic design (and yet are also crammed full of everything it’s truly amazing) which is something we as developers are going to need to focus on in terms of themes. We are going to need to think about the future of arcade sites and what they will need to look across all platforms, not just desktop which is partially what made MyArcadeTheme a success in our opinion.
Another and more important issue will be for SEO. The days of using the same description as everyone else and ranking well in Google are gone. There needs to be a better system than to do what everyone else is doing if you plan to rank well organically. Search engines are demanding more content which can be difficult for websites in the space as its hard to make a game description very long and wordy (and also not to run on repeatedly).