How do you feel about logins

[Zuggz]

I was wondering how everyone felt about login / password accounts for flash games.

This summer me and a group of other guys are working on flash games like there's no tomorrow and have a website made for the propose of hosting the games. (mostly large games RPGs, RTS, etc)
The games of course will spam the web on places like Newgrounds and any sponsors which are interested.

A lot of these games will need data saved and loaded but I greatly dislike using cookies to do this. For many reasons but one is that the data is only saved on the one computer.

To solve this we plan on having all the data needed saved on our server. The downside, this will require a login for the user.

We plan on having the user system added to all the games. With the addition of a page for info on our website for each game based on your progress ( a page with your character from the rpg with all his stats and items, or for the rts battle logs and stats. basically all for show off rights).

Since we know there will be people that refuse to signup for a login account (name, password, email - to prevent bots raping our database) we will have a guest feature which will use cookies for the saving and loading. Just so no one is left out.

How would you feel about wasting 10 seconds of your life to create a login for all the games produced by us? Would you be turned off right away and close the flash and vote zero followed by a mean review or would you deal with it and enjoy the games?

Any ideas are also being greatly accepted.

Thanks for any input given in advance :D.

excuse spelling or grammar errors, I am dyslexic. :(

[KaynSlamdyke]

Make it optional. And make it BETTER

If you make it mandatory, people will go elsewhere, or at worst complain. Force people to giving you thier email and they'll feel cheated out of the effort required at doing so unless you provide a feature that justifies it - like complex high score tables and friends lists.

Otherwise you may as well just save the games as passwords. Theres plenty of encryption functions you can try out to reduce a save game state to an unhackable string of characters.

[Headshot777]

At 5/13/09 09:06 PM, Zuggz wrote: How would you feel about wasting 10 seconds of your life to create a login for all the games produced by us?

I don't mind at all, actually. It's not like it will kill me :)

Would you be turned off right away and close the flash and vote zero followed by a mean review or would you deal with it and enjoy the games?

Second one.

You've got a pretty big project coming up. A good server costs a lot of money, and making good RPGs could take months, even years.

[Zuggz]

Thanks for the input.

@KS
As stated before, there will be a guest feature which does use no login and cookies for saving.

The e-mails will only be used to send the activation code, but I do see how people can be turned off with just giving it out to anyone.

I wasn't thinking friend's lists, but thats a good idea. almost like comparing you're progress to others. Advance ladders (highscores) are going to be in the future to.

@Headshot
Oh how we know its a big project, but that's all the fun.

We have our server up and running so thats no issue.
It's the time and work that'll be the pain. But we need the money so that should motivate us enough.

Thanks both of you again.

[Nisas]

I would probably skip over that flash if I had to make a login.

If there is a guest feature I would play it and possibly make a login later.

[TheBoob]

I am currently working on a rpg that uses a log in like this. I contemplated this a LOT as i didn't know % wise who would sign up, and who would just close it right away. I decided that the best way to go about creating this system is as follows:

When a user first opens the flash, they are required to create a log in. For the "username" they can either put in their email address, or they can just make up a user name. If they choose the latter, there is no option for them to recover their password at a later date, and no optinos to keep them updated on the status of their characters and highscores.

In addition, if you choose to put in your email address as the username, the password is sent to you via email, but you can continue playing the game without having to check for the password first (this creates the option for strait play, without having to leave the game to check email or anything). If you did not enter an email (and just entered a random user name) you are prompted to create a password on the next screen.

I hope this gives you some insight from the research i did when i was starting my project, and i will continue reading this thread cause more information is always good.

[Nisas]

Using an email could work, but it might scare off some people afraid of getting spammed.

[KaynSlamdyke]

If the aim is to drag users to your site, a login is a bad way to start things off. But its a great continuation of current play. The best model I've seen is letting the user sign up at any point during thier current session if they're enjoying it.

In your games if the user's going to try saving or any other premium feature, state there and then that it requires a sign up (that most importantly can be done while in game and is only two fields long - email address and password with validation and provides INSTANT access to your sites features). The user can continue playing the basic game even without the sign up, but they aren't pressurised at any point or forced into it. It's thier choice here. Then later they can do silly things like Display Name and stuff for your site, or just validate thier account and continue playing this game using your server.

With your serverside stuff, just delete accounts and all thier data made forty eight hours after creation that weren't validated.

[mayoarm11]

if the 'new account' options are in-game (not linked to a website), then I'd have no problem with it. In addition, only include the mandatory stuff. If I have to fill out too much information, I'd give up.

:P

[Zuggz]

@KS

Thats a very interesting idea. I guess the goal is to have people come back to the site, but we don't really care much about traffic. It's all about having the silly extra features which when our api is more mature will all be accessible within the games. I like the idea having it only ask for creation of a user account when they try to do one of the "bonus" things.

Thanks again for your input and ideas on the subject.