In this blog we combine tutorials on creating games with the story of ClapLab as a startup that has been built and growing over the years.
This post is about the next version that the ClapLab development team is working on and in another post we will cover the business progress of the generator.

Almost a year has passed since the launch of the ClapLab game generator and we have already come a long way.
In this way we have invested in technical development, adding features, fixing bugs, improvements, updates and more.

Listening and living the area – updates!

Throughout the year, the number of generator users increased significantly: new subscribers joined and more organizations were added as generator users. Every time we had the opportunity to receive inquiries from users or organizations, we tried to listen and add things that suited our development roadmap.

Some of the developments were uploaded immediately to the generator, and some waited and will be uploaded in the big update that will be published soon.

UI/UX improvements

The user experience in ClapLab is an experience that requires learning and focus from the game creators, so we decided to put a significant emphasis on improving the experience.

We used the expertise of UI/UX consultants who helped us analyze the process that users go through from the registration stage to the game publication stage.
We analyzed the steps and what the creators go through and were able to simplify them and enable quick, easy and fun game creation.

In the screenshot from the development environment, you can see the accessibility of the new game capabilities, and the ease of understanding.

As part of user experience improvements:

• The entire game edit underwent a re-experience design.
• The design of the games is completely different and has become more playful.
• We have reduced and reduced buttons in order to streamline and facilitate the creation of games.
• We have dramatically improved the editing capabilities of the content itself.
• We have increased the editing area considerably.
• We have added editing functions to make the game easier to understand and use.
• We renewed the language management both in the games and in the interface to the point of full support.
• And many more updates and improvements.

The new update is a significant leap forward in the experience and visibility of ClapLab and the games and products of the creators.

Adding a scoring system to document the players’ achievements

A system that will record the players’ achievements is one of the most requested features both by schools and by creators who distribute the games in corporate learning systems, and also among those who use the games for competition between surfers.

Due to privacy and player protection issues, we have avoided complete identification and retention of player data.
In consultation with game creators and users of the generator, we found an excellent compromise that was implemented in the system and will appear in the new version: a scoring system that allows players to enter a name or nickname in a way that will allow game operators to know who played, but will not save any external identifying data.

In this way, the users are only exposed to data on the achievements of the players without saving problematic data.

The feature, which will be available to premium users of the generator, is created by clicking on the “Collect Results” activation button, and viewing the results by clicking on “Results Table” .

Creating a user feed system for premium subscribers

_{Working with institutions and with creators who are concentrated in one organization requires managing the users, and giving appropriate permissions.
We developed a user management system for each organization separately, and different identification options.}

The content managers in the organization can add users, remove users or purchase a subscription where each organization identifies its game creators by the e-mail address of the registrants.

When working in the generator as an organization, the games and part of the game content are shared by all creators so that the organization enjoys the experience of browsing an internal website and co-creating within the ClapLab interface.

Advanced sharing options and many more features

As part of some of the developments, we have added an option to create a game gallery for every organization and every user of the generator. Today we are working on creating a public game database where games will be uploaded that the creators choose to share with the world.

About the gallery that received the name OpenLab and its use in a separate post below.

On top of that, we fixed and added a lot of small and big things in using the generator, for your enjoyment.

As always, we are attentive to any improvement, correction and suggestions from the surfers and users of ClapLab.