Google’s Chrome Web Store is great.  It allows for a more public viewing of HTML5 and Flash games.  It creates a hub for those games, and it allows for an interested person to go and find, well, something via Google.  The name of the game, really.  

One would think this means that the Web Store is providing an outlet for independent developers.  But it doesn’t.  It doesn’t allow for a serious search of all the games on their site.  You have to use their search engine, there is no other way around it.  This leads to no one learning about the game because they’re browsing the puzzle section, as there is no brain and puzzle section beyond the main page.  They only learn about it if they actually search for our games name, or they view the small featured and popular section.  This allows for little to no visibility for smaller game developers.

It also has no real rubric for counting how the weekly installs or total users are collected.  We have no idea how those numbers are made.  I’ve watched our own numbers, and I think the names (‘users’ and ‘weekly installs’) are incredibly misleading.  It’s really quite too bad, because I used to think that the Chrome Web Store was a great option for our games.  Now I’m wondering, especially due to the lack of ability to browse, if it’s even worth our time.