OpenAI launched the official GPT Store this week. You can now search for publicly created GPTs or explore some featured and popular ones in a variety of categories. It's a great first step and I'm glad to see this go live. But as a designer of adventure game GPTs, there are lots of additional enhancements I'd love to see incorporated in the store as it grows and expands. Here are some of my recommendations, in case anyone from OpenAI happens to stumble across this:
A dedicated Entertainment category: Of the six pre-defined categories, it's not entirely clear where Adventure Inked's text adventure games belong. Our games have strong storytelling and illustration components but they're not really the raw asset creation tools that you'll typically find in the Writing or DALL*E categories. I guess we'd fall under the Lifestyle category alongside gym workout, healthy eating, movie recommendation, and dating advice GPTs. In short, OpenAI is choosing to focus on business-focused GPTs that inform, advise, generate assets, and support decision-making. It's an understandable bias and reminds me of Apple's initial assumptions regarding the App Store. But Apple quickly realized how important games were to achieving scale and driving platform adoption. A dedicated Entertainment category for GPTs seems like an easy win.
Greater category depth: Each category shows the top six GPTs within the category (presumably the six most popular), with a "See more" button that reveals a total of 12 GPTs. With six pre-defined categories, a "Trending" category, plus 4 "Featured" GPTs, that's a total of 88 GPTs available through the category system. Given the hundreds of thousands of GPTs that have already been created, 88 is a drop in the bucket. Instead, I'd like to see the "See more" buttons lead to dedicated category pages that offer expanded depth, dedicated filter options, etc.
Search improvements: Given the current limitations to the category system, I suspect most high-value users will be relying on search to find what they need. For example, the only way to currently discover Adventure Inked games within the platform is to search for something like "adventure game". Right now, searches result in a dropdown list of approximately 21 results. As with the category system, I suggest a "See more" option that leads to a more robust search results page.
Creator pages: Good GPTs are created by good GPT creators. And if you like one GPT from a given creator, chances are that you'll like other GPTs from that same creator. And a passionate creator will find it easier to promote and link to their central creator page rather than always to a single GPT. Additional functionality like the ability to customize your creator page to add context to your work and blog about your creations (like I do here) would add further value to this approach.
Community features: Most of all, the GPT Store needs to be more that just a warehouse for GPTs. It needs to become a community. Traffic counts are currently included when searching but I don't see them anywhere else in the store, so that could be expanded upon. Ratings and reviews are obvious additions. Messaging and discussion forums, both general and specific to individual GPTs or creators, would also be welcome. The ability to subscribe to GPTs and creators for updates and new releases would be extremely helpful, as would the ability to curate lists of existing GPTs. And the ability to report issues like copyright infringement or otherwise objectionable GPTs would likely be helpful (I've already seen a couple of "chat with Hitler" GPTs, for instance, and the most popular adventure game GPT I've found is directly infringing on the wonderful "Monkey Island" franchise from LucasArts and Telltale Games). I get it - community features are often complex, nuanced, and require significant staffing to moderate and maintain. But they're well worth it if ChatGPT and the GPT Store are going to transition from the early adopters like us to the broader population. What I would love to see OpenAI explore is actually using their large language models to do the heavy lifting of community moderation. It's a unique opportunity to for them and a valuable use case to prove out.
Another note to call out is that OpenAI's promised revenue-sharing for GPT creators has not yet rolled out alongside the launch of the GPT Store itself, like many had been expecting. That appears to still be a few months out and may initially be restricted to U.S. creators only. As a Canadian-based GPT creator, that further increases my reliance on third-party donation and membership platforms like here on Buy Me A Coffee to bootstrap my work. I look forward to the opportunity to find the right balance between those two sources when the moment comes.
In the meantime, a quick bit of trivia: What are Adventure Inked's Top 5 Adventure Games in the GPT Store, based on number of chats?
#1: Steampunk Murders with 80+ chats
#2: 8-Bit Aliens with 70+ chats
#3: 8-Bit Detective with 60+ chats
#4 (tied): 8-Bit Dungeon with 50+ chats
#4 (tied): 8-Bit Battles with 50+ chats
Let me know your thoughts on the GPT Store's launch and how you think OpenAI could expand on and improve it in the months to come.