Plays Games Widget

Turn any WordPress page into a swipeable HTML5 games experience — and give your members a reason to come back.

Plays Games Widget lets publishers add a portrait, mobile-first feed of playable HTML5 games to pages, posts and widget areas. Visitors can swipe through game previews, launch a game instantly, and — when score/progression games are enabled — keep their results inside your WordPress website.

The plugin is designed for publishers, communities, blogs and content sites that want to add an interactive games section without building a game platform from scratch.

More than a game feed

Version 2.1 adds a complete engagement layer around selected games:

• Score & progression games — choose which supported games your community can compete on.
• Publisher-owned player data — scores, levels, coins, stars, wins and progression can be stored in your own WordPress database for logged-in members.
• Leaderboards — add a ranking for supported games with a shortcode.
• Member scores & progress — let logged-in users see their own saved game activity and ranking.
• Publisher statistics — track Widget Views, Preview Views, Games Started, Play Rate and Top Games from your WordPress dashboard.
• No separate player account required — your existing WordPress user accounts remain the member accounts.

Swipe-first game discovery

The widget uses a vertical, swipeable experience inspired by modern short-form feeds. It works on mobile and desktop and can be used as:

• A general HTML5 games feed.
• A feed filtered by category.
• A single selected score/progression game.
• A closed playlist of selected score/progression games.
• A score-games entry point that still lets visitors browse the wider Plays Games catalog.

With multiple selected score games, the playlist can loop continuously in both swipe directions.

Publisher controls

Manage the default experience from Plays Games → Widget and competitive/progression games from Plays Games → Scores.

You can control:

• Width and height.
• Left, center or right alignment.
• Corner radius.
• Category filtering.
• Lazy loading.
• Selected score/progression games.
• Whether visitors can continue swiping into the wider game catalog.

WordPress integration

Use the plugin wherever it fits your site:

• Gutenberg block — insert the Plays Games block in the editor.
• Shortcode — use [pgames_widget].
• Multiple widgets — add more than one widget to the same page.
• Leaderboard shortcode — display rankings for supported games.
• Member module shortcode — display a logged-in member’s scores and progression.

The widget reserves its dimensions before loading to help avoid layout shifts and supports lazy loading for pages where the games section appears further down.

Privacy-first local data

The publisher statistics module stores daily aggregate counters in your WordPress database and does not store visitor IP addresses, visitor cookies, email addresses or WordPress user IDs.

When score/progression games are enabled, gameplay metrics for logged-in members are stored locally in the publisher’s WordPress database. WordPress account credentials are not sent to Plays-Games.com for this storage.

The plugin also integrates with WordPress Export Personal Data and Erase Personal Data tools.

Core features

• Infinite swipeable HTML5 games feed
• Hundreds of playable HTML5 games
• Mobile-first responsive experience
• Gutenberg block
• Shortcode support
• More than 90 game categories
• Category filtering
• White-label embedding
• Adjustable width and height
• Left / center / right alignment
• Adjustable corner radius
• Lazy loading
• Multiple widgets per page
• Score and progression game selection
• Multi-metric storage for score, level, currency and progression data
• Per-game leaderboards
• Member scores, progression and rankings module
• Anonymous local publisher statistics
• 7 / 30 / 90 day Statistics views
• Widget Views, Preview Views, Games Started and Play Rate
• Top Games reporting
• WordPress personal-data export and erase integration
• No Plays-Games account required to install and use the plugin

Quick start

1. Install and activate Plays Games Widget.
2. Open Plays Games → Widget and set your default size and behavior.
3. Add the Plays Games block to a page or use [pgames_widget].
4. Optional: open Plays Games → Scores to choose competitive or progression-enabled games.
5. Optional: add a leaderboard or member scores module using the provided shortcodes.

External service

This plugin displays content provided by Plays-Games.com inside an iframe.

The service provides:

• HTML5 game feed
• Preview videos
• Playable games
• A catalogue of games with validated score/progression metrics

The public widget loads content from:

• https://plays-games.com/index-white-label.php

When Plays Games → Scores is opened for the first time, or when an administrator explicitly refreshes the score/progression catalogue, WordPress requests:

• https://plays-games.com/api/score-catalog.php

The catalogue request contains no WordPress member ID, email address, password or score history.

When the widget is displayed, the website hostname is included in the pub parameter for publisher attribution. The visitor’s browser connects to Plays-Games.com to load the feed and games. Embedded games and advertising components can also connect to their respective game or advertising providers as part of the game experience.

If score/progression games are enabled, gameplay metrics received by the WordPress page are stored locally in the publisher’s WordPress database for logged-in members. The plugin does not send the WordPress user ID, email address, password or other WordPress account credentials to Plays-Games.com for this local storage.

Creating a Plays-Games.com account is optional and is not required to install or use this plugin.

The Plays-Games.com service may display advertisements as part of the game experience, in the same way as when visiting Plays-Games.com directly.

Terms of Use:
https://www.plays-games.com/terms-of-use.php

Privacy Policy:
https://www.plays-games.com/privacy-policy.php

Documentation:
https://plays-games.com/publisher-widget.html

Anonymous publisher statistics

The plugin can keep a small local statistics table, wp_pgames_stats_daily (the WordPress table prefix may differ).

The statistics table contains daily aggregate counters only:

• Widget views
• Game preview views
• Games started
• Anonymous score/progression metric update counts
• Plays Games game ID and game title for per-game totals

The statistics table does not store visitor IP addresses, visitor cookies, WordPress user IDs, email addresses or other visitor identifiers.

Statistics are sent from the Plays-Games.com iframe to the embedding WordPress page using postMessage, then recorded by the publisher’s own WordPress REST endpoint. They are not sent back to Plays-Games.com by the WordPress statistics module.

Local player data and privacy

When a site administrator enables score or progression games, the plugin can store gameplay metrics for logged-in WordPress users in the site’s own wp_pgames_scores table (the table prefix may differ).

Stored records can include:

• WordPress user ID
• Plays Games game identifier
• Metric identifier and type (for example score, level, currency, stars, wins or progression)
• Current value and retained best/latest value
• Number of recorded updates
• Creation and update timestamps

If the site owner publishes a leaderboard shortcode, the user’s WordPress public display name and leaderboard value may be shown publicly. This release does not load player avatars from Gravatar.

The plugin integrates with WordPress Tools → Export Personal Data and Tools → Erase Personal Data. Permanently deleting a WordPress user also deletes that user’s Plays Games score/progression rows. Uninstalling the plugin removes the plugin’s score/progression table.

Source code

All plugin JavaScript is included in this plugin in human-readable source form. No minified or compiled JavaScript is distributed and no build step is required.

The JavaScript source files are:

• assets/admin.js
• assets/block-editor-settings.js
• assets/scores-front.js
• blocks/plays-games/index.js

Shortcode

Basic:

[pgames_widget]

Customized:

[pgames_widget width="100%" height="650" category="arcade" radius="14" lazy="true"]

Categories

Choose from more than 90 categories directly in the widget settings, including:

• Arcade
• Puzzle
• Action
• Racing
• Sports
• Shooting
• Strategy
• Stickman
• Kids

Leave the category empty to display all games.

Score and progression modules

Score/progression-enabled games are managed centrally in Plays Games → Scores.

Each supported game can expose one or more validated gameplay metrics such as score, level, currency, stars, wins or progression.

Display one automatic leaderboard that follows the score game currently visible in the swipe feed:

[pgames_leaderboard]

Display a fixed leaderboard for a specific rankable game instead:

[pgames_leaderboard game="game-slug" limit="10"]

Display scores, levels, progression and rankings for the currently logged-in member:

[pgames_my_scores]

Leaderboards and member modules use data stored by the current WordPress website only.