I agree that many of the things on your wonderful list
would be useful. I've also starting adding them to a plan (see
at the bottom).
I still think promoting packaging is still very useful, and
a very low effort thing to do.
Game distribution for general users should definitely not
happen on the cheeseshop. Especially not as the primary
method. The audience I'm thinking of is more other game
developers (and people who will eventually become developers).
I think the package index is better than 'random free upload
webpage on the internet', which many are uploading code to
now. Also pyweek has proven that a code template can provide a
helpful structure for people using other packaging tools.
Often times, eventually, someone figures out the latest work
arounds for the various packaging tools and a script appears
which works for many platforms. Of course every year platforms
update, and the packaging tools develop new features...*cough*
bugs *cough* that means that last years script has stopped
working.
But now with free CI options... it seems more possible to
make a tool which builds peoples apps for them. But again
would require maintenance. By leaning on the python packaging
infrastructure, we access to all the tools for packaging
libraries.
The pygame website, and things like pyweek have thousands of
games on there already. There's also thousands of people who
look through those games every month. I'm fully intending to
improve apon the features on the website for people releasing
games.