But I'm wondering what exactly constitutes as duplicate content. I am currently making a gaming website that is basically divided into 3 parts: the header area, the game area, and the 'other games' area. The other games area has maybe 10 or 15 games in it with descriptions of each game. Right now I want the 'other games' area to be the same on every page so that from any page you can reach most, if not all, the games on the website. Is this bad? I want the user to be able to access the games from any page, so is there any other way to approach this? I was considering making 3 different 'other games' areas, and one would be randomly picked upon the page load. Would this be better? Or should I just keep it how it is?
Your site really isn't content based, so it shouldn't matter to you, because google can't index games. When we say duplicate content, we mean more than what constitutes as "citing", so maybe three paragraphs of plagiarism constitutes as duplicate, and google will go Chuck Norris on your site. PS: are you using SSI or another dynamic language? It could help with what you want to do.
I don't see this as a problem because has more to do with navigation, not content. Duplicate content generally refers to a problem of totally different websites having the exact same content. I don't think you could be docked for what it sounds like you have there.
Oh ok. I'm using simple PHP includes right now to do the work. It is basically acting as a navigation, but it will have a lot of words in it. Here's a website that has a similar thing: Mario Game Towards the middle where it says Mario Games, then has that list of games. That's sort of what I'm going for.