Forums > News > 2017 - a fine year for adding games on MobyGames so far!
Simon Carless (1833) on 8/14/2017 3:31 AM · Permalink · Report
We just wanted to highlight the above graph, for which the red bar is the number of games - of any era - added on MobyGames by users since 2012. So 2017's total additions include games from 1981, 2012, and even 2017! (Side note: the green bar is number of times games have been set to 'pending', so includes 2 entries for anything that needed to be set to WIP.)
Current MobyGames management took over the site at the end of 2013, following an aborted site redesign. We're proud of the work you've done with us to keep up with what is an increasingly crowded game market, and fill in a lot of older holes in our database! (And there's four and a half months to go, so expect 2017's red bar to go a lot higher by year's end.)
Simon Carless (1833) on 8/14/2017 12:44 PM · Permalink · Report
This isn't built into our (original) back-end stats page, so nope - oh well.
MAT (241279) on 8/14/2017 9:01 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
I wonder how tall would that red bar for 2017 be if it only included added games that actually have a description ;))
EDIT: Might include side bar after 2017 that shows added games with description. Meaning games not added by helper alone. If that bar would be decreasing in comparison to earlier years then I wouldn't say it's a good thing. Otherwise, I still don't see why we wouldn't accept games without any description at all, it sure would help us add some obscure titles that are non-English so scraper can't help. If we're aiming toward quantity, that is.
Alaka (108246) on 8/14/2017 4:40 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Why would someone spend the time to add 1 measly game with a well written description when in that same time frame they could of added 5-10 scraped game entries. To add insult also only get 1 point for their hard work. No thanks.
Anyway, description-less Japanese games would be a negative imho since sometimes it can be hard to find info on these games in English and if Mobygames has that English info on these game it would be a positive for this site.
Simon Carless (1833) on 8/14/2017 8:05 PM · Permalink · Report
Sorry, grumpy people in these comments! I'm aware that losing mandatory descriptions still bothers some people. But we'd also like to celebrate those who have caught up on the ten of thousands games we were missing that nobody was likely to write descriptions for.
We're good with fiddling with description points but much like reviews, we seem to degenerate into lack of consensus when changing things like this.
Alaka (108246) on 8/14/2017 8:27 PM · Permalink · Report
I just want to make it clear their is no "grumpiness" from me. Just stating the obvious fact that adding scraped games is way easier than writing a description.
"We're good with fiddling with description points but much like reviews, we seem to degenerate into lack of consensus when changing things like this."
That approver forum thread we recently had, had a majority of people agreeing to increase the points for this. Heck, you seem to make decisions that make radical changes to the site without majority consent so I don't see why you can't put your foot down on this and just increase the points since it obviously needs to be done. Eh, whatever...
Simon Carless (1833) on 8/15/2017 2:13 AM · Permalink · Report
I know, we just got burned by the '# of points for reviews' discussion, which we had to change back. :) I'll consult with Tracy about this.
Also thanks for not being grumpy!
Simon Carless (1833) on 8/20/2017 3:19 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
Descriptions are now worth [EDIT: 4!] points. And it's retroactive, I believe.
Iggi (37254) on 8/26/2017 9:34 AM · Permalink · Report
Wow, thanks - that made my day (though the number of points was lowered to 4 points it seems). I have to admit I hate adding descriptions because of the required amount of work, but at the same time I feel they are a very important part of MobyGames. Now I don't feel stupid for adding descriptions because it's not even worth it any more at least ;-)
Cavalary (11610) on 8/15/2017 1:49 PM · Permalink · Report
shrug Lots of grumpiness from me, and will only get worse.
As for the tens of thousands of games that nobody was likely to write a proper description for, means no contributor cares enough for them, got sufficiently involved playing (or more directly involved in some cases) to want to do so and know what to put there. In which case, so be it, they'll be here when or if somebody'll show up who will care.
Flapco (46046) on 8/15/2017 6:46 PM · Permalink · Report
Though I am not a fan of adding games without description, I think Mobygames will never attract the diehard collectors needed to add the last obscure missing games for older platforms. Adding (older) missing games with a adblurb (or not) might pay off in the long run (covers can be gathered with useful info on the missing games).
But I am pretty sure no collector will add the huge amounts of games still missing for the PS1 and PS2 (I estimate there are still a 2000 or more missing for the two combined, 700 + USA and EU games) for example. I think as long as Mobygames does’t have a complete set of releases (or at least very close) most of those collectors look elsewhere. Which is a pity as I think Mobygames has a good listing system for collectors.
MAT (241279) on 8/16/2017 3:30 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
The scraper works great with US PSN site, right? But do you know how many hundreds and thousands of Japanese-only PSN games and DLCs are out there that noone will add because it requires description and noone plays such games to be able to write one or wants to spend too much time researching, or is simply unable due to a language barrier. That said, there are just as many timed PSN games same as on US PSN, and because we can't use scraper to add those there's a good chance we'll never ever have them in our database and they'll just be lost in time.
EDIT: My point here is that if descriptions aren't mandatory (as they are not on English scraped games), then anyone would be able to add Japanese or other non-English games with ease and we'd have them in our DB. It wouldn't be that much different to English scraped games with ad-blurbs only since Japanese scraped games would still have promo shots and would be more or less depicted. And description could always be added. By not allowing this we can never catch up with non-English games in quantity and there are just as much as English games out there. Not sure why we'd put priority to have English-only games. This is sort of a game museum in a way, we try to record history, not English-only games and who cares about the rest.
EDIT 2: At the very least, if we do enforce description requirement for non-English game, we should allow it to be completely minimalistic for the sake of actually getting such entries in larger quantities. Something like "X is a fantasy role-playing game played in top-down perspective.". I know that info is covered in genres alone, but that would help users add such games without having to know the story or too much about the game, just looking at screenshots would suffice. Just saying. I'm not gonna add such entries, but it would help for all the others that might if acceptable.
Unicorn Lynx (181676) on 8/17/2017 8:41 AM · Permalink · Report
I'm glad to see the website to which I dedicated a huge amount of my time over the course of fifteen years or so not only up and running, but thriving :)
I'm not active on the site anymore because I don't play games nowadays. I had an intense time with the Dark Souls series a few months ago (finished all three of them twice each :)), but it looks like I might be done with this hobby for good. I'm hanging a lot on the Booksie website, writing short stories and communicating with other authors. Games just don't seem to be important anymore. Never say never, of course :)
That said, I really don't like the description-less policy :( If this happened four-five years ago, I'd totally quit in protest... and probably be back again, but still :)
Cavalary (11610) on 8/17/2017 10:22 AM · Permalink · Report
Glad to see you around here again, even if it is with sad news. Though, on that note, while seeing someone give up on something which was truly important to them, as your previous dedication definitely proves was the case with games, is always very sad, writing definitely is a worthy area of interest, so it's good to know that some other creative side of life is getting the benefit of your skills and dedication now.
Tracy Poff (2095) on 8/17/2017 2:03 PM · Permalink · Report
It's sad to hear you might not be returning to us, but I'm glad that it's because you've found something else more absorbing. You've got to follow your heart.
For my part, I find in games much of the same attraction I find in literature (or in film, etc.)--games, too, are heavily intertextual, and it's a mental challenge and a joy to trace the web of influence and understand how both the meaning and gameplay are built on what came before.
And, please forgive me, but I must proselytize: have you considered combining your interests? There is a thriving community of interactive fiction authors. It's organized largely around the annual ifcomp, which is accepting submissions for this year's competition until the end of the month. That is perhaps a bit too soon, but there's always next year. Twine games are accepted, as well, which seem to be popular with people more interested in writing than in game-making.
In any case, good luck in your future endeavors, and I'll hope to see you back here, some day.
Pseudo_Intellectual (67062) on 8/17/2017 4:35 PM · Permalink · Report
Always glad to see you! Whatever undertaking inherits the analysis and focus you brought to bear on your gaming hobby will surely flourish as a consequence.
MAT (241279) on 8/17/2017 10:17 PM · Permalink · Report
Hehe, seeing Oleg here is like seeing some long gone game company coming back to life again, like Cinemaware :) Glad to see you here chatting, don't care if you lost interest in games or not, come here to check up on and talk to us a bit every now and then ;))
chirinea (47526) on 8/18/2017 12:50 AM · Permalink · Report
Glad to hear from you, dude! A week doesn't pass by without me thinking "where's Oleg?". You are probably the last person in this website I'd think would abandon gaming, and it is sad to think you wouldn't show up here anymore. But I second MAT, please, stop by and chat whenever possible. MobyGames is almost as much about the community as it is about games.
OmegaPC777 (8239) on 8/23/2017 11:23 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
This certainly has been a big game addition year. :) Thank you, everyone!
Unicorn Lynx (181676) on 9/6/2017 6:01 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Thank you for the kind words, guys :) I did some review and Have List clean-up, and also updated my avatar, as you can see :) I might actually check out some of those games on my list I haven't played / reviewed yet. It's good to hear from you guys again :)
Donatello (466) on 9/10/2017 1:58 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Unicorn Lynx wrote--]Thank you for the kind words, guys :) I did some review and Have List clean-up, and also updated my avatar, as you can see :) I might actually check out some of those games on my list I haven't played / reviewed yet. It's good to hear from you guys again :) [/Q --end Unicorn Lynx wrote--]
Just curious, are you not playing games anymore because you dislike the overall direction of where the industry is headed?
Unicorn Lynx (181676) on 9/10/2017 4:10 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Donatello wrote--] Just curious, are you not playing games anymore because you dislike the overall direction of where the industry is headed? [/Q --end Donatello wrote--]
That too, yes. I just lost interest in modern games - and that despite the fact that I consider Dark Souls series the best of the best, and also really enjoyed Witcher 3. But seeing all this shiny commercial stuff, indie fan fiction, and veritable hordes of mindless casual games just makes me tired.
Also, I really, REALLY dislike the new "description not needed" thing on MobyGames :-(. And (to a lesser extent) promotional screenshots. I just checked the entry for "Mass Effect: Andromeda" - half a year after the release, it still has no description and no screenshots. In the old days, that could have been utterly impossible. Since there was zero factual information to have, I had to go to Wikipedia.
There is really no point in using MobyGames for anything that was submitted after that unfortunate policy change. All I see are idiotic ad blurbs and promo shots, which tell me nothing at all about how the game plays. MobyGames is only good for checking on older games now.
I've been playing a bit of older RPG classics, though. Might capture some screenshots and write a few reviews in the future :-)
Simon Carless (1833) on 9/10/2017 10:01 PM · Permalink · Report
I know there's no point discussing this with the 'old guard' - who did a ton of work on this back in the day - but we lost the 'fight' with Wikipedia over descriptions 10+ years ago. Theirs are generally more complete and better because lots more people contribute to their website & it's easy to do so. That was true WAY before myself and Reed even started in 2013.
So we had a couple of choices. Either just don't document new games much at all (since descriptions were mandatory), or document them without descriptions but with metadata like covers, credits, and promo images. We preferred to push the latter - especially given that we were only getting 2 or 3 people doing 'proper' quality regular descriptions for new games even BEFORE this change. And were thousands of games behind.
I'm aware that it is a perversion of the original MobyGames concept. But as proven by Google Analytics logs, what people visit us for nowadays by and large is not original descriptions on famous games. It's for stuff like credits - which we do have for Mass Effect Andromeda and almost nobody else does. (We're #1 result for 'Herbert Lowis game credits', for example, one of the lead animators.) Also covers and promo art. We do good on those. We hope to continue.
Unicorn Lynx (181676) on 9/11/2017 1:29 AM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Simon Carless wrote--]I know there's no point discussing this with the 'old guard' - who did a ton of work on this back in the day - but we lost the 'fight' with Wikipedia over descriptions 10+ years ago. Theirs are generally more complete and better because lots more people contribute to their website & it's easy to do so. That was true WAY before myself and Reed even started in 2013.
So we had a couple of choices. Either just don't document new games much at all (since descriptions were mandatory), or document them without descriptions but with metadata like covers, credits, and promo images. We preferred to push the latter - especially given that we were only getting 2 or 3 people doing 'proper' quality regular descriptions for new games even BEFORE this change. And were thousands of games behind.
I'm aware that it is a perversion of the original MobyGames concept. But as proven by Google Analytics logs, what people visit us for nowadays by and large is not original descriptions on famous games. It's for stuff like credits - which we do have for Mass Effect Andromeda and almost nobody else does. (We're #1 result for 'Herbert Lowis game credits', for example, one of the lead animators.) Also covers and promo art. We do good on those. We hope to continue. [/Q --end Simon Carless wrote--]
I do not blame you in the least, Simon :) On the contrary, I (and the rest of the "old guard", I'm sure :)) are very grateful to you guys for saving MobyGames, adding many features, and being constantly present and active. You've done an outstanding job. Disliking the "no description required" policy is more of a pet peeve of mine. I actually enjoyed original descriptions written by our users, and am sad to see them all but disappear for newer games. Please don't take it the wrong way :)
Also, I can't believe I've been with MobyGames for sixteen years. I'm "old guard", indeed... Or just old :-()