How can we contribute to the Launchbox Games Database? Beta & Moderator Signups!

[DOS76]

No I believe that non-regional metadata is a huge issue with the database that are already available but that being said unless we had some actual Japanese users that would be able to help us out finding documentation for many of these games may be hard to come by.

[FreakyDinosaur]

I would like to be signed up to contribute and moderate the database. I made contributions to PCGamingWiki for older games.

[Kriven]

I'll contribute as well. Username is Kriven.

[SentaiBrad]

Nathan DiYorio said I'll contribute as well. Username is Kriven.

That's right, I was trying to remember why that name sounded familiar on Steam.

[Kriven]

Ah, sorry. I haven't been on Steam very much lately other than to satisfy my digital hoarding addiction, and I haven't been as active here as I was in the past. The last part being why I waited this long to volunteer for the database. In part I wanted to see what form it would take before offering. Edit: I was doing what I can to fill in missing details for games. Right now I'm working on RE: Revelations for Wii U, and I'm a little stumped. Someone has filled in "No" for the "Cooperative" field, but the Raid Mode does feature a cooperative component, albeit online. To that end also, I'm not sure how to fill in the "Players" field, since local play is restricted to a single player while online play can feature two. "Survival Horror" is also absent as a genre, and I don't think I can suggest its addition without being a moderator myself.

[Cebion]

Hey folks. late to the party but nevertheless. I contributed to some gamedatabases with lots of PC-Games. Especially the dos era. I really like this project and I hope this Database will be the best one yet. I've read all the posts before me and I think we have to consider to make this database good. I'll list some things which I think are important and should be discussed: - Game Titles: Since the main language of the launchbox database is English we should always make the displayed title the English one. But the game should also be searchable by the aka names. These aka names should also be displayed on the game page. Also important for Japanese Titles etc. ie. The Secret of Monkey Island aka: Monkey Island 1 Monkey Island Yurei: Kaizoku Oosoudou (Japanese) Classification of the genre: The biggest mistakes made by a lot of databases are the wrong categorization of the genres. An action adventure is no adventure and only because some games have adventure elements this doesn't make them adventures either. So I think we should add sub-genres. For example Beyond good and evil. It is an action game with adventure elements. So we could make a maingenre with sub genres. ie. Maingenre: Action, Adventure, Education,Platformer, Racing, RPG, Simulation, Sport, Strategy Subgenre: Above but as sub-genre title: So if I pick Adventure as main and action as a sub I'd expect that it is an adventure with some action elements and vice versa. This can then be extended by description genres: ie.: first person, 2d, 3d, 3rd Person, On top Sight, horizontal scrolling, isometric, coop, multiplayer, online, only text, point and click, vertical scrolling So my Monkey Island would be: Adventure [Point and click] To enhance this even further for a powerful search and classification we could work with themes Some of the themes I could imagine: American History, Anime, Arabian History, Asian History, Cars, Battlemech, Book, Comic, Cyberpunk, Dating, Detective / Mystery, Politics, Realtime, Trains, Erotic, Fantasy, Movie/TV, Planes, Pinball, Mafia, Greek History, Horror, Chopper, Interactive Movie, Wargame, Labyrinth, Love / Romance, Lightgun Shooter, Logic, Minigames, Medieval, Nordic History, Pirates, Post-Apocalyptic, Quiz, Rhytm, Round-Based, Roman History, Sci-Fi, Shooter, Espionage, Tactics, Submarine, Western, Economy. Besides covers it would be nice to have images of the media. (Floppys, CD's) and of course of the goodies (Manuals, Codewheels, etc. etc.) Some random thoughts: Then if a game is part of a compilation should the game be linked to it? If the game has an addon should it be linked? Releases of the game: Again with Monkey Island 1 for example: Game was originally released in 1990 with 3,5 and 5,25 inch floppy's for dos. In 1991 it has been ported to atari st In 1992 it has been rereleased with cd. And that's only a part and only for the us. For Europe etc. it has different dates. Should we include European dates as well? And what about the different publishers? German version for example has a different publisher then in the US. Contents of the game: ie: 2 part box, manual, codewheel, 2 3,5 floppys, Some things that would be cool: Trivia? Country of origin Operating System Is the game voiced? Language in game? Forbidden Game? Germany has an index for games for example. Regionfree? Demo / Shareware? Related Websites Some features I'd love to see: Ability to add games to add to my backlog. (Not played yet) Recommendation of games based on the ratings of other users. Levels of Contributions (Awards etc.) I really like sites like icheckmovies where you get trophies when you watched movies from a list. That could be implemented for games as well. Also I think mobygames has a good approach of submission goals. I'd love to contribute and help make this database the best one out there! If you're looking for moderators I'm also here to help.

[CliveBarker]

Very good read, Cebion. I like your suggestions a lot. I want to comment on some of them. If a game is released in multiple platforms in different dates, I think the oldest date should be the one with top priority. I do not know if Jason wants the website aesthetics to be minimalistic, but the more metadata we are allowed to put in a game, the more info must be placed and shown at the game DB page. This can result in some web design issues. One suggestion for this specific topic: is to show only the oldest one in the "Date" field and the other dates can appear while hovering X platform. So, for example: Monkey Island first release was 1990. This is the one that will be at the Date field. The game was released for Atari at 1991. So, the user can hover the platform with the mouse and the "1991" will appear as a little text box. For moderation purposes, other approach can be used. Like showing all the dates and platforms next to each other, to facilitate the job. I like all the things you propose as "extra" metadata. Like Trivia and such. The problem is, the more info, the more dedication and time will take to a moderator to ensure every bit of data is correct. So, if these things get added (I would like them to be), maybe we should put some metadata priorities at the Moderation guidelines. Example: Top priority (must be correct always): Game Title Image Description Release Date Platforms Publisher Developer Genre Single Player/Multiplayer ... The other metadata can be "free" of moderation while submitting, but a moderator can check and edit the info whenever they need or want. This, to ensure that the most relevant metadata gets curated in a more efficient way and the DB gets rolling more quickly with a lot of moderated game submissions. And then, a moderator can spend their time adding or editing other, less relevant fields. This is all I wanted to say. Nice eye btw, kinda creeps me out :p

[DOS76]

One thing I'm confused with this discussion is if the MS-DOS version came out in 1990 why would the Atari ST version even be mentioned in the DOS section wouldn't the game have its own entry under the Atari ST platform and then the 1991 would be used as the release date for that version. I could see for using the earliest date though for games that are re-released on the platform

[Cebion]

DOS76 said One thing I'm confused with this discussion is if the MS-DOS version came out in 1990 why would the Atari ST version even be mentioned in the DOS section wouldn't the game have its own entry under the Atari ST platform and then the 1991 would be used as the release date for that version. I could see for using the earliest date though for games that are re-released on the platform

Thats correct. If you select your Platform and then do a search you won't have a problem. But if you search from the mainpage you'll get sometimes over 15 hits with the same titles and different platforms. Just some ideas since we're at the early stage =)

[CliveBarker]

DOS76 said One thing I'm confused with this discussion is if the MS-DOS version came out in 1990 why would the Atari ST version even be mentioned in the DOS section wouldn't the game have its own entry under the Atari ST platform and then the 1991 would be used as the release date for that version. I could see for using the earliest date though for games that are re-released on the platform

Oh, I thought every game will have their own page, and in that page all the platforms where its available will be displayed. For example if I look for Zelda II i get this result: http://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/2605 The game page for Zelda II and its list of details. So if this game were multiplatform, those should be listed there. I thought this is the way the DB was going to manage the entries. But if you say that this is a per platform basis, I am very lost... hehe

[DOS76]

Sorry guys I didn't know about the main pages I've never searched an individual game on the DB I usually just go there to moderate and haven't really looked around to much.

[SentaiBrad]

No the Database will be per platform, in the case of the same game being on multiple platforms obviously the date earliest will probably show up, but this doesn't account for the same game on the same console for multiple regions. Something like what Wikipedia shows. This would probably be a good idea in the long run, but right now it's not the top priority.

[DOS76]

So actually when I searched I only got different platform results so what I said still applies.

[hubz]

Started working on NES today, and noticed doubles and Famicom releases in the NES Section. Will these be removable in the future?

[SentaiBrad]

Yes. For now adding, removing and image editing are not available. In steps.

[retrtokid]

Hi. Id like to help contribute / moderate to the Database, I have a vast knowledge of the BBC / Acorn Electron systems, I've helped out a lot on BBC / Electron start.dot web site so I've been involved in this thing before, not been over confident, looking at the entries already set out in the Database for the Acorn Electron are incorrect in places. Always pleased to help in any other way I can.

[wkLeon]

Jason Carr said @CriticalCid, @XxvondutchxX, @wkLeon, I tried to open it up for you guys but I couldn't find your accounts. Go ahead and register and give me your gamer tags and I'll get you access.

Just letting you know that my account on the database is now @wkLeon. You can now add me to the admin list.

[AnUnusedMoniker]

Hey Guys, I'm interested in Moderating the database. Just let me know if/how I can help. Regards,

[alissongamer]

I would like to help organize the database, because I too helped in TheGamesDB, and realized that you got quite a lot of them, and there are things that should be arranged as duplicate images, or images with bad quality just not being deleted.

[Jason Carr]

Hi all, I just finally opened up changes, uploads, moderation for game images live on the site. Up next will be the ability to add and delete games. I know moderation isn't perfect at this point (we could do a lot of things to make it easier and more streamlined), but I'll be spending more time on that after we get editing squared away across the board. I'm about to open up moderation to the rest of the folks in this thread, so stay tuned. :)