Removing indies from 'mod'db and keeping them on 'indie'db Thread

Ok a little bit of a rant from me, I have been following moddb for a long time and have found it invaluably useful in my fruitful harvesting of gaming gems which are mods. I have also been introduced to the possibilities of the indie scene.

However in the moddb news feed there are too many small random indie games some not even commercial. It also doesn't help when the mods aren't authorised for quite a while and they end up just being at the bottom of the news feed for only a small window of time untill they are knocked just below the threshold. I know that in my own experience, I would try things in the news feed that got a lot of attention and had discussions etc. However, with so much clutter it is almost impossible and makes it extra hard for mods which may be trying to bolster player bases or what have you, if they don't get the spotlight they deserve.

I have been pondering on this for a while after seeing swathes of indies and not mods on moddb however, recently a mod that I follow made a release (First Strike of bf2142) and it was at the bottom below like 7 other indie games and it just went after a few hours. It wasn't even given a chance and it wasn't put down by other mods.

/end rant.

Is it just me?

Case point in the news articles atm there are 2 mods and the rest are indies.

Edited by: joshino

I like that its convienently in one place (that i dont have to switch sites to find something cool) and also i prefer the red color scheme over the acid green

Completely agree with joshino. IndieDB should be a special place, just like ModDB, instead of being just a shiny looking overlay. :-)

And yes, as Flash112 pointed out, the IndieDB theme is a bit too "bright", though it's okay. IMHO, IndieDB would require
1) additional dark/toned skins, for example blue and red skin to choose from
2) have all indies from ModDB moved to IndieDB

But the 2nd point only if the first one would be fulfilled. ;-) Because right now, IndieDB may meet a similar end to AddonDB...

I'd like them separated. This is what GameSpy did (putting everything together) & ended up with so much clutter it lost it's appeal. Right now there's 8 indie games listed on the front page and 3 mods. I'm wondering if mod teams just don't bother any more because of all the indie stuff that's put out there and they feel they get lost in the shuffle.

Is there a way for a user setting to be setup so it only showed stuff from moddb.com/addon/indie/etc?

On a semi-related note, it SEEMS that stuff is authorized in batches and some thing will sit there for 1/2 a day while other things are up there less then an hour. Like I said, it seems that way, don't know if it's true.

Yeah, news and other indie stuff only adds to the cluster of mod articles & downloads on the front page of ModDB. BTW, everything is checked & authorised only once a day, and usually by Henley (with the exception of e.g. Overgrowth news that is authorised immediately whatever time of day it is, and whichever admin is online).

@moci, yes, there seems to be no reason for modders and mod players (and even other people, curious guests, those unregistered, whoever) to even take a look at IndieDB. Makes the whole site much less appealing.

Visiting Desura to install games and mods has some serious sense, while the existence of IndieDB has only very little point right now.

Technically there's no reason for indies to visit moddb if they don't care about mods. It works both ways. To look at it another way, if I wanted to know all the gritty details about indie game X I'd be on their website, not this one.

Any way things could be authorized twice a day so stuff stays up longer?

Maybe not users, but the amount of new indie games registered here drastically increased. Few people were aware that ModDB also gives some space to indie developers for their games.

With the unrevealing of IndieDB, more indies are added to the database, daily.

@TheHappyFriar You need to ask Henley about that. The whole DesuraNET team is very busy lately, so it seems rather unlikely. (Waiting myself for monthly spotlights to return. :-( They seem to be gone for good.)

feillyne wrote: Yeah, news and other indie stuff only adds to the cluster of mod articles & downloads on the front page of ModDB. BTW, everything is checked & authorised only once a day, and usually by Henley (with the exception of e.g. Overgrowth news that is authorised immediately whatever time of day it is, and whichever admin is online).

What is the reason that news of certain projects are treated favored? What gives an Indie title the right to be treated favored over for example mods? I can imagine some Modders getting pissed reading that statement here fostering discomfort in the community between Modders/Indies (which we really don't need).

Edited by: Dragonlord

None of projects are treated favoured, rather it's the developers and the QUALITY of their news that gets noticed by admins. So far, Overgrowth devs make sure that their news is well-formatted, free of HTML and spelling errors, and media rich (instead of just walls of text).

Only few other devs do that. Others simply care little to read news guidelines, though there are many more mod & indie devs doing that now.

For example, most news that awaits authorisation now could be simply archived, immediately (walls of text, little relevant to mod updates), but people left "keep private" option unchecked. So who's fostering discomfort for who?

Edited by: feillyne

Yep, majority of the content is both added and viewed through ModDB anyway. That's why IndieDB is pushed into the background, instead of being a true "sister" site. And also that's why the solution proposed by joshino seems very relevant.

Edited by: feillyne

Well I really prefer it the way it is now. ModDB is a great organized system which makes it easy to find both mods and indies without everything being in the way. I understand the need to separate the two because IndieDB isn't used as much as ModDB but that's maybe because of the lack of games on IndieDB, it needs time to grow.
Also, if you were to separate the two, image this: what if there are mods for indie games? that would really complicate things and there would be a lot of switching back and forth between sites.

It's a relatively interesting proposal but I think the majority will agree that things should stay the way they are now (please correct me if I'm wrong).

feillyne wrote: For example, most news that awaits authorisation now could be simply archived, immediately (walls of text, little relevant to mod updates), but people left "keep private" option unchecked. So who's fostering discomfort for who?

I guess this is also due to the lack in the system. You have only two options: public (front-page) or private (profile only). There's no in-between (group only for example). Also private news and articles tend to not show up as notifications to the watchers which sort of forces you to not tick it. Furthermore the editor seems to change the rules all the time. It's very difficult to format a text HTML properly as a month or two later the editor suddenly messes up tried-and-true HTML formating or goes crazy for no reason (like suddenly spreading formating all over a paragraph with no way to kill it off except deleting the entire text and start new). Forces many to just bang in simple text and maybe an image or two (videos are also a real pain to add to news-posts, I posted about that some time ago already) as anything else is most probably going to explode in their face. Furthermore the "private" button is not really in a prominent place nor is it properly explained so many don't get what ticking it is going to do. I know the authorizing process is a pain with the many real trash news and articles all around but the current system does also its best to make the live of people hard (and error prone). Fixing this all would certainly cut down on the number of news posts/articles queued up for authorization.

Now what goes for the topic at hand I don't think it makes sense to totally rip Indie stuff out of ModDB. After all both Desura and IndieDB are just views of ModDB so a separation is not really possible. But the color theme on IndieDB definitely could use an improvement, that's right.

@Dragonlord Yes you're mostly right, the system needs revamp, but the main DesuraNET team is, as previously said (many times), very very busy.

BTW, private news doesn't show up on your updates list? Strange, on my list it does. Perhaps you should report it as a bug.

Λdmiral wrote: Well I really prefer it the way it is now. ModDB is a great organized system which makes it easy to find both mods and indies without everything being in the way. I understand the need to separate the two because IndieDB isn't used as much as ModDB but that's maybe because of the lack of games on IndieDB, it needs time to grow.

Loads of indies are on the database. People simply prefer to view indie games through ModDB though. :-) Also only ModDB support custom skins (themes) for game profiles, IIRC.

Λdmiral wrote: Also, if you were to separate the two, image this: what if there are mods for indie games? that would really complicate things and there would be a lot of switching back and forth between sites.

There's a simple solution: mods for indie games and indies (with mods) themselves stay on ModDB. ;-) Only indies without mods would be exclusively on IndieDB (and Desura if published).

Edited by: feillyne

feillyne wrote: Loads of indies are on the database. People simply prefer to view indie games through ModDB though. :-) Also only ModDB support custom skins (themes) for game profiles. IndieDB doesn't at all.

Why so? I thought IndieDB is mainly just a view of ModDB so shouldn't the theming information not be stored already alongside the profile?

@EDIT: Concerning private news not showing: it's not always. At times I see (especially in groups or games) news posts that never made it into my update list while others in the group did. Could be though due to various reasons that I can't see from here.

Edited by: Dragonlord

Dragonlord wrote: Why so? I thought IndieDB is mainly just a view of ModDB so shouldn't the theming information not be stored already alongside the profile?

Should, although they seem to have different CSS/theming info, IIRC.

Though after a second look... it seems Minecraft got a new skin on IndieDB, so sorry for that misstatement, it seems it's possible:
Indiedb.com (ModDB: Moddb.com )
But for example, Λdmiral Skeybar's Space 3102: ACEs Void wasn't "ported" there:
Indiedb.com (ModDB: Moddb.com)

Dragonlord wrote: @EDIT: Concerning private news not showing: it's not always. At times I see (especially in groups) news posts that never made it into my update list while others in the group did. Could be though due to various reasons that I can't see from here.

You're sure? Only updates about new member blog posts stopped to be shown, at least here, dunno why (maybe DesuraNET took this feature out). But all updates about new articles kept private (whether on game, mod or group profiles) are displayed correctly.

Edited by: feillyne

feillyne wrote:
Though after a second look... it seems Minecraft got a new skin on IndieDB, so sorry for that misstatement, it seems it's possible:
Indiedb.com (ModDB: Moddb.com )
But for example, Λdmiral Skeybar's Space 3102: ACEs Void wasn't "ported" there:
Indiedb.com (ModDB: Moddb.com)

Maybe only active and popular games get ported because staff needs to do it manually?

Yeah, that's probably why.

Curious to know what official DesuraNET team thinks about joshino's suggestion.

Edited by: feillyne

Yes, I'd like to hear their opinions on this as well.

Automatically check the "private" box to start. I didn't check it when I posted news in the Doom 3 game and there was no way for me to make it private after I hit the submit button. Oopes on my part as I didn't really want it on the front page as I'm not really concerned with what non-D3 fans thought of the news anyway.

So change that default and move it by the submit button so it's nice and obvious.

Please.

Personally I've been a bit confused about indie games being on ModDB. The way I imagined it was that IndieDB was where the game data/info (profile) was stored and IndieDB profiles could be used if adding a mod on ModDB.

I guess the outlier is that for non-indie games there needs to be a place to add the game profile and therefore ModDB needs the game profile ability which means no real way of stopping Indie games from adding profiles there.

If you separated the games profiles and mod profiles it might work but then it wouldn't be IndieDB - it'd be GameDB? With Desura providing sale profiles for games they sell, linking to "extended" info (reviews/screenshots/videos) stored on the GameDB and mods stored on ModDB. If all three sites shared the same backend they could be themeable from the single user profile?

Hello thanks for the suggestion. IndieDB is a new site it has only been active for just over a year now, and in that time we have seen the active developer count rise considerably. News and new game profiles are created at a much quicker rate then that of ModDB so while the news flow on ModDB has stayed the same the new injection of Indie related content makes the news move much quicker, however the popularity of the site is well below that of ModDB (and I mean considerable enough to not segregate the community). The site has been a success however like you said 90% of our community still uses ModDB and that will not change.

What I think needs to happen is for a new site design to better suite the large number of news we get daily, however this wont happen until our other projects settle down a bit.

Henley - I'm sure users would just prefer it if you added new filters to the tabs. Rather than filter exclusively by platform, you can split it to include mods, indies and 'commercial' games.

Edited by: ambershee

@Henley thanks for your answer.

@ambershee Yep, right, something like that. IMHO, these platform filters should be replaced with filters: ModDB / IndieDB / Desura / IndieRoyale / ModHallOfFame.

So all sister sites are included. So far platform selection caused much confusion and people's complaints about mods suddenly "vanishing" from the site.

Well, thanks for the responses I didn't actually expect this to get much if any attention so I guess thats a great sign!
I honestly would agree that if you thought it hindered desura i.e people would stop pandering to indies just because they don't want to navigate to indiedb as they are only used to moddb. I'm glad that you have given it thought and it is understandable that the manpower needed to change it is elsewhere atm. In the end I am just greatful to moddb for such a long time giving me easy access to what the mainstream of gaming no longer offers. I also hope that desura can streamline this process and convert those individuals who grumble at the current state of video gaming then do nothing about it. ( For example - Youtube.com This video whilst I agree with the premise, if they just took a look over available indies and mods they would never feel like that again.)

Back on topic, didn't there used to be a mod round up? I mean could something like that be feasible again, where perhaps modders who have pushed out major releases can put forward to have their mod commented on in said newsletter? Perhaps even taking the need for staff writers could make them write a very short description and provide links etc for formatting in? I mean it's such a small thing with large consequences because most users are going to be lurkers who will pick at things they are presented with, and others coming for something specific they already know about.

Edited by: joshino