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Poll: Clean up list? (7 votes)
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Spring cleaning the list of games (Forums : Suggestions : Spring cleaning the list of games) Locked
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Mar 31 2017 Anchor

Hi

I have been on this site for some months and the one thing that bugs me out the most is: Old games or plain unfinished, with no updates for years, are still in the list of games.

The games of active creators have to battle an undying foe that is far above them in the list, because of time. Their current views place them in the top of the list and new entries and smaller creations never see the light of day.

Now to my suggestions:

1. How about two different lists. One with games already out (i.e. FNAF) for a longer period of time or even directly at release. The second one just for games in development.

2. Take out abandoned games. Let the players maybe have a button to report a game for being abandoned and check it out. Garbage Day, for example, can be bought but also was abandoned but is still in the list but since it received enough attention at the start, it is still on position 38 (at time of writing).

In my opinion it would be better if the position of a title would be reflected through the attention the game gets at the moment (maybe a period of a month or even a year). A bit like the review system of steam right now. Just let views decay over time or ignore them after a certain threshold. After all, an active game development leads to several updates per year I would think.

Maybe I'm not alone with this thought. If I am or not, maybe you are kind enough to use the poll to show me.

Rackhim

Apr 5 2017 Anchor

Well, it is one thing to keep released and unreleased/in-development games separate, and this

"2. Take out abandoned games. Let the players maybe have a button to report a game for being abandoned and check it out. Garbage Day, for example, can be bought but also was abandoned but is still in the list but since it received enough attention at the start, it is still on position 38 (at time of writing)."

is another thing. First, because it is way too subjective. Who could judge that? Site admins? The community? We are talking about released games that someone suddenly deemed abandoned. Second, it defeats the point of the site being just a database, not a classy restaurant, all games (desktop, web, flash, hardcore, casual, released, unreleased, abandoned and so on) should be given a chance and accepted without any question. (Featuring or headlining news and particular releases and taking down bad quality-wise pages is a different matter entirely, mind you.)

RealApprentice
RealApprentice Mighty pirate!
Apr 6 2017 Anchor

I'm in favor of this, regrettably the staff will say "that is has files" and will not take any further action.

However, I do believe it must be possible to add an "active" or "archive" flag for mods and games, depending on how much development activity the mod/game has. The Filesnetwork portion of the old Gamefront already had such distinction that several of their sites were archived. This could also serve in the benefit for ModDB and their other sites such as Gamefront without resorting to date truncating.

By default, the search option ONLY searches in ACTIVE mods and games and not in those who have been flagged archived. In order to search through archived content, the user will have to manually activate this option in the additional options. That way, they can implement a single search feature for all their sites rather then have a search for ModDB and a seporate search for SlideDB and a seporate search for IndieDB and a seporate search for Gamefront and a seporate search for who-knows-what . . .

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Apr 6 2017 Anchor

Sorry, but me as a user would prefer to search for released games and mods, whether it is Steam, Gamefront or any other site, not for games and mods judged as "active" by a minority. One could question your motives, are you so jealous and do you hate popular games so much that you would like to label them as unwanted and inappropriate just because they are finished (complete) and there is no longer need for them to be in development?

The only problem is profiles hosting only outdated releases (not working in any way) or profiles marked as released but never released to the public. Not sure what you (Rackhim and RealApprentice) are really hinting at (which really sounds like "we can't win in a popularity contest, so let's at least block and hide popular released games and mods so they get out of our way")?

Apr 7 2017 Anchor

Your text, feillyne, sounds quite hostile and you assume a lot.

I may never win said popularity contest but it still irks me and my lack of talent is well known to me. If you would have a different list for finished games and those, that are in active development, I just think it being better for visibility.

It wouldn't be a minority, that's what this is for. If no majority is behind this, nothing will happen but maybe you only need the majority of the mods, not the users. And it is pretty easy to set a period of time(through vote or just plain logic) to have passed before a game is considered to be abandoned. If it is not released and, say, a year without an update has passed: Abandoned. Take those out, clean up the list.

Please stop assuming so much, feillyne, since you are not good at it.

And before you ask: The two main things I wanted to suggest with this are a sperate list for games in active development and/or to take out abandoned games(, in the new list or old ones).

Apr 7 2017 Anchor

Well, because that's the pot calling the kettle black. You assume that games are abandoned, which is assuming a lot while trying to hurt developers who may have stopped development for a while but still want to restart or add something to it, or they actually abandoned their games due to social pressure or artistic apathy, and will never come back or perhaps they will after a year or two, you never know. (Aye, I've seen indie games that were restarted after years.)

Early access / alphafund and unreleased games that are not developed anymore are a problem, but knowing the community, people will start reporting released games and mods (non-early-access ones), which is quite undesirable. Games and mods seem to be digital works of art, once they finished, they are complete, not abandoned... you sow then you reap rewards, not slave away for eternity just because people want you to update your games and mods your whole life.

EDIT: and by the way, it would be pretty easy to cheat the system and update the game/mod once a year so it is labelled as "active". Voting would be different, but considering karma vote spam and wars, voting could also be cheated or abused.

And constructive criticism of your idea has nothing to do with being hostile. Why do you assume someone is hostile when they criticise politely? These are forums after all, they are made for all kinds of discussions.

Edited by: feillyne

RealApprentice
RealApprentice Mighty pirate!
Apr 8 2017 Anchor
feillyne wrote:

Sorry, but me as a user would prefer to search for released games and mods, whether it is Steam, Gamefront or any other site, not for games and mods judged as "active" by a minority. One could question your motives, are you so jealous and do you hate popular games so much that you would like to label them as unwanted and inappropriate just because they are finished (complete) and there is no longer need for them to be in development?

The only problem is profiles hosting only outdated releases (not working in any way) or profiles marked as released but never released to the public. Not sure what you (Rackhim and RealApprentice) are really hinting at (which really sounds like "we can't win in a popularity contest, so let's at least block and hide popular released games and mods so they get out of our way")?

I don't think it's fair to accuse people of something that isn't the case when only a suggestion of a level of criteria is being put on the table. No matter where you go on the internet, people will always face a certain level of criteria. Those levels will be different when you visit ModDB, CNN or even the New York Times but none the less, they will be there. For ModDB, all uploads have a file, preview image, name and summary to begin with in order to be accepted. For CNN and the New York Times, all their articles must meet their respective journalistic criteria in order to be published.

In essence, this suggestion doesn't differ much from the criteria you are using for dead mods, as seen in the following quote (one of your posts from 2014):

feillyne wrote: Removed, to note you don't have to report old dead mods updated 4-8 years ago as those can be progressively and easily caught & handled by the staff.
feillyne wrote: So please report only new 1-24 months old (or last updated) TBD mods that have no media (screenshots, etc) any longer on their profiles - mods canned by developers themselves that were never archived or removed off the site.
feillyne wrote: That also includes recently "released" mods whose downloads and pictures were deleted and are not available anywhere or original developers do not wish them released here (so "released" mods that became "unreleased").


In here, you lay out several criteria for (dead) mods that need to be met in order to be deleted from ModDB. It's a stretch but one can assume when you don't see what you want to see, you'll get them "out of your way". Our suggestion really has nothing to do with a "popularity contest" as you are bringing it. Returning to the earlier mentioned Filesnetwork example: if you look at one of their pages, you'll see on the right two listings, Game Portals and The Archives. The first were the sites for the games they considered active, the latter were those that they didn't see as active anymore and for that, they had their own levels of criteria.

In no way do I say that those files/games need to be deleted, they just have to be flagged differently to prevent the system from clogging up. Their content will remain there but people will have to make a little more effort in order have them found, which won't be much of a problem because if I look for stuff that is at least twenty years old, I don't expect to find it through regular channels.

The level of criteria I propose for games and mods to be flagged 'active' or 'archived' on ModDB are:

  • 1) Is the developer/publisher still supporting the game by releasing patches for the multiplayer part or keeping the masterservers running?
  • 2) Does the game has an active modding community that periodical released new maps, skins and other stuff?
  • 3) Do people still play the game?

I'm quite convinced that whenever a developer doesn't update their game anymore, the publisher pulled the plug on the masterservers, no new maps are released and only four people are playing the game over the course of the year, everyone will agree that that particular game should be considered flagged 'archived'.

Edited by: RealApprentice

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Apr 9 2017 Anchor

I should copy your text into my initial post, RealApprentice, because it far better conveys what I wanted to say :) . I have nothing more to add. Well done.

@feillyne: Your Text came across quite hostile to me, maybe because of the things you implied. Nevermind, this is about archiving games and not my perception of your text.

Nearly everything can be abused, sadly, but you have to start somewhere and this suggestion is nothing different.

RealApprentice
RealApprentice Mighty pirate!
Apr 16 2017 Anchor

As an addition, I would like to point out the following example: Moddb.com

Within this file, the following red message appears:

This weapons skin has been archived by the uploader because it is out of date and no longer supported. We recommend you browse the file list for the latest weapons skin.

This signifies that a flagging system is already implemented, though currently available to the uploaders themselves but the it should be possible to extend those criteria further . . .

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