Design and Features ideas

[Indra]

Well, mind you, a game database in itself doesn't make the database popular. MG was primarily intended for game collectors (see their standard for packaging quality by Trixter). Later we discovered that users just liked having game lists.

I would say that the secret ingredient is the ability for users to customize a lot of things on their personal profile, either for hobby interests or bragging rights. As an RPG fanboi, I'd be ecstatic if my personal profile eventually became a character sheet of sorts. Hell, I used to spend hours just browsing the top 50 of anything on MG users i.e. contributing stuff = equivalent = how many chickens I kicked on an RPG that records that kinda stuff.

It's shallow, but there's a reason why the fashion industry is multi-billion dollar industry. :p
Also, this may be a side-opportunity for you guys who own the site to make some money via products. Fan service. Let's be realistic here.

Also, not entirely sure if this is the right thread for it, but that has never stopped me before. Stuff that never got implemented in MG in no particular order:

- Links to manuals via Replacementdocs
- Documenting game icons (there goes my game icon collection)
- Documenting official game trailers
- Documentation official and fan wallpapers (really, people like downloading free stuff)
- Documenting minor and major game mods (just to interest those nerd modders)
- Yeah, incorporate backloggery as Rola said.
- Document game music (legally questionable) and a separate section for game music info not part of the credits section.
- Oh, someone mentioned themes already? I miss my MobyDark.
- Game company hierarchies (parent company, subsidiaries, change of ownership, etc.) including detailed history of management)
- Game company logo screenshots evolving and for what games. Including company logo shots only used for a particular game.
- Game language support info
- Game price list comparison (I'm obviously not interested :p )

And a whole bunch of other stuff mentioned secretly in the MG approver wiki that apparently no one can access. -_-

Although mind you, depending on how ambitious the nerds here will be, it's going to be more of a Game Industry Database than just a Game Database cataloging games.

[Tracy Poff]

Another thing I was about to suggest to MobyGames (did you notice how often I say that?) was that it has everything needed to encompass backloggery.com functionality (honestly, just add icons "finished", "still playing"... to "Playlist" feature).

Actually, as useful as Backloggery is, I think that's not really a good fit for Oregami itself. In essence, Backloggery just lets you put some items in some lists, and coincidentally those items happen to be games. The only thing that Oregami would be useful for would be as a source of information on those games. Which, fortunately, it's designed to act as: the client-server model used means that it would be no harder to design a separate Backloggery-like site using Oregami data than it would be to incorporate that functionality into Oregami itself. It may even be simpler: keeping separate things separate generally makes software easier to understand and maintain.