News and information about other online game databases

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The UVL people reached 100K game entries, and took this milestone to start an interesting discussion about the future of the site, broadening their audience, missing features, etc..

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BTW, I just remembered VGMuseum, a site that focuses on everything with potential copyright problems. Just leaving the link here, so I don't forget again.

In other news, VGList.net is not reachable for several days.

[gene]

Mobygames is removing all watermarks from screenshots and cover scans.
Read the full thread here.

Let me quote this from the first post:

So why are we removing the watermarks? Well, essentially we think it's the right thing to do. Screenshots/covers don't belong to us and watermarks obscure the image. It's understandable why the site originally did this and it used to be very common, but we feel it's an outdated practice.

Nice!

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Mobygames is removing all watermarks from screenshots and cover scans.

A good and logical development which is long overdue.

The IGDB reached 10K "game titles" which naturally means 10K games in their database. Furthermore, there is this sentence in the news:

You don't have to collect Karma, but in doing so you are investing in us so that one day we can ALL reap the benefits.

Now whatever that means (collecting Karma means contributing.).

And VGList is still down, so it's probably dead.

[Independent]

I think all the other video games site quite read here.
Nevertheless: a club is the right way to collect all the fine video games.
(Rechtlich gesehe ist das der einzige vernünftige weg und die probleme die MG und co haben gibt es nicht theroretisch)

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Quite some news to share:

The IGDB published an advanced search which I like, because you can freely combine different criteria there. This could be a good role model for our own advanced search.

The UVL owner made some changes that are more or less cosmetic.

And last, but not least, VideogameGeek reworked their image policy, upping the screenshot limit to 24 in the process.

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Gene had the idea to publish blog posts with database news. So here goes!

I wrote the first issue of our new GameDB News Roundup, and also the German translation.

If no objections show up, I will publish those soon.

[gene]

Gene had the idea to publish blog posts with database news. So here goes!
I wrote the first issue of our new GameDB News Roundup, and also the German translation.
If no objections show up, I will publish those soon.

What a great idea!

I read both articles, only made one or two minor changes.
Can go online!

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Both versions are online!

[Independent]

Thank you for the German translation.
(Danke noch mal für die deutsche übersetzung)

[gene]

There is an interesting discussion about "main game titles" going on at Mobygames!

If you did not read it until now:
go for our blog post about game titles at Oregami.

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And just days after our big blog post about Gaming Environments, MobyGames adds four new virtual machine platforms to their database:

Z-Machine
Hugo
TADS
Glulx

Kudos to the Moby people for being the first major site to document these "hardware-independent" game releases!

[gene]

Back from holidays!

IGDB startet their public API access for everyone.
More here.

It is with great joy that we are finally able to launch our API officially. For all of our non-developing users, an API makes it possible for other sites and apps to access and use our data. One of the principles behind IGDB.com is accessibility of data. We wish to share the data with anyone who wants to build cool videogame oriented websites, apps and services.This means that the information you contribute to IGDB.com can now be used by other projects as well.

Thus you are not only contributing value to this site but to (hopefully with time) hundreds of other projects as well.For all developers out there that wish to start using our API, please request access here: http://www.igdb.com/api/request. We are looking forward to see what exciting game related projects you come up with. Happy coding!

PS. Even if you wish to create a similar site to IGDB.com, we will STILL give you access to our API. We are cool dudes and we are not afraid of competition. On the contrary we welcome it as it keeps us humble and on our toes.

[hydr0x]

Very interesting. I can only applaud them for getting the API ready and make it easy to use for everyone.

Of course, looking at the documentation, especially of the Game API, it's pretty obvious that their data model is not as well designed as hoped. On the other hand, their search algorithm is quite nice

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MobyGames lifted their media scan rules, and now accepts complete sets, where the media only differ by a number (say "1 of N").

And I wrote another News Roundup for video game databases. Please yell at me, when I missed something.