Patrick Bregger from Germany has become the Top Contributor of the year 2011. It is his first title in the history of MobyGames. He joins Trixter, MAT, Unicorn Lynx, quizzley7, Servo, Xoleras, Martin Smith, Sciere and joyvalley as a MobyChampion. All together, the Germans have won 4 "gold medals", more than any other country. United States and Belgium follow with 3 titles each; Croatia / Japan, Israel and United Kingdom are left with 1 gold medal each.

2011 has been a rough year for the website; some would even define it as a crisis year. The amount of contributions has decreased. Only 7 people scored 10000 or more points in 2011, as opposed to 13 in 2010.

On the other hand, addition of historical (FM Towns) and new platforms, as well as the promised reform in adding platforms (meticulously researched tech specs are no longer required) means that the site is still alive and kicking. We wish to thank all the contributors for their hard work, and hope together that the next year will see a flourishing website, receiving the recognition it deserves!

Any European should feel at home on MobyGames. A little patchwork here and there, Germans doing all the work, and we're good for another year.

However, if you look at the approval side (according to the approver stat page, don't know how accurate that thing is), the crone clearly goes to Jeanne. Which is even more impressive if we consider that she was pretty much out of the loop for the last months.

By the way, Sciere (and therefore Belgium) "won" three times, not once.

Oh, right. Sorry!

The 2011 Top 50 consist of:

11 Americans (-1)
9 Germans (+2)
3 Russians (+1)
3 French
3 Canadians (-1)
2 Belgians
2 Swedes (-1)
2 Dutch
2 Polish (+1)
2 Brazilians (-1)
2 n/a (+2)
1 Brit (-1)
1 Israeli
1 Japanese (+1)
1 Ukrainian
1 Italian
1 Romanian
1 Norwegian (+1)
1 South African
1 Finn

Australia, Spain and Worldwide has fallen off the list.

It's nice to see the variety. Good to see the Russians still going strong, covering a lot of otherwise unknown info. But we need more Asians. I have fallen out of the loop with Chinese games, and there seem to be no Koreans here around. There is a whole lot of Korean games out there undocumented.

Congrats to all these maniacs ;-) I hope the aftermath of pending contributions won't kick me out - already dropped to the bottom during my x-mas holidays. Although I was looking forward to hit the top 50 this year, I think it was just possible due to the absence of some veterans. Leaves a bitter aftertaste..

Nice work there Germany and congratulation from your bros to the west ^^. While I won't argue that the year has been rough on this website, I can also say in its favor that this year there are some new faces on the site too.

Grats everyone and keep up all the excellent work! Happy new year!

Either the approvers have gone really lazy, or I'm just being completely ignored, because I have unapproved contributions since November xD

Easy boy, some things need time. I have a game correction which is unapproved since May...May 2009.

2012 RIP Moby Games.

Huh?

This cheery fellow also posted in Deb's thread making very nasty comments, so I'd just ignore him (permanently if possible).

If you are talking about me I did no such thing idiot. You totally misunderstood. All of you did.

I thought at least posting would show I had a heart and felt bad for everyone.

"Did not know you. I don't know anyone on this site. And I feel it is dead. But. Oh, go ahead, click on the ruby slippers: you know you want to. And there's no place like home! ;-) "

What part of that hurt your brain? Maybe do a search to find out what it means before pissing yourself.

"Did not know you. I don't know anyone on this site. And I feel it is dead..."

This last comment about MobyGames being dead? Why was that needed in there is all I'm asking? Like I said there, if you have a beef with the site or how it's run, please do that in a better place than a memorial thread for someone who passed away.

That's all really...

Maybe you're right. But there are a couple of things.

1) Notice how his sentence construction and word use is a bit off. Maybe Cheerio really means well but doesn't have the necessary skills to properly express himself.

2) He quotes Mom's "About me" section in that post.

I think he might not be that bad.

If he wasn't a native English speaker I might have an easier time accepting that. If that's the case, that he meant well but messed up grammatically, then I'm sorry. If not, I stand by my statements.

Whoa, I thought he was polish for some reason. That flag there certainly raises some doubts about that hypothesis.

Let's just say that my American wife reacted kind of the same way I did... So language barrier is out as well.

I believe a stray, hostile meteorite from the main part of the internet pierced the remote, peaceful region known as Moby Games. Let's hope no more cross our path.

Nothing wrong with combining bad news with bad news. It is alright if you still have to think about it. I can't find my dictionary.

???

He might as well mean that 2012 RIP everything on Earth

Or he's trolling us. Could be both.

Very off topic, but it would have been nice to see MG participate in tomorrow's strike/blackout. I mean, hey, even Wikipedia's in! Plus that GOG.com also made their opposition public (and I see them listed on the "strike" site, but otherwise I don't see a blackout notice anywhere), and they seem to be MG's partners, right? Or now that GameFly owns MG, it has to be on that other side of the battlefield?

Every time I think about sopa, my blood pressure goes up and I get light headed.

If the approval of the items submitted to analysis were more faster, maybe there would be more interested in contributing, including myself. I have several games whose arts are not included in the database of the site and I am deeply discouraged to do the work for scan it because have items more than three months in line for analysis.

One more thing!

I see the site loosing its original focus with tons of new system that isn't a real systens. In one hand the aprovers are very meticulous reject some photos and requiring scans with more then 200dpis wath does not mean quality. A classic example is visible in super famicom cartridges that whe was scanned shows a blur areas because de curvature of carts and in thats case a photo is much more interesting, still more with the actuals digital cameras. In another hand I see mediocre pictures to ilustrate the games of this new systens like virtual console of wii and zeebo for example.

I think that moby games need to review the site policy.

I am say all it because I care about the site and deserve to see it again like one of best game site like it was some year ago... :(

PS: Sorry about my english, but I hope that my message can be understand and my dissatisfaction.

I see the site loosing its original focus with tons of new system that isn't a real systens.

Sorry to detract from your very valid point, but this reminded me that I've got to start cheerleading for some other obscure "not real systems" now that we've got the BBC and webOS up here. It's been a while since anyone mentioned the Apple Newton, but now I've got something waiting to be crammed in there!

Cover art approval is a hard job, so it tends to be slow, yes. One thing that maybe could speed up the process a bit would be to have the PC queues split from the approver side. When a contributor sends a scan for a DOS game, other sends one for a Windows game and other sends one for a Linux game they all get together in the same queue. As some approvers can be more familiar with some platforms than others, it ends up taking time to separate the ones you can work with better.

This is just an example of a problem that affects the speed of cover art approvals and one possible solution. There are other issues, so yeah, please, be patient, we're trying.


Though it is true that the resolution isn't the only measure of quality, I don't agree that pictures taken with a camera would be necessarily better than scanned images. There are better scanners which can do a great job focusing on objects which are not directly touching the scanner glass's, providing excellent images of round-edged cartridges as the ones you mention. Also, it seems to me that at least in average, better results are achieved more often with the use of scanners than with the use of cameras. In other words, you don't need to be a professional to get an acceptable scan, but you need to be almost a professional to get good results with photos.


Here you have to blame the publishers for not providing better quality images. Speaking about Zeebo, particularly, cover art images taken directly from the console's memory are no better than what you see here, and that's because the system was designed to work with a maximum resolution of 640*480.

chirinea you know the great appreciation I have for you. You are undoubtedly one of the members who helped a lot since the beginning, even you are Brazilian like me and this make the communication much more easier but I have to disagree with you on two points:

I. You said: "Cover art-approval is a hard job, so it tends to be slow," True, I agree, but that's no excuse, because some years ago there wasn't so much delay in the approval.

II.You said too: "you need to be Almost a professional to get good results with photos," I also agree that it is more difficult to draw a picture quality, but I have a Canon T3i and even using a tripod, careful focusing and light because I have a fairly good knowledge in photography, I had some photos rejected.

I only wish that the site be the same again ... The most frustrating is not have to repeat the work for some reason asked by approvers, but is haven´t a return of our volunteer work to help the site.

By the way, I am sending over the next few days scans of NES games that do not have here, then give a check!

A big hug my friend!