The game groups "Rogue variants" and "The Roguelike games" seem to serve the same purpose.

-Mike

Hahaaa! I've been trying to change and clarify this long ago, but nobody was interested. Now this gross desinterest yields the confusion that I expected. Well...

Here's the explanation, but the groups are described well anyway: The group "Rogue variants" is used for games commonly known as "Rogue-likes" everywhere else on the net -- i.e., single-character, top-down maze crawls rpg's, mostly with ASCII graphics.

The group "The Roguelike games" is used for for adaptations of popular commercial games or movies into a Roguelike, and like Alien: The Roguelike or Doom: The Roguelike etc.

I had suggested that "Rogue variants" be renamed "Rogue-like games", while "The Roguelike games" renamed "Roguelike adaptations" or something. But as game group management seems to be a highly esoteric and arcane art on MobyGame, with me not really knowing the right incantations, or whatever -- I have abandoned this whole issue.

Still pisses me off, though; MG could be really great -- but many of the most interesting games I'm interested in cannot be documented appropriately due to the rigid and overdetailed structure of the database.

I feel you. One of my main interests is canceled games and our ability to document those is sorely lacking.

Amen.

"Roguelikes" really ought to be the name of the "Rogue Variants" group, since it's the term universally used by anyone who cares about the admittedly niche group.

"The Roguelike games" is just confusing. It should contain everything that is both "roguelike" and "fangame", I think, but I don't know that that unique combination of attributes is really worth tracking with a group (except through the search engine, where searching for "roguelike" ought to turn up all the "X: the roguelike" games.)