I wanted to ask some of you a personal question. Lately I have been having so much trouble coming back to the site and contributing something and it's probably because I'm in High-School and I just don't have all the free time. I remember when I first came on to the site in 2005 I contributed things all the time, but I hardly do it anymore (Heck I've been playing video games more in my spare time than I use to.). I'd give anything if I can be just like the countless top contributors on the site like: Martin Smith, Jeanne, Corn Popper, Sciere, Unicorn Lynx, Servo, Oliver Jahn, Jass Oleg, Kabushi, MAT, Black Wolf, Lepricahn's Gold and a lot more.

Does anyone have a suggestion for me, I need to get back on the site.

Unicorn Lynx... ...Jass Oleg,

I realize that I might be close to schizophrenia, but is it that noticeable? :/

And it's "jazz", as in "jazz music" :()

Are you sure it isn't Jass Unicorn Oleg? ;P

Don't encourage him. :)

Jass Oleg? LOL...sorry...LOL...

It's funny cause I've been thinking lately that I don't spent the time I used to in playing video games because of Moby Games and other internet related ahhh...things. Seeing that you have contributed stuff in many different areas I'm sure it's not that hard for you to find something to contribute.

Um, I don't contribute all that often, but it isn't a big deal to me. When I can manage to put together a piece to contribute, I will. Honestly, are the little numbers next to your name that important to you? Just do what you manage to do, don't push yourself.

Most highly-ranked contributors probably spend more time reading and writing about games than actually playing them, so your case isn't necessarily a bad thing.

DJP Mom references your past educational submissions a lot, saving her a lot of work, so they are certainly not forgotten.

Well done, Jass Oleg it is. :) I think the problem you might be having is that most of the things to contribute to the site are somewhat time consuming. From finding out the release date and sourcing it to thinking of decent captions for screenshots to scanning then making sure the 15 consonant Molvanian name is spelled right for the 3rd time things can get pretty lengthy. If you're looking for contributions you can make without devoting large amounts of time I'd suggest you work on company and developer profiles. There's still tons without pictures or official sites. And some people listed as developers are more prominent then you think. Here's someone who doesn't have a picture; Adam West! Of course if you're looking for lengthier items then maybe instead of going towards purchased boxed games you could go after the indies released from sites such as Reflexive Entertainment or Big Fish Games. One thing that I did was try and add all the games from one small development house. I'm almost done too and it feels pretty good. I'm not sure how to end this now so, adios!

Oddly enough, I live in the same area, and we share the same library system, so many games I entered actually came from his home library :)

@ Andrew - kids games don't take much time to play, usually (if you can stand it!), and there are untold numbers still missing from the database. Many that are available to me I just can't play on my Vista machine, but maybe you can on your system. On your library website you can do an advanced search, limit it to software or video game, and type interactive multimedia in the general keyword field - it'll give you 173 pages of titles! Not all are games, and many are duplicates, but all are available to you (some places won't interlibrary loan games but you can still check out if you go there).

/library rant

How valid our suggestions can be really depends on what your reasons are for having a hard time contributing these days. If it's that editors have become picky, well, there's nothing to be done about that; if it's that you can't find any gaps where things haven't already been submitted, well, you need to look around until you find one of our glaring gaps.

If it's that you don't have time, don't worry about it -- the site will still be here after you graduate and have even less time 8)

A tragic loser? It's not worth it.

Who is a tragic loser?

all those countless top contributors, claims Iggy.

The problem is, once you see that you've hit a contribution score of 10000, you realise that you've probably spent more time writing about how said games play instead of playing them yourself. =) How depressing.

More easy contributions include, looking for games that have had their back covers scanned and then writing up the ad blurb. Adding licensed GBC/GBA/DS games that usually get ignored and filling out as much information as you can. A screen gives you, what, three points? I forget. But playing through those types of games doesn't take too long, and hammering the screencap button every so often will get you a steady flow of unique screens, enough to show the average user the game play. They usually have the credits in the main menu, too, meaning that you can screencap them through there so that there's a source for approvers to check when they're being confirmed. Licensed games usually have a large credits list, too, meaning even more points for you.

While credits are the toughest to do, they're also the most valuable if you're only interested in points. I've only done 150 or so sets of credits, but it's worked out to about 3600 points.

Although, personally, I don't really do it for the points. Firstly, I wanted the games I owned to be on the site. Which is done. Then I wanted to make sure that all the Mega Man games were on there. Oh boy, is that done now. Then I started adding Xbox Live Arcade games I downloaded. Then I unhooked the system so I could play games properly again. =) And since then, it's just been doing whatever I can do, really.

I've done more credits submissions than anyone else, but mostly on older games made by small teams. That's not the fast road to points.

I'd like to add that being a great contributor doesn't mean to be a top contributor. One could be just submitting screenshots and going up the ranks rally fast, while other could spend his time on MobyRanks or product codes and never get that high in the ranks. So if you just want to have points, install some emulator in your machine and start contributing screenshots.

but before you do, make sure that the emulator is set to produce shots in a sufficiently authentic resolution to be accepted by our approvers 8)

Which is why, to help the ego of you nerds *cough*, just aim for being a top contributor for a certain field (ie. screenshots, reviews, rankings, etc.) than the overall everything....since Sciere is determined in hoarding all the points. haha. Making up for Belgium's land mass I suppose.

MobyRanks are paid quite well, too.

Well, they're paid half a point. Except for product codes, minor edit revisions and no-point contributions like group-related stuff, it is the least you can get for a contribution. I know you've got about 8,500 of your almost 19,000 points only because of those, but people like you or nyccrg are exceptions.

But compare the time you need for a MobyRank with the time you need scanning cover art. Ca. 2 MobyRanks per minute --> 1 Point per minute vs. 3 covers in 5-10 minutes. It's nearly the same result. So for someone who is desperate for some points, it's an easy and fast way to get some.

Are you sure you got the times right? Cause if you do you must be really fast. I remember there was a time when I submitted some MobyRanks -enough actually to get used to it and be able to do it blindfolded but I'm sure I wanted close to 2 or 3 minutes for 1 submission. And that's because the actual submission may not take that much but it takes time to search for the game and see whether there is a MobyRank from the X site already in the database or not.

It depends on the source. How many pages do they use? How fast is their site? How fast is MobyGames at this moment? Do they have an easy layout where the conclusion is always at the same place? If everything fits, 2 per minute are more than possible. Including searching the game and looking for an already existing review. Most time is lost waiting for MobyGames to load...

Is one point really worth all that typing?

Half-point, Iggy, half.

It's not worth it.

Actually Stijn's got the most points for credits and he's only entered credits for 864 games. It's gotta be the team size that's the issue. You've entered credits for almost twice as many games but haven't received as many points. So maybe if he sticks to those new games with enormous credits?

The bigger and more legitimate the production the better, since my understanding is that credit entries of non-person entities (companies, nicknames, etc) don't garner any points 8)

The more credits I do, the more I see how careful you have to be when entering or approving them - I recently submitted credits for one game where a number of people were listed by their nicknames ("regular" nicknames, like Bob and Jen, I mean) and came up as not in the database when they actually were in by their full names, without AKAs. I'm sure this happens all the time, and the submitter has no way of knowing without researching. I do several things now when the credit wizard spits a name back at me:

• take another look at my source to make sure I entered it correctly
• open another Moby tab and check the name in it's various permutations - Bob Jones, Robert Jones, Bobby Jones, hyphenated names get checked by one, both, with a dash and without a dash, and so on
• poke around on the web a bit if the name is unusual, to see if the source has actually mis-spelled it (that happens with some frequency!)

It just isn't a simple point-amassing exercise, anyway, just sort of a satisfying one. I think of the kid testers who must just love to find themselves at Moby :D

I agree, I think credits are the most important thing here. It's what drew me to the site originally.

And remember when submitting credits always to have a box of aspirins nearby.

You should try Japanese credits sometime. Toru Nakajima, Tooru Nakajima, Tohru Nakajima, Touru Nakajima, Thoru Nakazima, Tooru Nakazima etc...

I'm sure you have pretty outspoken ideas about the concept of charity as well then =)

Remember that I am one of said losers.

My suggestion is: DON'T touch Petz series!!, Petz series is mine!!

I'm considering to massively contributing alternate titles to games in different languages too. But it doesn't look to ethical, just filling every game with titles in different languages doesn't seem to be very constructive.

In summary, you could try to find some forgotten field and specialize on it. For example, as I said, I'm contributing the stupid DS games of Ubisoft, mainly Imagine series and Petz series (note for editors: Petz series group needs revision due to the new DS games). It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. I have also noticed that many DS games have no screens at all, that's an unexploited field, for example.

This isn't unethical dude. As you said, someone has to do it. Look around, there are lots of Spanish titles around, and yes, this is constructive. If someone just knows the game by its Spanish title, you'll make it easier for him to find it. I for one use Brazilian titles a lot when searching for games: the way our search engine is, I would get lots and lots of titles if I searched in English.

Other great use for foreign titles is MobyTags. Sometimes you need to link that game which has lots of others which share the same name, but only that specific one is called that name in Spanish.

I spent an entire week researching CyberFront's website. I basically added the entirety of Valve's software catalog in Japanese, including all the alternate titles.

Alternate title contributions are nothing to be ashamed of.

"Alternate title contributions are nothing to be ashamed of."

It would be if you use babelfish to just translate them.

I don't. If I have doubts, I leave 'em alone and only add the Japanese spelling. :P

Well, for contributors who don't have access to legit games like moi, it's either freeware, abandownware, or holidays where you spend the entire day roaming for company profiles, developer info, and anything that can be confirmed from a verifiable source from the internet.

But the above only works if you have a lot of time to spare, where in my case I gained most of my points when I was in depression...hehe. If not, screenshots are always the fastest way to go. Followed by credits, but you'd have to work for that one...hard.

yay! :)

Hey, congratulations, that's a big round number and more!

Nah, wait for the news!