Happy Friday! One more release for the week.

v2023.03.03

• Added critic and user score sorting to the game browser
• New version of Contribute Game tool
• View cover page now includes links to other groups
• Can now create new threads in game forums
• Validation fixes
• Misc. UI polish, bug fixes
• Infrastructure optimization, updates

Thanks again for all the feedback and bug reports! We're working through them as fast as we can. Although we ran a long open beta, we're dealing with a complex data set with many many tools, and there's little substitute for real-world use. If you find anything that's still not working, and not already on the Bugs forum, please add it.

Update log for v20230301:

• Added customization options to game browser: Add or remove icons and platforms from the list
• Added Spellings and forum threads to game overview when they exist
• Added contribute page and link to game, person and company menus
• Added localized timestamps and paging to forum
• Game browser now remembers sort preference (last used)
• Game browser now displays relevant info depending on sort (e.g., Moby Score when sorting by Moby Score)
• Quick search optimization and improvement
• Display most recent credits on person and company overviews
• UI/UX improvements and fixes for credits contribution form
• Default to saving resized PNG/GIF as PNG (note: some screenshots are JPEG that should be PNG and will be regenerated)
• Improved game preview
• Can now add multiple critic scores on game submission form
• Require partial dates to be in ISO format
• Do not require perspective to be selected for all games
• Allow moby group tags
• Allow moby_html in photo captions
• Removed erroneous proof requirement for related sites
• Fixes for reviews summary display
• Fixed permission errors
• Fixed game cover preview to show comments
• Fixed approval email preference setting
• Fixed company logo submission
• Fixed for profile editing
• Fixed display of credits source and release info
• Fixed handling of role names when editing credits
• Fixed report function for forum posts
• Fixed editing WIP/pending games
• Fixed adding mononymous developers
• Fixed places where mobile UI wasn’t wrapping or resizing properly
• Fixed missing URL redirects
• Misc. other fixes, tweaks, polish

v20230223

• Added groups, genres and attributes to browse menu
• UI updates for contribution tools: critic scores and release info
• Better error reporting for image uploads
• Fixed “the role name is required” bug
• Fixed moby_html
• Email service fixes
• More URL redirects
• Misc. UI tweaks, fixes
• Misc. backend optimization, cleanup

As we continue fixing and polishing things up, I'm curious, what would be your ideal version of Related Games?

Update log v20230222

• Optimization pass on game collections and increased page size to 100
• Updated review / collect tool to display release year next to platform name (when relevant)
• Added ability to hide sections on the homepage
• Added preview functionality for forum posts
• Added ability to continue a rejected item
• Added approval comments on game submission step 2
• Enabled reordering of photos, screenshots, promo images
• Enabled non-integer values for critic scores
• Fixed email delivery
• Fixed forum thread message and unread counts
• Fixed product code editing
• Fixed editing promo images
• Fixed recent games endpoint on API
• Fixed adding new product codes
• Fixed review summary showing other platforms on platform pages
Fixed errors not showing up in some contribution tools
• Fixed quick search person filter
• Fixes for merging people entries
• ...and various UI polish and backend fixes

First update log on the new production platform! Thanks everyone for all the feedback and bug reports. We're going through them as quickly as we can.

v20230221 update log:

• Added paging to game collections
• Credits submission now saves between steps
• Better error reporting on credits submission
• Sorting game collections now remembered as a user preference
• Game browser now supports up to 50 results per page
• Fixed navbar menu for iOS Safari
• Fixed credit and image submissions
• Fixed WIP game platforms with covers
• Fixed approver credit classification editor
• Fixed product code validation
• Misc. minor fixes, tweaks

Note: We are aware of a problem with the email service. Emails are getting queued up, but not sent. They should resume by morning.

Welcome to the new MobyGames! It's the same database we've been curating over the past 24 years, but with an entirely rebuilt infrastructure, backend and frontend. We know it'll take some time to get used to, and we are still refining things. It's forever a work in progress, but now our rate of progress will be dramatically accelerated.

All data has been migrated, including:

• 323,918 games across 311 platforms
• 5,506,997 credits
• 1,015,236 industry professionals
• 45,642 companies
• 746,299 images of cover art, media, packaging
• 989,793 in-game screenshots taken by players
• 894,894 images of promotional art

What's new?

• An infrastructure with vertical and horizontal scaling, automated testing, hot reload, atomic deploys
• Perl backend replaced with Python
• Built from scratch user interface for desktop and mobile
• New search functionality, including search as you type
• All new game browser that updates in place
• Dark mode
• Related games
• More data! Including game rankings per platform and frequent collaborator data
• Trending games, companies and industry professionals
• Easier to rate, review, and collect games
• Hotkeys
• Estimated approval times for contributions
• Updated contribution and approval tools, with more improvements on the way
• Countless tweaks, revisions, and optimizations throughout the database and site

And there's much more to come as we continue working to make MobyGames an indispensable tool for gamers, historians, researchers, and the game industry writ large.

This project has been a long time in the works and we're excited to finally put it into production! Tracy and I have been chipping away at this for years on a mostly part-time basis, along with feedback and testing with Moby admins, approvers and contributors all along the way. And with thanks to Atari for supporting the project, enabling full time development to get the new platform to feature parity and beyond.

Thanks to the MobyGames community for your support and feedback so far. We hope you enjoy the new site and we'll be focused on fine-tuning and resolving any issues that arise. Then onward to improving contribution/approval tools and new features. We look forward to building on this new foundation! Stay tuned.

The site is going into read-only mode starting tonight as we begin the process of moving to the new platform! This may take a few days. We're moving millions of images, recreating their thumbnails, and updating the database from Postgres 11 to 15, along with over 60 migrations.

In the meantime, feel free to continue browsing this site or the beta (which no longer requires login).

Stay tuned!

As per tradition, I present to you this year's database visualization! Made possible by the MobyGames API.

Previous editions:
January 2022 - January 2021 - January 2020 - January 2019 - January 2018 - June 2017 - January 2017 - January 2016 - January 2015 - January 2014 - January 2013 - January 2012 - January 2011 - January 2010 - January 2009



(Click to enlarge)

An explanation: each coloured shape in the graph represents a platform. The horizontal axis is time. The vertical axis represents the number of games released and is stacked. So the height of a shape on a given point in time indicates the number of games released for that platform that year. The total height of the graph on a given point in time shows the total releases that year. The graph is meant to represent game releases and thus excludes DLC, Special Edition and Compilation items. It does include each game for each platform it was released on.
As usual we see a drop-off at the end, simply because we haven't been able to keep up with all the new game releases.
Feel free to point out interesting info in the graph and your contributions in the thread!

I have also updated the bar chart race I made last year with the new data.

Happy new year! You know the drill, it's that time again when we ask: what are your personal goals for 2023, MobyGames or gaming in general related? Here's our resolutions from last year. What about this year? Let us know in the comments below.

As we do at the end of every year, let us reminisce on all the games we've played over the past 365 days and share our impressions.

As always, the games themselves need not have come out in 2022 necessarily, all that matters is that you played them and they left a mark on you.

All registered MobyGames users can now log into the beta! Please check it out, explore and try to break things.

v20220923 update log

• Added import/export functionality to lists (check out your Game Collection page via your profile)
• Added ability to add games to lists via the list page
• Added ability to sort, edit and delete lists
• Added tooltip info for publishers and developers in game info block to indicate which release they are associated with
• Game browser now supports game groups
• Game browser now auto-populates company dropdown when there are fewer than 100 options
• Developer credit pages can now be sorted by role, date, Moby Score and genre
• Added reviews summary table to game overview and game reviews page
• Search now supports roman numerals
• Forum search can now be filtered by board
• Fixed Moby Score calculation
• Misc. UI polish
• Backend platform updates and optimizations (e.g., much faster search index rebuild)

v20220916 update log for beta.mobygames.com

• Added search as you type functionality (results now appear below the search bar as you type). By default the dropdown displays trending games, companies and developers.
• Added slash commands to search:
  /g to only search games (e.g., /g mario)
  /c to only search companies (e.g., /c atari)
  /d to only search devs (e.g., /d romero)
  /gr to only search groups (e.g., /gr animals)
• Added Frequent Collaborators section to developer pages (example)
• Added a snippet of company overview and developer biography to search results (example)
• Added highest rated game of developer or company to search results
• Added forum search
• Added ability to add and delete lists (via the Collection page on your user profile)
• Added list of galleries to screenshot pages (example), so you can see which gallery you're viewing and easily move between them
• MobyScore is now a combination of user score and critic score
• Search algorithm tweaks
• Bunch of UI tweaks, polish
• Backend platform updates