Kayburt (32272) on 2/29/2024 7:11 AM · edited · Reply · Permalink · Report

One of the biggest problems for searching for existing game is typing not just precise words (which can be in American or UK spelling) but also specific characters. One of the biggest issues I am having is finding games with a couple of characters due to the ampersand “&” being treated as a separate character.

With entries like “Ratchet and Clank” searches are fine due to the notability of those characters, with entries like “Packy and Marlon” it doesn’t recognise the existence of the game “Packy & Marlon”, it just associates what I input with developers or content packs, which makes absolutely no sense. This is problematic because it gives you the impression that the game doesn’t exist in the database and you end up submitting an entry for a game that turns out to already exist this entire time. This leads to redundant submissions clogging the queue or pending content and wasting time for both submitters and approvers.

Searches for both the Search bar on the header as well as the Official Title box for submitting new game need finer tuning to reduce redundancy and improve users’ experience. Skirting around this problem by adding alternate titles like “this and that” to the game “this & that” would not be ideal. The system needs to recognise that “ampersand” and “AND” are the same.