Forums > News > New Content: Promotional Images
Tracy Poff (2083) on 6/11/2016 7:31 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Here at MobyGames, all of our content is contributed and created by our users. Our descriptions are written, our screenshots selected, and our box art scanned by our contributors. As a result, we have a lot of things you can't find anywhere else.
This focus on original content has left us, until now, with a gap in our coverage of games: we didn't have a place for official screenshots, concept art, or any other images that game developers and publishers themselves created. We couldn't be a comprehensive database without these, so I'm pleased to say that we are now accepting contributions of promotional images for all games in MobyGames!
What kinds of images does that mean? In short, just about any official image: official screenshots, official wallpaper, concept art, and other odds and ends. We've been testing this for a few days, and a lot of great things have been contributed already!
Want to contribute some promotional images? You can see the guidelines on our standards page, or if you'd like to jump right in you can look at this quick guide to contributing official screenshots from Steam or other store pages. We appreciate your contributions!
If you'd just like to browse through the new images, we've got you covered: there's a new page dedicated to our growing collection of video game imagery, where you can see a selection of the latest images submitted by our users. It's linked right from the homepage, too--just click the 'more' link on the New Images section to get there. Have a look around, and enjoy!
Simon Carless (1835) on 6/12/2016 12:44 AM · Permalink · Report
Thanks for coding this, Tracy! Am excited to use it and have already started contributing items myself. Nice to see other people get involved already through the 'beta' testing, esp. MAT, Harmony, Kamikaze, Kennyannydenny, and now Sciere, and anyone else I forgot!
(BTW, we know the points are a bit broken still for promo art, we're working on it.)
Karsa Orlong (151824) on 6/12/2016 12:21 PM · Permalink · Report
These should be rewared same way as credits, 0.25 per picture :)
Simon Carless (1835) on 6/12/2016 1:51 PM · Permalink · Report
Hm, good point on # of points - 1 point per promo image may be a bit much given the ease you can grab them at times. Maybe 0.5? You do have to retype captions and some other stuff so it's more complex than credits arguably...
S Olafsson (57423) on 6/12/2016 7:49 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Nothing to see here, move along ;)
Karsa Orlong (151824) on 6/13/2016 7:56 AM · Permalink · Report
0.5 is fine, I quess (enough to encourage contributors, not too much for real screen takers/game players). This is like 'copy-paste' stuff, so we have to keep the balance.
Harmony♡ (20733) on 6/13/2016 3:48 PM · Permalink · Report
0.5 seems perfectly fair.
Tracy Poff (2083) on 6/13/2016 4:41 PM · Permalink · Report
Okay, I can make it 0.5 per image if that's what we want.
MAT (238621) on 6/18/2016 10:43 AM · Permalink · Report
You'd have to know the year and which are exactly taken from the official site, maybe if some original shots have watermark it'd be more clear but otherwise it'd be hard to know.
For older sites you can try using WebArchive page - https://archive.org/web/
They have archived pages for various sites, and while not everything may be retrievable, some stuff can be, or when you play with URLs themselves you can find some things that are not directly linkable.
Here are some samples I found that way:
Tracy Poff (2083) on 6/18/2016 6:08 PM · Permalink · Report
I wouldn't say the year is a strict requirement, though definitely we want to record the date if at all possible. The most important thing is knowing for sure that the images are official images and haven't been modified (or entirely created) by fans. That's hard to do for images from fan sites, but it's not impossible.
For example, if a fan site had a gallery specifically labelled as containing images previously available on the official site, and there weren't any indications they'd been modified or that the site wasn't trustworthy, I'd be inclined to accept them. Of course, it'd be better if those images could be found through the wayback machine or if there were some corroborating evidence, but we can't expect to have always ideal circumstances.
Plok (172201) on 6/18/2016 8:02 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
[Q --start MAT wrote--]You'd have to know the year and which are exactly taken from the official site, maybe if some original shots have watermark it'd be more clear but otherwise it'd be hard to know. [/Q --end MAT wrote--] For many of these, it's impossible (don't upload them yet, I have an even bigger batch waiting for when I have more time to sort them through MG's system, in a couple of weeks they'll all be here ;) )
However, some images I have sport a watermark from GameSpot, IGN, some fansites and a strange URL of EA's Thai office (used to be at www.ea.co.th ). Do I crop them or let them be?
MAT (238621) on 6/18/2016 11:04 PM · Permalink · Report
No, we definitely won't accept images that have IGN or Gamespot watermarks, even if they have them over official screenshots.
Not sure if that RA2 art is official or taken from CE DVD as I've uploaded here - http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/command-conquer-red-alert-2-collectors-edition/screenshots
I could capture all that making-of from DVD and upload it under RA2 CE as regular shots, though :)
I'm trying to find cool half-render half-mesh 3D model of destroyer from original Red Alert, I know that shot is official if only I could find it somewhere :)
Simon Carless (1835) on 6/19/2016 12:28 AM · Permalink · Report
In general we will only take things with watermarks if they are from the official site, but cos the rest of the site is watermarkless, we are looking for no watermarks on anything if at ALL possible. (I did just approve a number of ooold screenshots from Michael Cassidy of Nintendo games that had Nintendo Power watermarks on them, because that's how they appeared on the official Nintendo website (NP is owned by Nintendo), but I actually kicked them back the first time.)
Jake AM (9492) on 6/22/2016 9:10 PM · Permalink · Report
- Seriously, maybe insulting someone right off the bat isn't a good idea.
- That content isn't owned by GOG.
- It is owned by the creators/developers/publishers of the game itself.
Following the flow chart on this website (easiest explanation of fair use), this would be used for non-commercial purposes, in an educational setting.
This site isn't trying to gain money from posting these items. If they were there would be legal issues concerning the use of those images.
Also, if there was an issue, the company(ies) in question would be getting in contact with the owners of this website to discuss legality of the items in question. From that point on whatever the resolution would be, it would be addressed.
Disclaimer: I am not a legal mumbo jumbo expert, so there's that.
MAT (238621) on 6/24/2016 1:22 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
Fair enough I suppose. Most was uploaded by my who purchased those games from GOG. Most of their concept art is higher quality than we present them and is probably ripped from developer's website or some retail limited edition release. The only exclusive thing I noticed were a couple of wallpapers they have, that's about it.
It's not like anyone will but a GOG game because you get a bunch of concept art alongside, which when we present here is in lower resolution than original images. Sure, we could try to get those images from official websites or other placed on the Internet, it would just take longer time since GOG basically did the same thing and just grouped it on the single place. I love GOG and that's the only digital distributor I ever buy games from, and I've bought over 100 titles from them, but if they really mind this, all they need to do is say so and we'll remove everything like that, it's really no big deal. We're not doing anything with a goal to harm someone, developer, publisher, or distributor. We're just trying to provide as much and as detailed info about some game in a single place. It's really no big deal. Hell, I'm gonna email them right now and ask them about this and if they're really so much against it, we won't upload those stuff directly from them but will use official websites or other sources. This way, we at least mention where some thing can be got in original size. They're great, they're DRM-free, and they don't force you for keeping games in some cloud of their without being able to play offline or back it up for yourself. I have nothing but respect for them, they're awesome, imho! Maybe my uploads are a big no-no, but I thought it at least serves as a commercial for their content. My bad.
EDIT: Okay, I've sent the question to GOG.com to see what they think about it. I'll make sure to post their reply here (and remove all promo art from them if they request so) so there won't be any more confusion about it in the future. We should have probably done so before uploading, but I guess because most of that art can be found on official sites, we didn't. Our goal isn't to compete with sites like GOG or Steam or PSN, we're just a database for games, same as IMDB.com is for movies. If they see us using "their" promo art with referencing them as a source, as a bad thing, we'll remove it and apologize. Simple as that.
Cavalary (11411) on 7/5/2016 10:12 AM · Permalink · Report
Just adding that I sent a PM to Judas when this was posted, pointing him to the thread and saying it may be faster than the support route, he said he can't reply in any official fashion on the matter and to wait for the support message to go through the proper channels to someone who can.
Tracy Poff (2083) on 6/28/2016 2:34 PM · Permalink · Report
Whoops, those should have been accepted already, but there was a little bug in the file handler that was rejecting them. I've fixed it, so this will start working next time we deploy.
Pseudo_Intellectual (65536) on 6/30/2016 11:06 PM · Permalink · Report
Why not make that burden incumbent upon the computer, who is very good at enforcing its standards automatically?
Tracy Poff (2083) on 7/1/2016 8:49 PM · Permalink · Report
That's how it is now--anything but JPG, PNG, or GIF will be summarily rejected.
You mean, maybe, that BMP or TIFF should be automatically recompressed to PNG--not unreasonable. However, uncompressed BMP or TIFF are often going to be bigger than can be reliably uploaded anyway, so it's probably better to just tell the user to compress the images before uploading so no time is wasted on an upload that would probably fail.
Simon Carless (1835) on 7/1/2016 11:15 PM · Permalink · Report
From what I'm seeing, BMP and TIFF are a very small minority of the available promotional images, so that's probably a reason not to allow it. (We need to try to fix the transparent PNG issue first, too, and that's a problem with an existing upload format...)
Pseudo_Intellectual (65536) on 7/2/2016 9:01 PM · Permalink · Report
I did mean the latter case, but you make a good argument. (It's almost frustrating to have Tracy as The Man these days, since Corn Popper's seeming arbitrariness was so begging for rigorous debate.)
Tracy Poff (2083) on 7/2/2016 11:10 PM · Permalink · Report
(It's almost frustrating to have Tracy as The Man these days, since Corn Popper's seeming arbitrariness was so begging for rigorous debate.)
On this subject, just so it's clear to everyone: I do have to make decisions about what should be done, what can be done practically, and how I spend the limited time I have to work on MobyGames, but I'm not immune to persuasion. I try to give my reasoning so that everyone understands where I'm coming from, and if you disagree--say so.
I'd be very happy to see discussion on any given bug report or feature request, even--and especially--if it's to tell me that I'm totally off base. Many of you have much more experience than I do here, and since I've been coding for MobyGames I've had very little time for contributing or approving, so I rely on all of you to keep me apprised of what's working and what isn't. Certainly don't be afraid to disagree with me!
Simon Carless (1835) on 7/3/2016 1:37 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
I think PI is saying that you are so straightforward and logical that it's a lot more difficult to have a crazy argument based on weird subjective views with you, Tracy. (Which is a major plus!) I 100% agree with this and I suspect it's one of the main reasons we're getting stuff done around here :P
Patrick Bregger (290568) on 7/6/2016 3:02 AM · Permalink · Report
I'd say no because you need to "earn" them.
Simon Carless (1835) on 7/7/2016 12:40 AM · Permalink · Report
Somebody did Xbox achievements for one of the Halo games already. I'm neutral on it - it's OK, but there are entire website who document things like this already.