Sciere (930490) on 12/30/2008 9:21 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Update: originally I did not plan to post this, because there are always people who feel left out and this sets some bad blood, but I wanted to share it regardless of that. If any valuable contributions are missing, just share them in the replies. I thought it would be a nice way to bring some closure to 2008, and at the same time put some people in the spotlight who may have gone by unnoticed.

Before everyone is drowsed in the celebrations of yet another, bolder year, it is time to look back what 2008 brought to this site; some general observations of my own and statistics that cannot be tracked through this site’s stats page. The numbers shown below are based on a snapshot I took on 31st December 2007 and compared to 31st December 2008. That means that a lot of submissions submitted this year but not yet approved are not taken into account. Since they are based on the submission date however, they will be added to the 2008 statistics even if they are approved in 2009. The same happened last year, so this is still an overview of a full year, but not complete yet as more will be added to the 2008 stats in the coming months. I actually meant to make a breakdown for each platform based on game entries, cover art and screenshots, but MobyGames does not use tables so I couldn't paste the numbers and had to copy them by hand. Which I didn't... so instead, a lot of compliments to start the year with a warm, fuzzy feeling. If you want to compare the numbers yourself, the stats page of 2007 is available here.

As joyvalley already pointed out, if we observe the amount of submissions this year we grew stronger once again. The top 50 contributors of 2008 amounted to 316,900 points, where in 2007 this was 264,555. In 2007 1,456 points was sufficient to reach that year’s top 50, in 2008 1,961 was needed.

New game entries
Numbers alone are poor of course, so I’ll pass on some honorable mentions based on what I dealt with as an approver this year. Feel free to add those of your own for the queues you were involved with, or the information you enjoyed as a contributor or a visitor. First of all, we did extremely well in keeping track of new game releases, formerly a rather weak point of ours. In this regard we own a huge debt to Big John WV. Having joined in March 2007, he quickly became a prominent contributor for various platforms and especially new game releases, also covering genres that were underpopulated such as sports games. He learned to write outstanding descriptions very fast and is this year’s most active new game contributor with no less than 334 individual game entries. I tried, but I just couldn’t keep up. His partner in crime was stvedder, who focused on older releases we appeared to have missed. He has been with the site since 2006, but became very active this year with 180 new game releases. The Dutchman is also notorious for spamming his submission comment with at least 20 sources for approvers to learn more about the game, which is a good thing of course. Then we have the game collector Sicarius who provided an unbelievable amount of new PC game releases complete with cover art, screenshots, credits and descriptions to fill an entire Wikipedia entry. Let’s hope 2009 bring his break into game journalism. It is also of note that his command of English has vastly improved, a positive effect that contributing to this site appears to bring along. Next to keeping his own site fresh with news, he dedicated an unbelievable amount of time to MobyGames this year. We all know how tedious credit submissions can be to enter, but Sicarius showed no mercy submitted the largest listing ever to the site (Grand Theft Auto IV) with 3,540 names. Brian even had to optimize the credits system so he would be able to enter them. With 9,331 points this year, he also submitted the largest amount of credits ever in a single year. To top it off we have our Brazilian contributor Macs Black who works in silence, but was almost on his own responsible for all our listings of casual, downloadable games.

Local game development
Our diverse backgrounds and nationalities bring us in touch with titles and information we would never have been aware of otherwise. Next to the outstanding Odyssey submissions chirinea keeps us in touch with Brazilian game development and Klaster_1 and Stratege are always there with Russian release info, backed up with covers from them along with Kyler.ural.

Covers
It was good to see many new names scan their archives to contribute to the site. People such as faklan, EddyB43, robotriot (amazing amount of Amiga CD32 covers!), airshark (MSX), COBRA-COBRETTI (Polish covers), djsquarewave (Japanese titles), Pollo Diablo and qwertyuiop come to mind. Top of the crop this year was joyvalley, who appears to own about every single German PC release ever made available. He submitted no less than 4,000 covers this year and keeps the queue filled at all times. Not that anyone dares to go there now, as no one can make heads or tails of Xoleras' and joyvalley’s lengthy conversations in German.

Screenshots
Our eccentric bearded approver Pseudo_Intellectual does not only provide information about obscure games and wonderful titles I have come to love, he also played many DOS games this year to fill the gaps. The same goes for Depeche Mike Isguder, Pomah, Tomas Pettersson (especially Atari ST), LepricahnsGold (Atari/Game Boy), Opipeuter Inconnivus (WonderSwan/Game Boy), Parf (PSX), ALAKA (SNES/NES/Genesis), beetle120 (NES/Browser), ricky derocher (DOS), DJP Mom, Supernintendo Chalmers, Ben K (TV captures) and Servo (TV captures). Then there is also Picard who submitted an incredible wealth of screenshots, but needed some time to adapt to the site’s standards.

Various
I enjoyed the knowledgeable reviews by JazzOleg, St. Martyne, Jeanne (adventures), Black Wolf (classic gaming), Daniel Steinbrück, lasttoblame (rants!), Sam Jeffreys and Indra Depari of 'da Clan Depari and was glad to finally see some fellow Belgians contribute so much: cheers vicrabb and lieven.dk!

Also a round of applause for Wizo and Big John WV who meticulously keep up with submitting MobyRankings (and also approving them in Wizo’s case). You may also be interested to know that enormous-rat once again did outstanding work on company logos, the only area of the site he appears to be interested in. He submitted more than 1,000 logos this year alone! B.L. Stryker is also very active with older companies (and Czech ones in general) in this area.

Of course there is the entire approver’s team to thank and the fellow admins, who try to follow up submissions as quickly as possible. Jeanne was this year’s most active approver with almost 25% of all submissions. User I encountered the most were Kabushi who is omnipresent on the site, Terok Nor who spends lots of time correcting information (along with Kabushi) and Jeanne who shares my passion for company overviews and developer biographies where more contributions are still welcome. Also a random shout to Solid Flamingo for his interest in browser games.

2008 brought along three new platforms: browser games are now very present in the updates and bring along unusual game entries we need to document fast before they disappear. Spectravideo was also added along with the more recent iPhone/iPod Touch. Despite the efforts, we were once again unable to change much to the general system of the site and unfortunately Игги Друге was fed up with this and left. His expertise will be sorely missed. We’ll have to try and grind the wheels further in 2009 to bring changes where we can. On the other hand, we were also able to welcome a lot of new contributors, approvers and developers who came by to correct and contribute additional information. Xoleras is back in action and MAT also briefly passed by.

I probably forgot a lot of names, but do know all the hard work if appreciated, I’m sure the replies below will fill in where needed. This is one of the most valuable game resources on the net and I’m glad we stick to our standards to keep the quality as high as possible.

Time for some more 2008 numbers:

• New game entries (multiplatform): 6,273
• New screenshots: 62,865
• New covers: 28,774
• New reviews: 866
• New product codes: 8,737

Moving on to the general ranking movement compared to 31st December 2007.

In 2007 5,270 was sufficient to reach the top 50, in 2008 this was raised to 8,180. Names who dropped from the top 50 this year: //dbz., Lightknight, Belboz, CxHx, -Chris, Stillman and Riamus.

Thanks for being such a wonderful community and all the best... see you next year!