Forums > MobyGames > Immortals
MZ per X (3017) on 12/21/2013 10:33 AM · Permalink · Report
Reedx, Simon, I don't know how rich you are, how much you paid for MobyGames, or what ROI you expect from this investment. But please consider the following:
You could become immortals in the video game scene, if you put aside the money, and free MobyGames.
1) Free MobyGames from commercial interest.
All the assets and the legal maintainership would need to be transferred to a non-profit entity. This entity would need to have a governance in place which ensures that no single company or person could buy out the assets against the will of the community (something like The Document Foundation for Libre Office). This would also be the way to put the financial burden onto more shoulders.
2) Release the data.
All the data would need to be released under a permissive license, even for commercial use. Provide an API for easy access. This way, the whole games community (And yes, this includes even commercial companies like GF.) could unite under one banner, and work collaboratively on a really authoritative documentation of video game history. Imagine a site where companies and volunteers work side by side towards a common goal, with companies adding their current releases, and the volunteers researching history.
3) Free the code.
The source code would need to be open sourced, creating a community development project around it. This would wipe out the bug-fix / improvement bottleneck we've seen over the years, and is a must-have considering the huge improvements this site needs.
4) Free MobyGames from its US roots.
An authoritative video game documentation needs worldwide collaboration, so true multi-lingualism would be needed. A UI in many languages of the world, the possibility to translate all textual data into the most important languages, language champions to build the community for each language. But all this with common rules, and English setting the standards somehow, to avoid a situation like at Wikipedia where every language is a project of its own.
The sky is the limit for MobyGames, so please consider! :-)
Игги Друге (46653) on 12/22/2013 5:49 PM · Permalink · Report
Yes, we don't want to see the project sold to Ziff Davis some day, or turning against the visions of those who make the site work. Mobygames doesn't work without those who make it work.
Simon Carless (1834) on 12/23/2013 6:18 PM · Permalink · Report
Sorry, we never replied to this, but our longer-term plan is definitely to allow non-commercial use of the database by researchers and others. I don't think we have grand plans to make millions from Moby - I'm doing it in my sparetime and Reed is hoping to fit it in to his contracting - and in fact we're not even sure if the site is BREAKEVEN after hosting costs yet.
Some of these other ideas - while worthy - are fairly complex. For example, the codebase is in Perl and is TREMENDOUSLY complicated - I'm not even sure open-sourcing it would help that much given the relatively obscure language.
But we're committed to working with the community and also in finding some way to protect the data in the case of company changes in the future. That is very important.
Cavalary (11445) on 12/23/2013 6:30 PM · Permalink · Report
That part about the codebase begs the big question: In these spare-time circumstances, how long would it take to replicate it in a modern programming language, to make it easier to improve and expand in the future? May it be any at least vaguely feasible length of time? Because I'm thinking there will come a point when this will go from a very good idea to a requirement if MG is to keep improving.
Simon Carless (1834) on 12/23/2013 6:39 PM · Permalink · Report
Well, I can't really speak to the long-term plan here because we're still in the transitional position. I will say that Reed has made some excellent sites in PHP (for example: http://vgboxart.com/ ) and I know that our preference is to have a slicker, easier site to use in PHP. It's just quite a mammoth task to unravel. (As was shown by the attempted multi-year redesign that went fairly wrong.)
But a lot is going to depend on whether the page views for the site resume (there has been some significant loss since the redesign and even before that - we're looking at SEO) and so that's something we will discover over time...
Worst case scenario we will gradually improve the site in Perl - better situation, we find some ways to make a whole new site in PHP. But we'll be transparent about it!
Simon Carless (1834) on 12/23/2013 7:55 PM · Permalink · Report
Actually, Sciere, Gamasutra (and others!) is my dayjob - MobyGames I'm advising in my spare time, it's Reed's company (Blue Flame) that owns MobyGames. Just to clarify...
Cavalary (11445) on 12/23/2013 10:16 PM · Permalink · Report
Indra has been pointing out for quite some time that MG's SEO was dreadful. But it should also be kept in mind that, regardless of the current plans I see mentioned about encouraging submitting and updating information on newer releases, MG has been and most probably will continue to be mainly focused on old and/or obscure titles, this being the focus of the large majority of important contributors too. Casual users (those who stuck around for more than a click or two, I mean) probably most commonly found it while trying to determine the name of some game they played long before or to research more information about such a game, or perhaps about some old game they may be interested in playing/buying again. And if you think about it, this isn't exactly a bad thing. It's a big niche (that, incidentally, even those new shiny AAA titles will fit into someday) and the competition is far less fierce on it.
As for the issues with the redesign, well, it was a redesign. I was talking about a direct conversion as a first step. Granted, it doesn't sound like the most efficient use of the time, first making a conversion, bugs and issues included, and then fixing them, but it may prove to eventually earn more time than it loses by reducing the risk of additional bugs in the first version.
Just an opinion here...
Daniel Saner (3503) on 12/24/2013 12:47 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
If/when I return to contributing more stuff again, I'm definitely interested in also covering the brand-new stuff. Being a moderated factual database without pre-release entries, MobyGames will of course always be behind compared to other gaming media, but I don't think that's a problem. It's probably comparable to the situation between Wikipedia and news websites. It takes a while for recent events to be reflected on Wikipedia, until editors can be sure that they have enough information and credible sources to be able to make an appropriate, objective description of events. In extreme cases, editing might even be frozen and restricted to a core team. That doesn't hurt Wikipedia though because it's a very important use case they cater to, which is not in competition but complementary to news sites. The same is true for MobyGames, there's no reason why for a game that has been released, it should be less attractive to visitors and search engines than a mainstream site's post-release coverage, which all too often isn't much to write home about.
And of course the focus on older titles will always remain, simply because of the relations. As time goes on, ever more games will become vintage compared to the usual time-span the mainstream media is interested in. But I also think that interest in this information is growing and will become a bigger thing in the future. Games used to be products almost purely driven by technology and features for a long time, which made them less attractive very quickly as they got older. But we have ever more games now that are interesting to more people for more "timeless" reasons. The importance of technological innovation has dropped significantly, and at the same time people become more and more willing to play games that have simpler production but are more interesting in their content. It's all part of the growth of the entire industry. We're going beyond the teenager pastime and nerd world, into broad entertainment media, so interest in the history of the artform and its "classics" will in my opinion definitely grow. People won't just come here looking for that old, horrible-looking clunker they played ages ago, but maybe the game whose story touched them so deeply, and they'd like to look for other games by the same designer or author, etc. (we need more features! Keywords, user lists...)
Sorry to digress :) but in my opinion, videogames are only just starting to leave behind what for movies were the early years of short exploitation films, rank nickelodeons, and being regarded as cheap entertainment for the working class who weren't sophisticated or wealthy enough to go to the theatre...
Parf (7873) on 12/24/2013 7:58 AM · Permalink · Report
One thing which may also work in our favor is that GameStop and Game started selling retro stuff like NES, SNES etc not too long ago (with old games and consoles starting to become more expensive again online and such, meaning there's a big interest in it). So, if they become more visible to the mainstream again, maybe that will generate more interest in Moby. If it's old and obscure, we're one of the better sources to actually find some substantial information about it (since descriptions is a requirement here for one).
But who knows, only time can tell...
Simon Carless (1834) on 12/24/2013 12:01 PM · Permalink · Report
'MG has been and most probably will continue to be mainly focused on old and/or obscure titles, this being the focus of the large majority of important contributors too.'
This is what we're hoping to change just a little, since really MobyGames is the closest thing to IMDB for games and the reason I think it's important is because we need to cover pretty much everything. In the future, we have no idea what will be culturally important! (Although I agree that all the biggest contributors have their own special areas of interest, and that's just fine.)
Fred VT (25953) on 12/24/2013 1:39 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Simon Carless wrote--]'MG has been and most probably will continue to be mainly focused on old and/or obscure titles, this being the focus of the large majority of important contributors too.'
This is what we're hoping to change just a little, since really MobyGames is the closest thing to IMDB for games and the reason I think it's important is because we need to cover pretty much everything. In the future, we have no idea what will be culturally important! (Although I agree that all the biggest contributors have their own special areas of interest, and that's just fine.) [/Q --end Simon Carless wrote--]
We all have our own specialty, but you'll find some of us adding a wide range of games and details. I actually buy any games I can get my hands on for my budget just so I can own different kind of games. Of course you'll get a lot of Final Fantasy and Square-Enix stuff from me, but you'll also get a lot of seemingly random contributions too.
Cavalary (11445) on 12/24/2013 1:44 PM · Permalink · Report
About credits entries for new games, I'll repeat a suggestion made before the redesign: How about allowing publishers / developers who submit new game info, including full release data and credits (the information required by the wizard may stay at the bare minimum otherwise, including descriptions which may be difficult to be written by them in a way that'll meet our neutrality requirement, so those may need to be significantly altered / replaced during the approval process, possibly being left as brief placeholders to be fixed by other contributors later, without it being held against them) to add a preferred purchase (or access, for free games) link at the bottom of the description (if not separately under it, if someone will code it like that)? They get a free ad right on the game page, we get release info and all those pesky credits very quickly and without straining regular contributors otherwise.
CalaisianMindthief (8172) on 12/24/2013 2:07 PM · Permalink · Report
Just as a trivia, most submissions by developers / publishers (around 90%) do not meet minimum quality criteria for contributions on moby.
Patrick Bregger (301024) on 12/24/2013 2:12 PM · Permalink · Report
I remember one publisher contributor who edited her manual scans to cut off the developer credits.
Indra was here (20755) on 12/24/2013 3:04 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
[Q --start TotalAnarchy wrote--]Just as a trivia, most submissions by developers / publishers (around 90%) do not meet minimum quality criteria for contributions on moby. [/Q --end TotalAnarchy wrote--]And he's being nice. I'd go as far to say 99%. Most of them don't even bother providing a confirm-able source: I am lead developer, my information is reliable. No, it isn't you internet newbie. Did you even learn anything with that bachelor's degree about citations?
MZ per X (3017) on 12/24/2013 11:58 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Simon Carless wrote--]I don't think we have grand plans to make millions from Moby - I'm doing it in my sparetime and Reed is hoping to fit it in to his contracting - and in fact we're not even sure if the site is BREAKEVEN after hosting costs yet.[/Q --end Simon Carless wrote--] Sounds like a role model to make a non-profit out of.
[Q --start Simon Carless wrote--]Worst case scenario we will gradually improve the site in Perl - better situation, we find some ways to make a whole new site in PHP.[/Q --end Simon Carless wrote--]
Please read and understand: Things you should never do
Or ask GameFly which option they chose, and how it went. ;-)
Игги Друге (46653) on 12/27/2013 6:12 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Simon Carless wrote--]Some of these other ideas - while worthy - are fairly complex. For example, the codebase is in Perl and is TREMENDOUSLY complicated - I'm not even sure open-sourcing it would help that much given the relatively obscure language. [/Q --end Simon Carless wrote--]
The fact that people have gone to such lengths as making browser plugins just to work around the inefficacies of the current interface suggests that open sourcing the backend is worthwhile. It doesn't cost a single dollar, so any line of code improvement would be a revenue.
And Perl is hardly an obscure language. It's not Prolog or Simula.
SGruber (3812) on 12/25/2013 12:09 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
[Q --start MZ per X wrote--]Reedx, Simon, I don't know how rich you are, how much you paid for MobyGames, or what ROI you expect from this investment. But please consider the following:
You could become immortals in the video game scene, if you put aside the money, and free MobyGames.
[/Q --end MZ per X wrote--]
While I generally agree with you points, I don't think they survive the reality check. Running Moby costs money, and that money needs to be made some way. Any project should try to acquire multiple possible ways of income (without risking core ideals).
Personally, I rather have an approach that would net Moby some income aside from advertisement. But as I know the problems even Wikipedia has in acquiring enough donations, a purely donation based model probably won't float the Moby boat. Not that I know of any good way to achieve that income, it would be nice to have it (maybe put some little "is there any deal tracker" on each game with a referral link to the store with the lowest price or something.) Therefore commercial usage of this data should be allowed. (And I personally have no issues if my, rather insignificant, contributions would be commercially exploited by anybody as long as the profits would sustain this site). Also, more legal smackdown if another Giantbomb comes along.
Before we, or rather the people most involved in this site, get any lofty ideas and plans for this site, I think there needs to be a solid (financial and legal) foundation on which this site can be build.
I also think that it would put many troubled minds at ease, if some of the top and long time contributors/approvers had more to say in governing this site. Even the occasional visitor to this site probably knows the usual suspects and their immense contributions to this site. Therefore I guess they would make good "community voices" in the board room, so to say.
Edit: I think I need to change my nick. "SimonG" is getting confusing.
Indra was here (20755) on 12/25/2013 6:40 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
Speaking of donations, there is no donate button to be seen anywhere on the main page or the entire website, to be precise.
SGruber (3812) on 12/25/2013 12:38 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Indra is awakening... wrote--]Speaking of donations, there is no donate button to be seen anywhere on the main page or the entire website, to be precise. [/Q --end Indra is awakening... wrote--]
There is an email address under contacts, but wasn't there a donate button in the old days that would give you that sparkly star?
Indra was here (20755) on 12/25/2013 12:52 PM · Permalink · Report
There was. The plane ticket to the States just so I could donate via PayPal was more expensive than the donation though. Internet commerce my arse. :p