www.techingames.net - A Game Feature Tracker and Comparison Database
- Thread starter Arwin
- Start date
In my ideal world, defined by features the game could become 30% adventure, 50% FPS, 40% RPG and 5% platformer ...
So world interaction could become a gameplay element, and a traditional shooter would feature almost exclusively shooting and opening doors, say. May need to weight those elements though ...
So world interaction could become a gameplay element, and a traditional shooter would feature almost exclusively shooting and opening doors, say. May need to weight those elements though ...
D
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Yup any game which gives you freedom of approach - RPGs, Metal Gear, Metro, Far Cry - you'll never get consensus. The best you can probably do is a bunch of tick boxes, first person, third person, shooting, stealth, driving etc and let the eclectic mix stand as elements comprising the game.
I concur. I don't think a percentage can be applied with any real meaning. How do you qualify the percentage? Maybe, if a tick-box isn't accurate enough (eg. someone searching for RPG shouldn't get Destiny come up), perhaps a grading for each gameplay quality out of none, light, moderate and heavy. So:
Borderlands
Camera - First person
Shooting - Heavy
Loot and level - Heavy
Child of Light
Camera - 2D side
Platforming - Moderate
Puzzles - Light
Combat - Heavy
Or whatever it is - I've never played it.
Then to find platformers, you'd search for titles with Platforming == Heavy. And if you hate platforming of any kind and don't want it in your RPG or shooter, you can select RPGs and Shooters where Platforming == none.
Borderlands
Camera - First person
Shooting - Heavy
Loot and level - Heavy
Child of Light
Camera - 2D side
Platforming - Moderate
Puzzles - Light
Combat - Heavy
Or whatever it is - I've never played it.
Then to find platformers, you'd search for titles with Platforming == Heavy. And if you hate platforming of any kind and don't want it in your RPG or shooter, you can select RPGs and Shooters where Platforming == none.
Well I was more thinking along the lines of prototyping. You take what elements you think are typical of a certain genre, and then match other games against the prototype and see how well they match.
At a basic level this is doable and easily expressed as a percentage. More tricky is categorizing a game that allows you to choose between stealth kill, non-lethal kills, shooting, magic, whatnot, against a game that has a stealth section that makes up a fraction of the game that otherwise requires you to shoot people. Perhaps you could choose between none, option, section.
In the end though it would likely immediately be more rather than less meaningful than current genre definitions?
If the purpose is to inform users, how would your percentage idea be more informative than the category/ranking system? 40% like COD (shooter) means...? Shooting, but slower? Intermittent shooting and world traversal? Shooting with more emphasis on vehicles?
But the ranking system makes that more obvious and detailed, no?
Replace the labels with icons/power bars (I'll just try some) to show intensity, and you have a pretty detailed at-a-glance description of the game IMO. I suppose if one wanted, one could take these rankings and turn them into a percentage. 9 points in total, Shooting = 33%, Loot and level = 33%, Story driven = 11%, Science Fiction = 22%. And then create a pretty pie chart. But that to me isn't really meaningful data.
Borderlands
Camera - First person
............. Shooting - OOO
..... Loot and level - OOO
. Story Driven - O
.Science Fiction - OO
Camera - First person
............. Shooting - OOO
..... Loot and level - OOO
. Story Driven - O
.Science Fiction - OO
Replace the labels with icons/power bars (I'll just try some) to show intensity, and you have a pretty detailed at-a-glance description of the game IMO. I suppose if one wanted, one could take these rankings and turn them into a percentage. 9 points in total, Shooting = 33%, Loot and level = 33%, Story driven = 11%, Science Fiction = 22%. And then create a pretty pie chart. But that to me isn't really meaningful data.
Well, if you look at it that way, that's just a precision difference I think so no real disagreement there.
The challenge primarily is to get the data in there as precise and meaningful as possible so that the system can answer the right questions.
The challenge primarily is to get the data in there as precise and meaningful as possible so that the system can answer the right questions.
Having it precise is the tricky bit.
You're right, it's not objective, but my choice of three bands means they should be large enough that, subjectively, they still work. Whereas without, as a binary toggle, we lose a lot of necessary definition. A game with a 5 minute span of platforming and the rest all FPS would appear the equivalent of a game that's 50/50 shooting and platforming.
Let's try it from the other direction. What's the purpose of listing the genre types/features? If it's to search for games one might like, what's the minimum granularity needed to qualify a game as a particular type of game?
5 minute of platforming is already more quantifiable than "light platforming" if you ask me.
Now FPS, RPG, action-adventure, platform, open worlds and so on are widely accepted standard/definitions that work for many millions of players so I see no reason to not employ them in a mainstream site.
Sure some individuals don't need/like definitions, I abhor them personally, but many gamers/users no doubt will expect to have a genre/type/category search on the site.
This said I see you point Shifty so maybe "we", or rather Arwin, could decide to have single tick boxes as well as "intensity sliders" for those that feel/want to use them.
This way and it will be up to the users to decide how and what to say about each game.
P.S.
It might seem that I am complaining an judging by really Arwin has done a great job wit the site...I simply don't know when to stop talking
Now FPS, RPG, action-adventure, platform, open worlds and so on are widely accepted standard/definitions that work for many millions of players so I see no reason to not employ them in a mainstream site.
Sure some individuals don't need/like definitions, I abhor them personally, but many gamers/users no doubt will expect to have a genre/type/category search on the site.
This said I see you point Shifty so maybe "we", or rather Arwin, could decide to have single tick boxes as well as "intensity sliders" for those that feel/want to use them.
This way and it will be up to the users to decide how and what to say about each game.
P.S.
It might seem that I am complaining an judging by really Arwin has done a great job wit the site...I simply don't know when to stop talking
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If you're going to have sliders, you don't need a tick-box. Just set the search to >0 (the flag is equivalent to any non-zero rank of the feature).
Edit: Another facet for the 'gameplay' method is that it needs to be something anyone can use. A tickbox would do that, but I do think every Joe can reasonable gauge low, medium, high rankings for any given feature on any given game without being wildly wrong. The finer the granularity, the more subjective your data becomes unless you come up with a method to actually measure how much of a platformer etc. a game is! Ideally, you want the contributions of one person entering one game to be reliably representative.
Already created a slider for another site and it certainly has its uses. Slider easily gets an accidental value though. I think I'd rather have semantic categories that go something like this:
x Platforming
x Optional
x Scope
x Section
x Level
x Game
Right now though I am not even sure if Platforming is a good category. I made a traversal category that has walk, run, sprint, vehicular, etc. I would then add jump there, and under it give the options:
- precision
User is required to make precise jumps in order to progress
- double
User can jump again during the first jump
- wall
User can jump from the side of a wall
Etc.
x Platforming
x Optional
x Scope
x Section
x Level
x Game
Right now though I am not even sure if Platforming is a good category.
I made a traversal category that has walk, run, sprint, vehicular, etc. I would then add jump there, and under it give the options:- precision
User is required to make precise jumps in order to progress
- double
User can jump again during the first jump
- wall
User can jump from the side of a wall
Etc.
When I try to edit a game I get this:
Ok, that's good to know. And yes, you currently probably don't have enough rights to edit a game. But you should just click on the version if you want to add features? Editing a game is basically only for changing the name, publisher or developer, and the game was verified, you currently need to be Admin before it can be changed ...
Today I fixed some issues with the issue tracking (editing didn't work properly among others), optimized feature creation speed by a lot, changed some of the text, cleaned up platform details, removed a few layout issues (new style loaded by Ajax partials overriding existing styles) and implemented a few improvements to the charts, among which enabling the zoom option which is rather nice.
Made a start with adding review and score tracking and adding user filters. Will be a bit of work but the basis, adding publications, reviewers and reviews is in there (though guaranteed to not be bug free yet ). Reviews are added to game versions, so that we can track what features and bugs were in the game for that review, if a game gets a better score after a certain version, etc.
). Reviews are added to game versions, so that we can track what features and bugs were in the game for that review, if a game gets a better score after a certain version, etc.