[game_preservation] Game catalog and listings

[Jim Leonard]

Captain Commando wrote:

> Of course, I don't think anyone else seems to have information like this 

> either...


The reason we might not have this information is because 100% of the 
information is user-contributed, and, quite frankly, nobody has gotten 
around to contributing the information yet.  MobyGames certainly has the 
capability for that, but as you've found out it's not utilized much.


> About the only other thing I can think at the moment is a list of known 

> games that currently have no data. Such a list would be quite large, but 


One of MobyGames' founding principles was that we would have "useless" 
game entries (like "title, publisher, year" and that's it, or 
something).  So while we aren't complete on some of the platforms we 
support, at least every entry has a useful chunk of info.


> would fill a large chunk of missing information. I mention this because 

> one of the key things I see with a game catalogue is at least a note 

> that this game actually exists somewhere even if we don't have all the 

> necessary information on it. 


I agree, but MobyGames probably won't fill that space any time soon.  I 
founded MobyGames with my partner a decade ago specifically as a 
reaction to how many "empty" lists there were out there.


> Currently about the only place to find 

> information like this is through something like Digital Press's 

> collector's guide. If such a listing were to exist in the digital 

> catalogue, then users could know exactly what information is missing and 

> contribute it. For something like MobyGames, I could see games on the 

> list having a disclaimer that it is incomplete and unverified information.


Again, this is the opposite of our core principles so it probably 
wouldn't be good to expect this from us :-)  But who knows, maybe in the 
future things will change.
-- 
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)            http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project:           http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at     http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/