This is a thought I had while working on an upcoming post. Is there a Goodreads for Games?
(If you don’t know what Goodreads is, it’s a “social web site” where users enter books they’ve read, are currently reading and would like to read in the future. You can rate books on a 1-5 star scale and leave reviews as you like. You can add friends which allows you to see what books they’re reading, etc. It’s a great way to see what kind of reading your friends do, what their tastes are and what you have in common. Often, it’s surprising to see who’s read what. It’s also a great way to discover new books and authors. If we’re not already friends, I’d love to see what other Buttonmashers are reading. You can find me here.)
As I was adding a few books to my ever-growing “to-read” list on Goodreads, the thought occurred to me — would a Goodreads type website for gaming work? Would you use it?
I was also thinking if there was a site that is already doing that. There are sites that allow you to keep track of your collections. I use IGN and I know CAG has a system for cataloging your gaming collections. But these aren’t perfect because my collection is fluid. I am constantly adding and removing games to my collection. I want a way to catalog what I’ve played, what I’ve owned and what I want. Both sites have “wish lists” but they are just that — lists. I also what a way to keep track of progression I’ve made in my games.
I know there’s Backloggery (you can find me here), a site I signed up for but never really use. It’s been a while since I’ve visited the site but I don’t remember it being very user-friendly. But it was part of what I was looking for.
Giant Bomb has a pretty cool system. You can sync your various gamer profiles (Xbox Live, Steam, PSN) and it tracks your progress across platforms to give you an idea of how your “achievements” (pun intended) stack up against all other users. In particular, they breakdown achievements as “Rare”, “Uncommon” and “Common” based on the number of other people who have reached those achievements. Again, this is cool but is also only a part of what I’m looking for. I really like their system, but since I don’t have any “followers” or friends on the site I can really speak to the social aspects of the site. (Again, you can find me on Giant Bomb here)
So would a Goodreads-type site work for gamers? Would it be something you would use?
I’d use something like it but not owning the Sony/MS consoles I’d not make heavy use of it. Showing off gamer scores and achievements is something that I simply can’t get on with and gets in the way of actually knowing if a game is worth playing or not.
A “to play” list would help me though, I still have games from 2010 I’ve not played yet (such as Alpha Protocol) that I just keep forgetting to install. Didn’t know about Goodreads though, tempting to sign up to that.
Using the achievement system is definitely not a way to know if the game is worth playing. But I think a site like this could make use of the built-in achievement/trophy system to estimate completion and a way to compare your progress with your friends.
I suppose most games with achievements have progress milestone ones – it’d be some manual legwork but just counting those and automatically marking games as complete or well played would work. Steam-like “Hours played” would possibly be a better indication in anything non-linear, or non-story based.
Yes! I’ve been looking for something like this. i think enough gamers are on the net enough it would go over well. Let me know if you are looking for any help on the project
I may take you up on this , Graham!
Please do!
Playfire.com has a system of adding games that you are playing, have played and/or own, but you can’t add games that you want buy, you can just create wishlists
You should give it a try
my profile: http://www.playfire.com/DracoKall
Ps: Playfire staff is always looking for system, and they also accept tons of sugestions coming from there users
Thanks for the link! Checking it out now. Hopefully it will be what I’ve been looking for. Or at least a close facsimile thereof.
So, what did you think about playfire?
I still haven’t had a chance to dig deep yet. I checked out your link and liked what I saw but I still need to make an account and really dig in.
I was also alerted to another site that looks interesting.
I want this. I actually have a Bento database that I’ve made, but what’s the point to continuously update it because it cannot really be shared.
I also want a flickchart for games more.
I also have an account at giantbomb. There is some good social/database ideas there.
I assume you’re agentgray on GB? I’ll look you up.
What’s a flickchart?
Yep for giantbomb.
I’ve just destroyed your day.
Started following you on Giantbomb. And just had to quit playing with flickchart lest I be fired from my job. I’ll pay with it some more at home.
It’s awesome 🙂
I have been wanting to do this for a long time. Just saw this post now. If you want/need more help on this, please contact me.
Shannon,
I’d love to chat with you about this, I’m still interested in putting something together. I’ll be in contact via email.
It seems many gamers do want a site like that, any update on your search?
P.S: If you still haven’t found anything that meet your needs and are working on something yourself and need some help with it, let me know 🙂
Yea, why doesn’t this exist? Somebody Ruby on Rails this up! 🙂
I would love to see a site like goodreads but for video games. I am an active GR member and love how you can shelve things the way you want plus great search options. I keep looking but nothing collaborates the sites. You can either list what you own or use sites like raptr, trueachievements, etc to track current game play time. It would be great to see a more solid basis that gives you the options you need. Especially if you are playing offline or older console games.
Hey there, I was googling around for “goodreads for video games” and came across this post. I don’t know if you’re still looking for something like this, but I’ve built a site, http://www.grouvee.com, with the goal of being like a goodreads. If you get a chance, take a look at it and let me know what you think.
I just signed up for an account. I’ll let you know what I think!
Hi Peter. I just registered over at Grouvee and am busy rating games. As you’ll have guessed from me posting here I found the site through a search for Goodreads and video games. It has a lot of potential and I’m sure there are a lot of things that you’re still working on with the site (early days yet, right?). A few things I noticed that you may already have thought about:
– recommendations based on the games you’ve rated would be invaluable
– registering which consoles you own would also help in making any eventual recommendation system more relevant
– the rating system is a bit confusing at the moment: I say this because “ok” and “mostly didn’t like it” are not the same thing. I’ve chosen to take the former description for now when rating a game with two stars, i.e. that I don’t have strong feelings about the game one way or another. That gives me three ratings to distinguish between games I liked, games I really liked and games I thought were amazing and just one for games I didn’t like and that’s fine; really I couldn’t quantify how much I didn’t like a game and the mere fact that I didn’t like it should be enough for most purposes.
I really wish you the best of luck with this project and hope that my feedback may be helpful in some small way. I’ve been an active GoodReads user for some time now, as well as other purpose specific social networks such as Academia. If you’d like any more feedback then do get in touch with me – one of the websites linked from my Gravatar account should have contact details on it.