GameDB News Roundup 01/2017

project main site: www.oregami.org


Let's take another look at some developments within the video game database landscape.

(The content in this update is a bit outdated, as this will be the last GameDB News Roundup for the time being, because I want to concentrate more on subject matter work to finally bring Oregami online, and couldn't beat myself to publishing this earlier. If you want to continue writing these contents, please get in touch at our forums.)

IGDB.com released version 2 of their API this summer. And while I cannot tell the differences to version 1, version 2 is claimed to be faster, more stable and ready for heavy-weight usage. The interesting thing here is the pricing, which reveals that free use of the API is limited to 7,000 requests per day, which is rather not much. Also, IGDB's advanced search feature has been rewritten, and is now an even more powerful tool that is among the leaders of the pack. A feature that usually perfectly showcases the weaknesses embedded into the current models of genre definition, is an automated similar games search. The IGDB developers introduced this nonetheless, but also added the possibility for the users to add their own recommendations. Take a look at the recommendations page for the 1990's game Apprentice for an example.

Thoughts about internationalization (i18n)

project main site: www.oregami.org


It comes to no surprise for Oregami to face internationalization (i18n) issues sooner or later, since we are a project that wants to become the authoritative and free data pool for the global video gaming community. While English is a good choice for the first language of the project, and German as our native language a good choice for the second, a complete documentation of video games requires spreading the work and expertise to more languages.