RH | 5,013 Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 Considering the history of today, and the potential of the future for currently existing resources, I might be motivated to try and create a new game collection and price tracking tool. If a team were to start from scratch, what are some features you've always which you'd have with these tools? I'm not saying I'm going to start a platform like this, but I am feeling more motivated than ever. With that said, I would request that if you engage this discussion, please keep it on topic and let's not rail on any competition that might exist for today. This is about moving forward and potentially making a new tool that we all find valuable. Again, I'm not saying that I will make a new site, but I might try to spearhead a team on this. Even if I don't/can't do that, maybe this will help facilitate a new team to rise up and make a community-focused game tracking and pricing system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RH | 5,013 Posted October 31, 2019 Author Share Posted October 31, 2019 reserved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RH | 5,013 Posted October 31, 2019 Author Share Posted October 31, 2019 reserved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gloves | 11,890 Administrator · Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 As a collector and not an "investor" I don't GAF about the "value". Frankly they're never near accurate enough anyway. I'd personally focus on accuracy of information, availability of variants where possible to choose from (i.e. "I have X variant"), and just overall robustness and searchability of the data. Not me, but someone out there wants to be able to filter to "All Black Box Mario NES variants" and someone ELSE wants to filter to "All Adventure Island games across all systems". I'd focus on the "collecting" aspect of it, personally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RH | 5,013 Posted October 31, 2019 Author Share Posted October 31, 2019 1 minute ago, Gloves said: As a collector and not an "investor" I don't GAF about the "value". Frankly they're never near accurate enough anyway. I'd personally focus on accuracy of information, availability of variants where possible to choose from (i.e. "I have X variant"), and just overall robustness and searchability of the data. Not me, but someone out there wants to be able to filter to "All Black Box Mario NES variants" and someone ELSE wants to filter to "All Adventure Island games across all systems". I'd focus on the "collecting" aspect of it, personally. I understand that and I'm partially in the same boat. My main, personal difference is that I love, and have always loved, some form of collecting. I have my personal niche I buy and I never intend to get rid of. Then, there are the things that I think are "really cool", I want them in my collection, but I'm not attached to them. If I think I can buy those items for a cheap price, or if I think they might go up, I'll "invest" in the item to enjoy it on my shelf for a few years and then flip it, and use the cash for more games, or trade it. There's value in knowing the value of your stuff, and these generalized numbers are useful. Plus, having long-standing eBay history helps too, which eBay has always refused to maintain. Anyway, I do agree wit this. I think a collection-management tool/searchable DB is most important. In fact, I think I'd make it a bit community-focused so people could find other collectors, where an internal algorithm can match people with games for trade, with people wanting games to trade for. Basically, if you have titles x,y & z that another collector wants, and you have stuff they want of the same value, you can see that on a dashboard, or something. You can then initiate a trade. But, for a matching system to work, you have to have a rightful gauge of value and price. I'm thinking through ways to do this that's not 100% tied to eBay. I think it can be done, but you have to get the process right in your mind, so that people can't game values. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ap123 | 112 Subscriber T1 · Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 It would be cool to include a review score for each title. Maybe link to Metacritic or something? None of the collecting tools I've seen include any information about the actual playability. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ap123 | 112 Subscriber T1 · Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 (edited) ....continuing the trail of thought, customizable searching would be a huge bonus. "Show me platformer NES games under $20 with an 80+ playability rating" Edited October 31, 2019 by ap123 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alder | 243 Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 Agreed with Gloves. I'd like to be able to automatically track franchise completion, or completion of any subset. Like, here's every game I own, how close am I to having every Zelda game? How about every game published by LJN? (Lol) I've made a few mockups of this (just schema-wise on a whiteboard) and I found the most difficult thing was dealing with the granularity of variants and what counts as a game. If you ignore a lot of that it'd be quicker to get off the ground, but it'll be a bigger pain to refactor in the future. Value is useful information and should probably be a goal, but right now we lack a centralized place to track completion by the categories mentioned above. I think it's also important that the community-driven angle be kept upfront, allowing for feedback and, if value is tracked, transparency into the calculation. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RH | 5,013 Posted October 31, 2019 Author Share Posted October 31, 2019 I really like this idea of having "tags", appropriate data fields or whatever we want to call it for all of these details. The biggest issue for this, though, is managing the data. It's to much for one person, and even with a small team, it's hard to verify accuracy, unless gurus with curated lists are willing to step-up and partake as admins. I've also considered that each game could benefit from having a wiki page, with all of this information being modifiable. If games can have data entered via wiki, there needs to be some form of approval process, since joe-shmoe could come along and make an edit because he bought a CIB item and didn't even think to considered pieces might have been swapped around. This leads me to consider creating something like a pseudo-gamification system where greater ,positive involvement with the tool garners more rights and permissions, which will allow users to grow into moderator roles. Something like the StackExchange network of sites. I really like these ideas, but I (or whomever) can't bite off a project to big to manage. We could enter a lot of data and, though it'd be awesome to have those options, my personal #1 concern with that information would be to keep it as accurate as possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroGameTexas | 4 Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 Will be very dificult to keep up with all the inacurate data that people tend to believe and a group of collectors will have to get together to have a starting point.. Showing data of all the possible variants with the latest grade games from VGA/Wata information from all those private collectors will probably be a good start, but not everyone can access those data base reports to keep updated at least on a monthly bases with all the submissions that i have seen lately. Definitely a great thread to place ideas. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RalliArtEvo | 44 Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 I think something that mirrored what GVN currently offers would be fine for me. I use it as a collection tool and also as a spot price checker when I'm out in the wild looking for games. Anything beyond those two items are a bonus. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RH | 5,013 Posted October 31, 2019 Author Share Posted October 31, 2019 1 minute ago, RalliArtEvo said: I think something that mirrored what GVN currently offers would be fine for me. I use it as a collection tool and also as a spot price checker when I'm out in the wild looking for games. Anything beyond those two items are a bonus. I think comments like this are helpful too. The old adage of, if it's not broken, why fix it can definitely apply for some. For those who are 95-100% happy with GVN, feel free to raise your hand and let your voice be heard. There's no need to reinvent the wheel to much if most people like it the way it is. Also, there's nothing saying a new tool can't start out simple with plans of expanding in phases and, in fact, I'm sure I'd do that. On initial release, I'd have a structure in place for future updates, but it would definitely be barebones to begin with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroGameTexas | 4 Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 The problem i always have over GVN is that you can’t just include every variant and give an average value. Look at this example you cant give a fair value if all the variants are included. Probably a filter can properly fix that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RH | 5,013 Posted October 31, 2019 Author Share Posted October 31, 2019 (edited) 8 minutes ago, VideoGameTexas said: The problem i always have over GVN is that you can’t just include every variant and give an average value. Look at this example you cant give a fair value if all the variants are included. Probably a filter can properly fix that. This is where good data management comes into play. There is some filtering with GVN. For instance, greatest hits are separated for SONY games. This makes sense. But, some variants aren't as straight-forward. You might actually have to open the auction and see that a region-free game might be a UK version, which could be inferior (or possibly superior) to a collector. Yes, this would be nice, but it takes man-hours to verify these details. But, regarding variants, I am a Game Boy game variant hunter, so it's important to me too but at some point you have to draw a line and say which variants you do want to track, and those you can't. This would be an endeavor of finding the right, manageable balance of what we need vs. realistic effort get there. I can be a data nerd, so I'd like to catalog everything down to the most minute detail but, that's simply impossible. Thanks for requesting this though. My goal isn't to shoot people down, but at least address why this is difficult. Hopefully that will facilitate other discussions that might actually solve some of these problems. Edited October 31, 2019 by RH 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arch_8ngel | 1,597 Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 57 minutes ago, Gloves said: As a collector and not an "investor" I don't GAF about the "value". Frankly they're never near accurate enough anyway. I'd personally focus on accuracy of information, availability of variants where possible to choose from (i.e. "I have X variant"), and just overall robustness and searchability of the data. Not me, but someone out there wants to be able to filter to "All Black Box Mario NES variants" and someone ELSE wants to filter to "All Adventure Island games across all systems". I'd focus on the "collecting" aspect of it, personally. I think there is some interesting data mining that can go on, and interested parties could probably "improve" with human interpretation of questionable datapoints. Hands-free, you could at least automate cart-only BINs (current asking) and completed BIN/auctions. That could show trends/spreads. If you have enough volume to populate that kind of data, you could probably similarly automate lot values, by value-weighting the games in a lot. CIB/sealed obviously get a lot harder, though with slabbed auctions becoming more frequent, automatically tracking those and doing some grade-weighting as well as clearly tracking not just what the buyer paid but what the seller received, net fees, could be "useful" in the context of taking a stab at whether any private transaction represents a fair deal for both parties. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_Feisty_Pickle | 244 Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 2 hours ago, RH said: I understand that and I'm partially in the same boat. My main, personal difference is that I love, and have always loved, some form of collecting. I have my personal niche I buy and I never intend to get rid of. Then, there are the things that I think are "really cool", I want them in my collection, but I'm not attached to them. If I think I can buy those items for a cheap price, or if I think they might go up, I'll "invest" in the item to enjoy it on my shelf for a few years and then flip it, and use the cash for more games, or trade it. There's value in knowing the value of your stuff, and these generalized numbers are useful. Plus, having long-standing eBay history helps too, which eBay has always refused to maintain. Anyway, I do agree wit this. I think a collection-management tool/searchable DB is most important. In fact, I think I'd make it a bit community-focused so people could find other collectors, where an internal algorithm can match people with games for trade, with people wanting games to trade for. Basically, if you have titles x,y & z that another collector wants, and you have stuff they want of the same value, you can see that on a dashboard, or something. You can then initiate a trade. But, for a matching system to work, you have to have a rightful gauge of value and price. I'm thinking through ways to do this that's not 100% tied to eBay. I think it can be done, but you have to get the process right in your mind, so that people can't game values. Sounds interesting to me. I've had similar ideas about having a database to track your collection, be able to mark which ones are available for purchase/trade, and then match users who have those same items on a "want" list. I'm a backend web dev (~2 years experience so still pretty new professionally) but if you start something up let me know. I would possibly be interested in helping out where I can. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phart010 | 1,710 Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 You could put a voting system in place. For any given referenced price, the community can vote on how accurate the current price is. You’d have a bunch of sellers voting that it should be higher, and a bunch of buyers voting that it should be lower. You could use profiles of the people voting to determine whether they are biased and filter out the biased votes. The real market price would then probably be around some average of what the buyers and sellers collectively voted Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DefaultGen | 5,506 Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 (edited) 4 hours ago, Gloves said: As a collector and not an "investor" I don't GAF about the "value". Frankly they're never near accurate enough anyway. I'd personally focus on accuracy of information, availability of variants where possible to choose from (i.e. "I have X variant"), and just overall robustness and searchability of the data. Not me, but someone out there wants to be able to filter to "All Black Box Mario NES variants" and someone ELSE wants to filter to "All Adventure Island games across all systems". I'd focus on the "collecting" aspect of it, personally. +1. Focused and detailed is what really matters to me. Every once in a while someone would post a list of like 7 releases of one game on NA down to the screws, seals, product codes, box contents, and that kind of forum post is 100% more valuable than any entry in any game database out there, usually better than NA itself. Detailed collector info and pics of different versions are all I'd really care about. Anyone can dump the data from Mobygames into a tool and add filters to sort it. There's already too many mediocre collection tracking apps that do virtually the same thing. Combine all the detailed variant pictures I see from collectors on Instagram, all the box contents I look through the_wizard_666's list for, and the sortability of the original NA database and it will be something worthwhile. I know people know what type of dust sleeve is correct for each game or know that TLOZ came with a different cart baggie with a hole in it, but that kind of detailed info is stuff you'll never get on RFGeneration or an iPhone app, or even the old NA database. Like, is there a 100% list somewhere of all Wii U games that include a manual, or otherwise which specific non-manual insert they have? I had to constantly look at Youtube unboxings when I needed that kind of info. That's "important" information just kind of floating out in space right now. Edited October 31, 2019 by DefaultGen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Code Monkey | 2,023 Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 I'm working on one that utilizes Google Lens Tensorflow for image recognition. You can point your phone at a table full of games and it'll pop up with values beside each game as well as a check if you have it or not. No more sorting through an application, just point and see. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chromableedstudios | 24 Posted November 1, 2019 Share Posted November 1, 2019 I've sort of poked at this a few times, but what I would want is ability to hook up a USB barcode scanner, scan a location tag and quickly take inventory based on barcode (flashing the name on screen until next scan). That and a choose a game randomiser kinda thing. My prototype made use of the Amazon api which worked well enough except their data is a mess as far as system and what not... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rooster | 124 Posted November 1, 2019 Share Posted November 1, 2019 The big one for me is the ability to easily track Japanese games. There aren't a ton of good collection trackers that I know of which can track FC and SFC games, let alone PC Engine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheBiRD | 137 Posted November 1, 2019 Share Posted November 1, 2019 Filter by "condition vs sold price" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nintegageo | 582 Posted November 1, 2019 Share Posted November 1, 2019 I really appreciate when a site has non-NA titles, even though it's mainly what I collect. A 1-stop shop place is ideal. Oh and appreciated the NA rarity numbers next to games, although I think Common/Uncommon/Rare would be enough rather than actual numbers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMDLineKing | 4 Posted November 2, 2019 Share Posted November 2, 2019 I was DB editor/contributor on NA and there was a lot of excess information. I think it would be cool to keep the actual Curated DB really simple. Require photos / evidence for a data point and that gets a BOLD or star next to it that someone can click to SEE where the information came from, similar to references on WIKIPEDIA. Title, Alt Titles, Nintendo Numbers, Release Data, Publisher, Alt Publisher, Developer, UNIQUE DOCUMENTATION, Liscensed/Unlicensed,Rarity (Use numbers and let people change to "Unique/Rare/Uncommon/Common" as an option). Then allow the users to have their own public data that can be linked to a title(you can charge for Private DB entries to allow folks to put whatever fields they want, personal data, etc) That way you're not having 100+ fields of information that a lot of people don't care about. Someone wants to create unverifiable information on a title that's fine, you'd have to link their DB to even see it on your collection. Basically, it would be ultra awesome to be able to import multiple DB's for the data you want on a title or system. So you have the Master/Curated DB with only necessary information and have user created DB's for everything else. Make them selectable as part of your collection. So if you want to pull in all the Mega Man Variants, Manual Data, Boxes, Releases, etc that could be a user DB. Eventually it would be massive and user driven for the information someone is willing to care about and input, not just blanks and copy pasta. Hell it would even make it easy for existing DB's to be linked to for more info on a title. Imagine someone comes on and wants to see a manual, its not there.. So they start a Manuals DB for Nintendo that creates additional fields against the Curated DB entries. Now they can go and find links to the Manuals and put them in the DB. I don't think uploading entire manuals would be valuable, but linking to a repository on Archive.Org might be! Next guy comes on and likes to track games that were released on multiple systems. He can create them and list the differences. DB's get owners and moderators, if there is a split in a community, cool, the DB is replicated to a new branch and that group can do what they want. Not sure how feasible it is, but I think getting the basic game lists together would be simple. Then folks can start their variant lists, manual change lists, box change list, etc. If there is a popular field that more folks want, you can source the user DB's to pull that info into the main one if needed. DB's could get a black, blue, green, red, and white Sage to signify accuracy/completion as voted by the community. White Sage being "Good as it Gets / Complete" and black being the default/starting point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twiztor | 856 Posted November 2, 2019 Share Posted November 2, 2019 GVN worked perfectly well for what i used it for. an "at a glance" idea on price and let me track my collection. i really like the idea of subset tracking ("all Zelda games") but no idea how difficult this would be to implement Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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