Messages

1

General / Re: IGN just acquired a ton of their competitors

« on: Today at 03:33:59 pm »

Based on this entire thread, it really shows just how much politics plays a major role in gaming journalism. Any social issue will trigger either side and get them to engage in the comments. Engagement is key these days for anyone to get paid on any platform. Simple views aren't enough, like they were 20 years ago. The latest "issue" with Assassin's Creed: Shadows goes to show this. Both sides are flooding social media, either defending it or trying to tear it apart. This is what these outlets thrive on.

Has anyone noticed the lack of indie reviews over the last several years? Unless the game has gone viral on streaming or social platforms, no one will cover it.

2

General / Re: IGN just acquired a ton of their competitors

« on: May 27, 2024, 09:12:44 am »

Game journalism has been... not great... for a long time. There's a lot of crap out there. The best of the gaming sites IMO, GameTrailers.com, died out a long time ago. Unfortunately, both IGN and PushSquare groups are heavily left leaning, so if they post anything that has to do with politics, even moderately conservative opinions will be removed and users banned. I know this as I have been temp banned from both sites at some point for expressing a non-hostile conservative opinion.

Where am I going with this, you may be asking... If IGN has bought out their competitors, then there is no great loss. It's simply the consolidation of the same opinion under one banner and this will have zero impact on the readers and those that interact on their sites. That is... until with everything in the gaming industry at the moment... they start to downsize.

It has nothing to do with being "left leaning". To be honest, most of the top comments on all IGN posts are heavily right leaning. Usually some pretty sick stuff at that. Politics have nothing to do with this consolidation. It's about finances. We're headed towards another 80's game crash. Everything is about profit and pleasing share holders now. Gaming isn't about the art of it anymore. AAA games will implode, and all that will be left are the indie titles that have held the gaming industry up for the last decade. Small gaming sites can no longer thrive like they used to.

You missed what I was trying to convey. These sites all have the same ideals, the same mindset. They're essentially all the same. Now that it's all under one banner... there's been no loss.

I didn't miss your point. Your point is purely political, and there isn't any sort of agenda. The loss is huge. This isn't good for the gaming industry. Every site being under one banner means less trust, more shady back room deals, and a lot of people aren't going to trust any reviews on these sites anymore. IGN already has a bad enough reputation and this is going to seem like the Amazon or Starbucks of the gaming journalism industry. Buying up everybody, monopolizing, and killing trust. But sure, it's all about "leftist" ideas. Whatever that means.

Fair enough. You didn't miss my point. You saw it and ignored it entirely.

If you still have trust in the reviews these sites have then I don't know what to tell you. They haven't been trustworthy... any of them... in at least a decade.

I didn't ignore it. I clearly addressed it. Your point was that sites being left leaning and political makes them untrustworthy. That was your point, and I addressed it as such. I also never once said I trusted anything.

I will agree with you that you can't trust most sites anymore, and gaming reviews need to be taken with a grain of salt from  journalists. I usually go towards user reviews these days, and even then you have to be cautious with review bombing, which can be misleading, or an entire game getting negative reviews over a single issue.

3

General / Re: Which Generation Of Console Or PC Games You Think Contain The Best Graphics

« on: May 27, 2024, 09:04:47 am »

When we had processing limitations. PS3/Xbox 360 generation and earlier required developers to be clever and use coding tricks to make their games push these systems to the limits. I feel these games hold up the best today. We have so much processing power available today I feel developers have no desire to push things to their limits.

4

General / Re: IGN just acquired a ton of their competitors

« on: May 22, 2024, 01:41:54 am »

Game journalism has been... not great... for a long time. There's a lot of crap out there. The best of the gaming sites IMO, GameTrailers.com, died out a long time ago. Unfortunately, both IGN and PushSquare groups are heavily left leaning, so if they post anything that has to do with politics, even moderately conservative opinions will be removed and users banned. I know this as I have been temp banned from both sites at some point for expressing a non-hostile conservative opinion.

Where am I going with this, you may be asking... If IGN has bought out their competitors, then there is no great loss. It's simply the consolidation of the same opinion under one banner and this will have zero impact on the readers and those that interact on their sites. That is... until with everything in the gaming industry at the moment... they start to downsize.

It has nothing to do with being "left leaning". To be honest, most of the top comments on all IGN posts are heavily right leaning. Usually some pretty sick stuff at that. Politics have nothing to do with this consolidation. It's about finances. We're headed towards another 80's game crash. Everything is about profit and pleasing share holders now. Gaming isn't about the art of it anymore. AAA games will implode, and all that will be left are the indie titles that have held the gaming industry up for the last decade. Small gaming sites can no longer thrive like they used to.

You missed what I was trying to convey. These sites all have the same ideals, the same mindset. They're essentially all the same. Now that it's all under one banner... there's been no loss.

I didn't miss your point. Your point is purely political, and there isn't any sort of agenda. The loss is huge. This isn't good for the gaming industry. Every site being under one banner means less trust, more shady back room deals, and a lot of people aren't going to trust any reviews on these sites anymore. IGN already has a bad enough reputation and this is going to seem like the Amazon or Starbucks of the gaming journalism industry. Buying up everybody, monopolizing, and killing trust. But sure, it's all about "leftist" ideas. Whatever that means.

5

General / Re: IGN just acquired a ton of their competitors

« on: May 21, 2024, 06:37:43 pm »

Game journalism has been... not great... for a long time. There's a lot of crap out there. The best of the gaming sites IMO, GameTrailers.com, died out a long time ago. Unfortunately, both IGN and PushSquare groups are heavily left leaning, so if they post anything that has to do with politics, even moderately conservative opinions will be removed and users banned. I know this as I have been temp banned from both sites at some point for expressing a non-hostile conservative opinion.

Where am I going with this, you may be asking... If IGN has bought out their competitors, then there is no great loss. It's simply the consolidation of the same opinion under one banner and this will have zero impact on the readers and those that interact on their sites. That is... until with everything in the gaming industry at the moment... they start to downsize.

It has nothing to do with being "left leaning". To be honest, most of the top comments on all IGN posts are heavily right leaning. Usually some pretty sick stuff at that. Politics have nothing to do with this consolidation. It's about finances. We're headed towards another 80's game crash. Everything is about profit and pleasing share holders now. Gaming isn't about the art of it anymore. AAA games will implode, and all that will be left are the indie titles that have held the gaming industry up for the last decade. Small gaming sites can no longer thrive like they used to.

6

Video Game Database Discussion / Re: Questions on scans

« on: May 10, 2024, 11:02:08 pm »

Regarding submission quantity, I'll only mention that, if you really do plan on submitting thousands of image submissions, it may be better to space them out, only so that staff don't get bogged down with the edit queue. Those responding to the queue have to get to everybody's edit submissions, and reviewing them can, at times, be a lengthy process. Don't let that deter you from submitting edits in bulk, though, if you're adamant about getting it all done at once. Although, spacing submissions out will also make it easier for you to review your Notifications log, in the event that any submission is rejected.

Personally, the only other database I sometimes frequent for images is MobyGames, since their submissions are generally okay. I've not come across any other site which accounts for variant items in large numbers, though, which is one focus of our site, so usually resorting to eBay or sites like it is necessary for my purposes.

It's a shame we can't comment back on rejections. For example in the recent Silent Hill 3 rejection I realized (like an idiot) I had the box upside when I submitted it to my collection and I have the barcode left side box. Sometimes the rejections are as simple as that. I looked at something upside down or missed something when I originally added it to my collection. I won't submit them as a slow stream throughout the day. It also won't be daily. Maybe a few times a week during the course of a few hours (mostly over night) so there might be a few dozen at a time at most.

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Video Game Database Discussion / Re: Questions on scans

« on: May 10, 2024, 10:13:00 pm »

1. If a submitted image has higher quality than an entry's existing image, it will be approved. However, be aware that we group the quality of images into different tiers, which you can read about in the "Front/Back art slot image type priority for physical items" section of the Item Images post of the style guide.

2. You may need to clear your browser cache to see newly-updated images. Because you sent the same submission twice, there was no reason for the second submission to be approved since the first was already approved. With that said, if someone submits an image edit to a field, then re-submits a separate image to the same field before it can be responded to by staff, the second image will overwrite the first. This means staff will never see the first image, only the second. This is even the case when two separate members submit images to the same image field for a specific entry.

3. Those sorts of blemishes are fine to submit and will be approved as a replacement if the existing image is lower quality. That said, as I mentioned in the Admins Comments upon rejection, your image submission for Juggernaut's front image slot is lower quality due to its markings on the top-right corner, which seem to be from a removed pricing label that's left residue. We can all see its quality, as this is the eBay listing you purchased, evident from the back cover pricing labels which were scanned as part of your submission. Because the entry didn't previously have back art information, the back art image submission was approved.

4. Currently, neither spine nor inlay art should be submitted to any field. Perhaps one day, dedicated fields for that sort of information will be implemented.

5. All submitted images scale to 200px, no matter if they're submitted smaller or larger than that size. It's unfortunate that the size isn't a little larger to help with identifying information, but that's how the system is designed.

No need to feel like you'll upset anyone with submissions. We value them and the work that everyone contributes. Obviously, we encourage the highest quality effort which members are able to provide, but even low standard submissions are appreciated.

Okay! Thanks so much for all of that. I do wait for the yellow flag in the top right corner and see what was approved and submitted before fixing something or leaving it alone. So, it seems I should just submit what I have (it could be thousands of photos over the course of the next several weeks) and my only other question would be should I leave out anything with stickers? I saw my Silent Hill 3 Brady guide rear photo was accepted despite having a price sticker on it. I'm guessing that fell into the higher quality tier?

I'm glad you guys are patient and appreciate it. I've hesisted in the past with uploaded large amount of changes because I was worried I would flood the admins with too many submissions. It's unfortunate that dedicated video game cover sites are now pretty much gone like cdcovers.cc and The Cover Project has a very small library these days and they allow custom submissions. I am also uploading everything to pricecharting.com because the photos there are kind of like the wild west with not much oversight.

Also, I tested the image cache clearing for the Dark Seed II image that was just submitted and it worked. It was showing the older one despite the submission being approved. Really annoying how that works. I will do this from now on before resubmitting anything.

8

Video Showcase / Re: Oldgamerz Community Links

« on: May 10, 2024, 09:52:59 pm »

(edit) I own (49,851) retro video games including variations an but probably will not record most of my physical copies for a long time or ever because I have a limited budget but and some of those games are free mods and free games that are 20 years or older but most of my physical copies are newer, I told you this because I am a video game preserver. I purchased mostly all of them with real money and not credit and don't tell me about pirary because I did not pirate them. I bought them fair and square and their is proof of it too, somewhere on the online records somewhere.

You should call the Guinnes book of world records for biggest game collection, you'll break the current record of 24K with ease   

I think this dude's account got hacked. He has over 2k posts.

9

Video Game Database Discussion / Questions on scans

« on: May 10, 2024, 09:38:19 pm »

I bought a scanner so I could upload as many images as I can. I trialed a few images as around half of mine keep being rejected even after corrections are made in the comments of the rejection.

1. If there is a low quality image already existing (front image for example) and I upload a scan of that image (which is higher quality) does that count or do you guys just want images that don't exist?

2. I uploaded a front box scan of Dark Seed II https://vgcollect.com/item/264437 for Apple  and the rejection notes said the image already exists. However, that image is a low quality photo with a large glare. Mine was a higher quality scan.

3. If something has a sticker or blemish do you guys not want the scan? I uploaded a scan of the front cover for the Juggernaut Prime guide and it had a small amount of sticker residue in the corner. However, this can is much higher quality than the one currently available one. Do the scans need to be 100% perfect?

4. Do you guys need rear art spines or inlays or is that not currently being uploaded on the site anywhere?

5. Where are the larger scans? When I right click and open the image they are always 200x248. Clicking the images does nothing. I feel like I'm missing something here and it's always been a mystery since I joined years back. If there is a higher quality scan already uploaded I can't tell. I feel like I'll just be submitting everything I can and whatever gets rejected for dupes gets rejected, but I don't want to piss the admins off.

I want to help contribute as much as I can, but I know I need to fine tune things within the guidelines.

10

Modern Video Games / Re: Nintendo Switch 2

« on: March 09, 2024, 12:04:37 pm »

As stated, I think 2024 will be the year we get to see the Switch 2, or whatever Nintendo calls it. I do think it'll be similar to the current Switch in terms of its hybrid handheld/console setup, however it'll have the added bonus of a 4k screen and games made to play in 4k too.

I think even a 4K screen is being optimistic Let alone games made to be played in 4K. I highly doubt it considering Nintendo's being low on them specs since Wii era.

Nintendo has always gone low end for specs.  That's their whole thing and how they cornered the handheld market.

Where talking consoles here though, not handhelds

Nintendo wasn't always about low specs to keep stuff cheap. during snes, N64 and cube era in terms of specs they where actually the most powerfull or far above average compared to competitors

Believe it or not a cube was twice times as powerfull compared to a Ps2 than again it does make sense why cube games look so much better compared to ps2 games, and while ps1 had discs for storage, in terms of raw power N64 had it beat for faster paced games and generally world generation it only lacked storage but if not for that it was far more powerfull than a ps1. And let us not start with the snes. It had the other notable competitors beat at everything barring blast processing.

The Gamecube being more powerful than the PS2 is pretty common knowledge. However, I believe they will finally reach 1080p status undocked and docked.

11

Modern Video Games / Re: Where do you draw the line? New Game Prices

« on: February 27, 2024, 08:54:46 pm »

It's going to keep going up until the economy callapses like everything else. $150 would be stupid. Many wouldn't buy it or wait until the price drops down. We're already paying $130 for Gold Edition games from Ubisoft, but that does include a season pass and other DLC. For just the base game? I don't know. I'm fine paying $70 for new games as they should have gone up years and years ago. If anything games have gotten cheaper over time adjusted for inflation.

12

Modern Video Games / Re: Xbox going third party

« on: February 16, 2024, 08:54:52 am »

My issue with this is we need exclusivity. So many younger gamers are saying "End the console wars!" No! Don't! Competition breeds innovation. Without these exclusives, there's no reason to push their platform forward more. If Xbox put all of its exclusives on other systems there would be no reason to be loyal to the brand or for it to exist unless it went 100% software-based like Sega did. Microsoft keeps making these same mistakes and losing all of its exclusives from third parties or themselves. They either cancel them or let them go to other platforms. Microsoft hasn't had a good new IP since the mid-2000s.

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General / Re: Your Own Opinion About Collecting Today

« on: August 24, 2023, 05:47:31 am »

From the very beginning when I started (around 2008 or so) after I started working out of high school I told myself I have to want to play whatever I buy. There are a lot of collectors who just buy everything in their path and end up with so much stuff stuffed into boxes they never see again. I started a wishlist way back then and have gotten a good majority of it over time. Thankfully it was before the huge rise in prices during COVID, but now I'm just left with a few rare games for some consoles. I talked to my wife about this a few months ago and I've pretty much stopped collecting. I will buy an expensive game that's on the top of my wishlist (not many left) once in a while. She got me one as a surprise gift a few weeks ago randomly walking into a used game store. But, the days of going into a retro game store and walking away with an armful of games (including rare ones) for a few hundred bucks is gone.

Right now I'm just restoring and modernizing consoles to preserve them. New power supplies (internal), new LCD screens for handhelds, amplifiers/sound boards, rechargeable battery mods, replacing blown capacitors, buying modern controllers for older consoles, etc. The preservation and restoration is super satisfying and I know these consoles will now last forever without worrying about moving parts breaking and dying and things going pop one day. I'm of course collecting for modern consoles regularly, more so than retro ones over the last 4 years, and that will always continue.

Bottom line, anyone who wants to start collecting retro games today is screwed. I feel really bad for them. I talked to a few store owners near me and everyone is flipping games for profit rather than just collecting to have them. People who don't even play games are buying them up in droves. It's super sad.

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Modern Video Games / Re: Are "triple A" games dead?

« on: August 10, 2023, 01:06:00 am »

I can understand why you would think this. After the arrival of the HD consoles (PS3/Xbox 360) development time increased so much that most AAA games can take up to five years to complete. If you look back prior to that AAA games were released all year round some times dozens in a week. The PS2/Xbox era was probably the last generation of frequently released AAA games that would take two years or less to make. Some times we only get a single game in a franchise per generation now. I feel like indie titles over the last decade and a half have been keeping gaming in general alive. Without those smaller releases, many people would have lost interest.

15

Site Feedback / Re: Edit button losing data on collection page

« on: July 22, 2023, 10:07:55 pm »

Still happening to me. I just lost a bunch of edits today without realizing this was happening. I went back and changed everything, dozens of items are either at 0.00 or 0000 for year.