There Should Be a Pandroa for Video Games
I had a thought the other day that I still can’t believe I’ve vocalized to a friend during a discussion about music: “MTV was great when we were young but it’s totally obsolete”
For anyone that grew up in the 90’s this kind of talk is heresy. Many of us and the personalities we carry today were molded by MTV and their charismatic VJs we watched for countless hours after school. Today’s lack of communal music video viewing certainly would suggest that there is an even greater need for a curated music listening experience. Yet the reality is that this couldn’t be further from the truth.
The truth is that the more I’ve gotten used to streaming music, the more I’ve appreciated how good algorithms are at creating personalized playlists. I’m one of the few oddballs that fluctuate between paid subscriptions on multiple streaming music sites and on each of them I’m blown away by how much better math can introduce me to music I enjoy than MTV ever could.
How well algorithms work in learning someone’s music taste isn’t just limited to music though. Anytime a movie is suggested to you on Netflix or an item is suggested to purchase on Amazon, it’s an algorithm at work that makes the recommendation. However, one area I wish had it’s own version of Pandora’s music genome project, the engine behind it’s music recommendations, is video games.
Though video games may be getting more digital as we move forward to new generations, they are still expensive at roughly $60 a title. Gamefly has helped provide game rentals to offset costs of buying new games, but for serious gamers the time it takes to gain a rewarding experience from a game takes much longer than the 2–3 minutes or so it takes to enjoy a song from a music streaming service. The enormous amount of titles that come each year requires gamers to be very selective with which games they invest their time into.
Unfortunately, it sometimes can take a week or so into a game before you realize you aren’t interested in finishing it. By the time that reality sets in, it’s deflating to realise that you aren’t getting back those hours you put into it. This is why I think there should be a better way to discover games because as I get older my free time has become scarcer and costlier than it was when I was a younger. There’s a wealth of gaming sites and podcasts out there to help gamers make better decisions but what would be better is a Pandora-like platform that uses your own gaming history to generate data driven recommendations.
If there was some kind of Pandora for Gaming, it would help gamers avoid the marketing hype that puts pressure to pre-order games that don’t meet the promises of aggressive campaigns and allow them to save their money in the process. It also would expose gamers to entire libraries of titles that didn’t have the budgets to spend on marketing when they were being developed. Everyone has their own unique tastes in games and it’s about time a data driven approach to discovering new games becomes available to the general public in the form of a new platform.
The Benefits of Tracking
While we’re on the topic of platforms though, if a Pandora-like one was to be developed it should do more than just generate gaming recommendations. I’d actually like to see one where each gamer’s personal gaming history is tracked as part of a digital library. There’s another form of media that made me realize the benefits of digital libraries and it’s one of the oldest. I’m talking about books of course and as an avid reader, I’ve read so many books in my lifetime that the ones that stand out the most are only a handful of ones that left an impression on me. This leaves out hundreds of others and as I get older it kind of sucks not remembering everything you’ve read.
A similar thing happens when it comes to games because chances are outside the ones that really were great; you probably forgot how many games you’ve played since you got your first gaming system. This obviously can be avoided by hanging onto old gaming cartridges but with gaming moving into the cloud and becoming more digital, much like music CDs, the end of physical media is fast approaching. This means that without a mechanism to track your gaming history, you won’t have much to show for the hundreds to thousands of hours you invested into playing different games. It may not seem like a big deal to casual gamers but once I started using Goodreads as way to track my reading, I immediately felt a fulfilling sense of gratification and appreciation when seeing how large my digital library was. If a platform like this existed for gaming, it would probably be an even more rewarding experience to use when seeing your gaming history span across different periods of your life.
A Possible Solution
The need for discovering and tracking games seems like such a common one that I searched around all week certain that I would find something. While there are some forms of an IMDb for games and large online libraries of gaming ratings, I wasn’t quite able to find the platform I originally envisioned. However, I did stumble upon one glimmer of hope. After a deep online search, I came across a Playne.
From what it looks like Playne is in early development and is in the process of creating it’s own Pandora-like Video Game Genome project for the purpose of powering an algorithm that will be able to make it’s own data driven game recommendations. Of course part of what makes music streaming sites like Pandora work so well is that it’s based on a person’s musical taste and I was pleased to see that Playne seeks to the same by allowing it’s users to populate their own gaming histories on their profiles.
I created a profile to test it out and found myself completely immersed in a fit of nostalgia as I listed and rated games from when I was a kid up until my adult years. The more games you list and rate, the better Playne will be able to make recommendations for you so it’s worthwhile to do so. Playne also boasts of having it’s own reward system where users can earn points for their gaming progress so it seems as if there is even more reason to visit the site often. Even more impressive to me was the mobile app Playne has available to track your progress on the go, which for people like me that spend a lot of time commuting will certainly make us of on long bus rides.
One thing I realized recently when IMDb shut down it’s message boards is that an online database without a community is no doubt a resource, but a lifeless one people forget about. There’s nothing wrong with that but for a database to be given life, it needs a community of engaged users. My hope is that Playne continues to grow and becomes an essential part of gaming’s future. The only way this can happen is through new users so I encourage you to check it our for yourself.
After all, at a time where gaming is at a junction between traditional systems, cloud based downloads, and mobile apps, it’s always a evocative experience to look back at the past and remember what it was that lead you into becoming a gamer. From what it looks like, Playne seeks to answer that call.
