What happened so far, part 1
In December 2010 a guy named Jens registered in the discussion board of Kultpower and TheLegacy and asked the communtity:
"What if we found a non-profit registered association of gamers to create the ultimate, worldwide, community-based database about computer and video games, pushing to academic standards of documentation?"
After some hesitant answers from other board-members he went further and stated:
"I want to create a new project like Mobygames or TheLegacy, but better."
Wow. That was an announcement! To "replace" Mobygames and TheLegacy, that is a sweeping goal, indeed. MobyGames with more than 60,000 game entries, TheLegacy with more than 35,000 games recorded. Not to forget the hundreds of thousands of screen shots and cover scans, these two projects have accumulated over the years.
So we asked for some more details. And after some further back and forth we finall saw that it really does make sense to create a novel online-game-database. Of course we respect the great work of all the other projects, but nevertheless we believe that - if we re-think everything from scratch - we can advance things in some areas (non-profit focus, openness and extensibility, logical data model) and thereby create a secure, open and comprehensive documentation of the history of computer- and video games.
At the end of January 2011 we finished our "mission statement". In only a few sentences we describe our goals:
Now here we are, ten months later. What do we have so far?
"What if we found a non-profit registered association of gamers to create the ultimate, worldwide, community-based database about computer and video games, pushing to academic standards of documentation?"
After some hesitant answers from other board-members he went further and stated:
"I want to create a new project like Mobygames or TheLegacy, but better."
Wow. That was an announcement! To "replace" Mobygames and TheLegacy, that is a sweeping goal, indeed. MobyGames with more than 60,000 game entries, TheLegacy with more than 35,000 games recorded. Not to forget the hundreds of thousands of screen shots and cover scans, these two projects have accumulated over the years.
So we asked for some more details. And after some further back and forth we finall saw that it really does make sense to create a novel online-game-database. Of course we respect the great work of all the other projects, but nevertheless we believe that - if we re-think everything from scratch - we can advance things in some areas (non-profit focus, openness and extensibility, logical data model) and thereby create a secure, open and comprehensive documentation of the history of computer- and video games.
At the end of January 2011 we finished our "mission statement". In only a few sentences we describe our goals:
We want to create a new online-system for the management and the long time storage of computer and video game data, which avoids the problems of other existing projects and at the same time is designed with innovation and sustainability.
These are the characteristics of our system:
- the logical data model shall be comprehensive and therefore exceed the capabilities of any other existing game database.
- the underlying technology shall be based upon a modern software architecture, so everything is easy expandable and maintainable.
- everybody (with the required skills) shall be able to extend and enhance the source code
- the gathered data will be available to everybody, from a technical point of view as well as regarding licensing conditions
- multi-lingualism is a goal right from the beginning
- a non-profit organisation (instead of one ore more individuals) shall be the operator of the database, to assure a long term stability and availability.
Now here we are, ten months later. What do we have so far?
- about ten people are in the team (everyone in his spare time)
- a wiki for the documentation of our ideas and concepts with more than twenty pages, some of them with great investigations and details.
- a special area in the discussion board with more than 700 postings in 60 threads
- a first version of a java web application, which stores the elementary parts of computer and video games in a database and displays them
- a brand new name for our brand new project: OREGAMI.org (Open Register of Game Information)
- we want to reproduce some selected games within our current data model to see if it "works" and if we have forgotten something
- some special aspects of game data have to be finalized, like add-ons, compilations and game series
- advance the programming
- think about the web design and create some mockups
- and much more!