The Title of this post says it all really…
It is my opinion that nobody will bother to track gaming time MANUALLY…
I know I wont!
So my suggestion, is Why isn’t there a downloadable software for tracking game play time?
All your major competitors have automatic game tracking.
Surely it would not be difficult to have Grouvee Software that will automatically detect what games we are playing?
how long we play them, and maybe some kind of automatic status changer to something like #nowplaying Dying Light (or whatever game you happening to be playing)
I personally don’t track game time at all, I guess I don’t get the point. But Grouvee does already take Steam’s playtime data and adds it automatically.
But as you point out, there are lots of other places that track game time played, and they don’t have everything Grouvee has. I don’t know of a site that lets me catalog my collection like Grouvee does, while also tracking playtime. Keep in mind that many of Grouvee’s users are cataloging non-PC games. And if they want to track play time on their older consoles (for example, NES) they are going to have to do it manually no matter what.
Could be it’s best just to use one site for tracking play time, and another for cataloging. When it comes down to it, creating software, I imagine, would be incredibly time consuming when there are many, many other features Peter wants to create and add to the site.
I don’t track my playing time either, but I would like the ability to do so! It would be interesting to see exactly how many hours I play such and such a game? …but its not something I would manually do; remember after each gaming session!? & I don’t really use Stream all that much either…
Very Good point concerning non-PC games. I also completely agree with you, they don’t have everything Grouvee has!
Dont get me wrong, I am not suggesting some HUGE software project like evolve or Xfire, I just meant, a small app, that reflects my nowplaying library here on grouvee, that also has the ability to monitor when the game.exe is being used (and how long) & posts that on to my #nowplaying shelve. (and maybe changes my status to now playing this game)
I have tried out those other tracking softwares from Evolve and Xfire, etc. and they are all way too heavy and try to do too much (like also act as a vpn!) And they are all VERY inflexible. They will recognise if you buy all your games from steam and have them installed in the usual folder. But if you play Indie games or order retail PC games from amazon.co.uk because I am adult gamer and even over 18 PC games get heavily censored here; or prefer to install all your PC games on a different Harddiskdrive… NON-STANDARD;Then these tracking softwares fail misserbly! (Game NOT detected) They do have a ‘manually add’ games as well, but they try to overcomplicate this as well and end up failing because of this. They don’t have an Easy solution, like simply allowing me to manually point the game (from the game Library at the website) directly at the game.exe and monitor it. This is why I abandoned those other tracking systems again like raptr & evolve…
This is also exactly what I like about Grouvee, that its very clean and ordered here, it does what you want, and does not overly complicate the whole process. Its turning into a Goodreads style website except for my Games!
Thumbs Up! Keep up the Good Work!
I have no idea how hard or easy to be to build a simple time tracking application. The idea of it has me intrigued, and I’ll definitely add it to the list to take a look at. I have a feeling it would be hard to do in a way that would work for the majority of people’s setups. Like @Jess said, there’s quite a few things I’m building right now, so I don’t know when I’ll get to it. I do want more people to enter their times on the site so we can do some cool stuff with it, and maybe having a tracker would help.
Yeah, I have no idea either how hard such an Application would be to program. *if only I were a software dev! I guess it should be a some kind of of game scrobbler? Similar to what they have on Last.fm for music!?
Indeed a game stats tracker would be rather cool.
+Plus it would pave the way to allow cool new Grouvee website features like:
Monthly or Weekly game playing Stats displayed on Grouveer profiles based on Game Play time…
–Top 5 games based on playtime!
–Last Game played: Dying Light
–Time playing gaming this week: 10 hrs
–Most played Game this week: Dying Light
–Favourite Genres: Survival Horror, CoOp etc.
–Social Network integration
i.e. Monthly or Weekly Status updates sent to Facebook and Twitter,
with something like:
My Top 3 games on Grouvee:
Dying Light 2. Alien Isolation 3. Batman Arkham
http//:Link to user profile on Grouvee with more game stats…
*As well as being a desirable addition for Grouveers, it would also be free word-of-mouth advertising for Grouvee!
Lots of potential there really!
The Application should be able to:
–It should reflect the games I add to my playshelf on Grouvee.
–Grouvee Status Updates
–Add our Games Library (the local folder where we install our games, I personally install all my games into ‘Game Files’ on a separate HDD for games only, but everybody is different!) *Being able to add the main Games Install Folder might help with making the application compatible on more peoples setups?
–It should be able to search my Local Game Library for game.exe and match them to the Grouvee Games Database… *for more compatibility, If it does not autodetect a game, there should be a way the end user can help the application find the game.exe by pointing it at the correct install folder and game.exe! (such info then gets added to the DB)
–It should be able to monitor for how long the game.exe is active, and send this info back to Grouvee, populating user profiles with valuable games stats…
But LOL, I have just clicked on your to-do-list…
*Thats some to-do-list!
You are indeed VERY busy!
I don’t know how you find time to do all that and get some quality gaming time in!?
But here on Groovee we are all very glad that you do!
I don’t think I have too much to add of value as far as a separate game tracking application is concerned (but it is an intriguing idea), and though I feel that my thoughts/‘wants’ on this topic have already been expressed and relatively well documented elsewhere on Grouvee, perhaps trying to explain it again here might spark further conversation from @Jess or @danfreedom23 (or anyone else).
While I recognize many people may share the same feelings as @Jess (that is, ‘I don’t track my time played nor do I see its point’), I for one may just exist in some weird minority: maybe it’s because I’m an analyst at heart (and at my job), but I actually really enjoy the insight that kind of data provides me into my gaming habit, for better or for worse. And because I’ve found that Grouvee is the only site I’ve come across that allows for dates/time played to be entered in a relatively straightforward way, I don’t mind manually entering in my time played.
And you know what? Since I’ve started doing that pretty regularly the past 4 months or so (for example, just have a look at my 2015 Played shelf - you’ll only see dates, but there are times in there too ), I have been much more conscious of choosing what I play and trying to stick with things for a bit longer than I otherwise might, along with trying not to jump so much from game to game to game. Ultimately that’s just the type of person I am, so I know that I’ll always ‘play’ more stuff than I finish, and own more stuff than I’ll likely play, but something about being able to look back over the last few weeks, months, or when it comes down to it, year, and see where/how I spent my time across games, consoles, particular month, etc., is pretty satisfying.
Last two things:
My ideal presentation of that data (assuming someone’s entered it or it’s been collected) is something not entirely unlike the 3DS’ ‘Activity Log.’ Basically it’s just a window into the titles you’ve played and for how long, with the ability to view that data from a variety of well, views (titles ranked by hours played or number of sessions, or what was played across a span of time, etc.)
I’m terrible about remembering what I’ve actually played, especially when it comes to smaller, bite-sized stuff; so when someone comes to me in December asking what I’ve played that’s awesome (or if I just want to reflect on my own year in gaming ), I like that I could potentially come to Grouvee to look back over everything that captured my interest and recall a game as awesome as Grow Home - something I ‘only’ spent 5 or 6 hours with, but was a great experience. Or I could see that ‘Oh man, I only spent an hour with Armello, but I should really go back to it now that it’s further along in Early Access’ or whatever.
Does this make me weird? Probably. But, I thought I’d at least try to illustrate the kinds of things one might do with tracking time played. Okay, this turned into a book - sorry!
Your not a minority, I totally agree with you! I enjoy looking back later and seeing what games I played and for how many hours! Its just that, I cant see how many hours I play a game for at the moment! I could look at the time I guess, before I start playing, and note how many hours it was after finishing a gaming session… but thats something I just don’t remember to do! Thats why I starting thinking about a tracking software, that does ONLY that tracking! But I have seen Peters to-do-list, and there are a lot of good ideas there that need need doing! & I appreciate that such an application might turn out to be quite difficult program…
I track a lot of things! I track as much as I can really! (I am a little forgetful!) I enjoy seeing my weekly stats! Like this week I looked at so-&-so many hours of movies or TV-shows, my most played music bands this week, because you read such&such a book, you might also like this book! etc…
It started out with tracking the music I listen to on Last.fm. Then I thought wouldn’t it be cool if I could track what movies and tv-shows I watch as well? Then I found Trakt.tv. It tracks everything automatically from my media center via plug-in, but I have to manually update it when I watch netflix. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to track my reading habits. I went looking & I found Goodreads. Cool, all my comics and books tracked! Then I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to track all my video games and game play stats? I searched and found things like Evolve, Raptr & Xfire, but none of them were right… Their tracking system was too standardized and rigid… I was thinking to myself for ages, wouldn’t it be great if we had some tracking website like trakt last.fm and goodreads, except just for Video games? Then recently I went searching again, and found some dudes blog telling me about Grouvee! & here I am!
Problem is Sony doesn’t allow third party trackers to see specifics on your playing, and Xbox has taken steps to make it more difficult with the Xbox One. I wish they would keep track of it like Steam does, which would allow easy exporting to services like Grouvee. It’s a simple feature that wouldn’t take long for them to implement.
I guess it should be a some kind of of game scrobbler? Similar to what they have on 
), I like that I could potentially come to Grouvee to look back over everything that captured my interest and recall a game as awesome as Grow Home - something I ‘only’ spent 5 or 6 hours with, but was a great experience. Or I could see that ‘Oh man, I only spent an hour with Armello, but I should really go back to it now that it’s further along in Early Access’ or whatever.