This subject is inappropriate to talk about but I can’t keep it to myself. Please bear with me. If Peter wishes me to shut up, I will.
Let’s cut to the chase here. I’m skeptical this site will be supported for much longer. It is only natural of a father to focus on his newborn child and make priorities.
My fear isn’t groundless. Does “RadeonPro” ring any bells? Not the AMD workstation GPU. The third-party one-man project which took on NVIDIA Inspector. RadeonPro was a lifesaver because AMD Catalyst was a joke back then.
Unfortunately, it took no newborn children to sink this promising piece of software – just a paycheck. In 2013, Raptr hired John - the engineer of RadeonPro - to work on AMD Gaming Evolved and he swiftly discontinued it. RadeonPro Infinity never came into existence just like Half Life 3.
This site is also a one-man project. While it should take far less effort to patch up compared to RadeonPro, it’s just as fragile.
I disliked John’s decision to kill off RadeonPro but it was nice of him to bid farewell instead of simply disappearing from radar.
At the end of the day, I only ask for the same early warning if you decided to leave this site behind in order to embrace life, which is completely understandable.
I’m a new Grouvee user and this has occurred to me, too. I tried a few other options before I settled on Grouvee to track games I am playing, but this one had a nice UX. I did wonder how long it was going to be around if market forces weren’t keeping it running if the original creator decided to move on. Has he considered developing Grouvee Gold, or expanding as a business in some way? What’s the future of Grouvee?
We do have Grouvee Gold! Grouvee Gold
$10 per year gets you a badge, an option to use the Dark theme on the site, and no ads.(Although right now I’m not running any ads currently. I’ll probably bring them back in some form soon though.) I don’t make a fortune on Gold, but it has mostly paid for the site the last couple of years.
That’s fair. I don’t have any plans of discontinuing the site. I definitely don’t have as much time as I used to in some ways, but I’m also home more on the weekends, so I have time on Sundays a lot of time to do a few things.
For the most part, the site runs fairly autonomously. The data updates itself automatically a few times a day, and all backups occur automatically.
Honestly, the thing I would be most worried about causing a site shutdown is if Giant Bomb ever cut me off from the data. I’ve talked to their engineering team, and their customer support about what I’m doing, and they’re all OK with it. If CBS ever changed their mind on access to the data, then this site could get screwed. There are other sites with this kind of data, just no one as good as them. IGDB is promising though.
I hope that helps alleviate some fears. I’m around for questions or concerns as always!
I’m honestly not too worried about Grouvee shutting down. Don’t get me wrong, it would suck, big time, but in the end it comes down to how you use the service.
If you see it as the place where you have all your data about games, your backlog, ratings, etc., then yes, grouvee going away would probably set you back in terms of data and time it took to curate it.
I like to think of grouvee, and similar sites that deal with managing a catalog of stuff, as a frontend to my own information. Sure, the page offers tons of features, an easy to use interface, a huge pool of preexisting data to add to your own collection, etc. but in the end, it’s a means to manage underlying data, not the actual data itself.
The most essential part of this is being able to convert said data to a format that can be used independently of the tool that generated it. Grouvee offers a really nice csv export which lets you do exactly that, and the layout of the generated file is simple enough that it shouldn’t take more than a few hours to have a working parser for it. Once you get to that point, you have essentially created a layer of abstraction between your data and the application that handles it.
Grouvee shutting down would be incredibly inconvenient because you lose the tool that removed most of the overhead that comes with managing a games catalog, but all your information would still be there, enabling you to either manage your library manually or look for a replacement service provider (given that you have regular backups).
Maybe I’m getting too worked up over this, but after having to deal with the fallout after data loss, both personally and professionally, I take the stance of hoping for the best while preparing for the worst.
I don’t think that Grouvee is in danger of being shutdown – however, I DO think Grouvee is in danger of falling behind. I’ve been a proud Grouvee user for over a year, but I’ve seen little to no changes or improvement on the site. There’s no shortage of requests or ideas from users (Peter sees most of them!), but nothing seems to change.
I’ve been holding onto my Grouvee Gold $$ until I see some quality of life changes. But there hasn’t been any. I wonder how many people are in the same boat as I.
I’ll agree that I haven’t had a ton of time for development, but I’ve pushed a bunch of little changes over the past year. A lot of them have been bug fixes, and quality of life type stuff. I don’t do a great job keeping track of what things I’ve built and when, but I know I’ve added the grid view to your collection page, the popular games page, the whole release management system (which wasn’t exactly a small thing), Markdown for posts, status updates on game pages, and more that I’m sure I’m not remembering. I just did a check on the codebase, and between @aqwelorr and I, we’ve made 234 code commits that have gone live on the site this year.
I’m not trying to argue with you because I haven’t had a bunch of time for the site, but I’ve put as much time into it as I can!
Forgive me – I’m reading my last post and it seems like I’m attacking you or accusing you of not doing anything. I realize you’re working hard and this isn’t your career, and I don’t think my post did a very good job of sympathizing with that.
Seriously, thank you for your hard work. I love the site - love what it does for me and my hobby - keep up the hard work and give what you can to it along the way. I want Grouvee to be so much more than what it is, but modern-day Grouvee is pretty sweet too.
To be fair, Peter granted my wishes to unleash Dark Theme (Grouvee Gold only) and Grid View over that past year. These can be considered extraordinary breakthroughs if we bear in mind that this site aims to mimic Goodreads.
In contrast, Darkadia and Backloggery really didn’t change one bit.
Keep Track of My Games is underrated but the site looks beautiful, Besides, its developer is very keen on new ideas.
The Keep Track of My Games guy seems like a cool dude. He posts on the Giant Bomb API forum occasionally, and seems pretty on top of it. Some of their UI is awesome, some of it’s a little cluttered, kind of like Grouvee
No worries! I don’t mean to sound like I’m arguing. If I could figure out how to make this a full time job, I would. Video game cataloging isn’t the most lucrative thing in the world, but it’s fun!
This is a fear I have with any service I use. Especially after being suspended from Twitter, I’ve been extremely cautious when it comes to signing up for services I plan to use long-term.
I actually really like how Miiverse’s discontinuation is being handled: ample warning AND the ability to save an archive of your posts, so all is not lost. I hope Grouvee stays up, well, forever, but in the event it should end I’d hope it be handled in a similar way.
There are other alternatives to grouvee that have their strengths and weaknesses. My second place choice is gamefaqs as it has some nice features for registered users, and it has an extensive database, and the gamepages allow very nice user data ‘ticks/entries’, and generally do look nice.but its very dry, and its more meant around the ‘faq’ bit and it’s lacking in really functional list/shelves and you can’t filter them down as nicely as you can in grouvee… I like grouvee myself. It’s strength is content discovery. I can find things in various little ways such as clicking developers or publishers. This feels like its less obtuse than browsing giant bomb. The social dynamic is a bit stunted here, and I wish the site would grow and fuel both the discovery aspect (of seeing what others are up to) As well as social. fixing missing platform and title issues would also be a major boon.
In any case, being this is a small site and its an investment in ones time to get use out of this site (by putting in the data, making lists, etc) its a somewhat valid concern… its something i’ve thought of time to time too. While its not the same, we can at least download our user data and have a copy of it. Were it to come to it. I would go through the process of importing it into gamefaqs or just leave it as it was and maybe build off the spreadsheet. (i’ve tested the gamefaqs part and the ‘shelves’ bit can be done with a little tweaking and patience, but its not the same. Statuses, reviews and other bits wouldnt translate into it.) Another option is launchbox But that is static and only on your computer and that would truly be a ton of work to translate one’s user data into launchbox… I personally just dont want to do that work either at this point. I also would trust my data on grouvee a lot more than in launchbox in its current state.
So maybe keep a copy of your data. and play with it using a service of your choice like gamefaqs that allow import so you know what you can do with it and what your data looks like.
Since peter uses his own service and the site more or less works unattended the question might be to ask how many gold memberships are necessary to maintain the site’s operating margin. If that becomes an issue i’m sure we would get a heads up.
anyway, imo grouvee is worth using and I’m happy to chip in a bit to keep it going.
It means people like the site. It means people use the site. That’s all I can ask for.
It really does inspire me to try and get more stuff going so that people enjoy the site more, and in turn feel more confident that it’s around for the long haul.
Is the code for this site publicly hosted? I’ve been doing web dev for nearly 20 years professionally so I wouldn’t mind picking up feature requests, bug fixes, and the like. Peter could keep full control of what’s merged, of course (the Benevolent Dictator For Life type of thing) but it’d take the pressure off.
It would be a bummer if Grouvee shut down but I think Peter is too dedicated to let it stop. I come here mainly for chatting with other gamers which I haven’t found as well of a community as this. I really enjoy talking games with @peter , @bmo, @GigaDeathNullGolem, @Torgo, and everyone else who cares to listen. Cataloging games is cool and all but it doesn’t match the social networking community Grouvee has built.
I hope this service doesn’t shut down.
First of all - it’s got a got GUI\features that work best for my needs (compared to other game cataloguing services).
Secondly - it’s got a nice feel of that small friendly community, where most users know each other.
If covering hosting\development expenses becomes hard - you could try doing it the Wikipedia way - add a small banner at the top saying something like “Support Grouvee by getting gold membership. This year’s goal: XXXX\XXXX$”. I think that would motivate more people to get gold.
Also, if it comes to the point of closing - emailing everyone a copy of their database would be nice.
Anyway, I hope it doesn’t come to that and also wish you to not worry about the rate of updates. We all have lives and experienced deficit of time
The idea of accepting pull requests is cool though, this might be a way to speed things up a little. (Even though I think Grouvee is totally usable as-is.)
i didnt post the link or mention it but i found something similar to this a while ago when the thread got started and spent some time looking around at each one, many of which this post mentions. it was just some guy on a gametracking site that posted a long list of all these services. I think i googled “game tracking sites” if you find one you like let us know.
after all was said and done i found I really like grouvee’s blend of strengths compared to a lot of places. one big problem is database issues on other services. a site might look cool or have some nice features but when stuff cant show up it really kills the utility of having the flair… yeah GB can be annoying on occasion but i find it gets the job done. There are a few reasons one might not want a free form site and I would really be afraid to use a DB that is done ‘by hand.’ The fact that gamefaqs has an impressive database is why it gets my second place vote… its also NEVER going away lol. One litmus test i was doing when looking at the databases of these sites is to see if it could pass the a ‘japcom’ test. Very few of these places have more than a handfful of PC-98 titles… a few manage to have things like a Rusty but the only ones that have Doop or Possessioner are UVGL and gamefaqs (I think)
Aside from that… These sites all have their own slant and some have nice feats… letterboxed various year in review, calander and etc. howlongto beat’s playdata is cool. and a few of these sites let you get very freeform with notes and tags.
keeptrack of my games is is good like this and to some extent gets a little closer to that lettereboxed look and feel but i found it takes a bit too much time to manage it. with grouvee i can add and edit things pretty quick. which is the other thing i like about grouvee
my videogame list has a very nice grouvee feel but it seems a bit small/new and i think the database is done independently by hand by their moderators. ouch. it might be worth bookmarking keeping tracking of.
the last one is universal video games list… it is pretty crazy. its like the linux of these sites. it reminded me of boardgamegeek and wikipedia. part of me likes it cause it has a lot of stuff on its DB and passes the japcom test but a whole lot of the people on it seem focuses on OLD games (like pre nes era) trying to get going on it was real daunting and it is certainly not a quick experience and i found takes too long to add things, but if you find that when you are want to add stuff and find it not showing up on GB and your own indiepenedent text file of stuff you track is getting long… do check it out. it would be a good supplement to you. for me thought more isnt better.
grouvee is nice due to the mostly functional GB database, quick UI, and somewhat existent community. I find i’m able to discover content through it. Its weakness are annoyance of when something doesnt show up/show up right, or changing your mind about how you have shelved things. and yes its also a bit smallish, which is a shame and somewhat suprising considering how useful it is
another site i’m growing fond of is retroachievements. this is actually a pretty similiar site in some ways and i have discovered a few games on it based on what people make the ahcievments for that i didnt otherwise notice or know about. One can only hope that these kinds of sites will continue in development and maybe even work together (such as work together with retroachievements or steam)
