Introducing: the GBAtemp Game Center! The first phase of our new central site feature
Mamma mia, what is-a-this?
The GBAtemp Game Center!
What if we brought the largest and most extensive database of video game information, from games themselves (>122K games), to video game platforms (>150), and even video game companies (>21K) and integrated it to your favorite site? This is what the GBAtemp Game Center is about, and it is made possible via a special partnership with IGDB.com who provides this database and maintains it up to date with their team of data engineers. Now what do we do with that crazy amount of data: this is where it gets interesting! We are going to roll out a ton of cool and exciting features to take the site to the next level.
What are currently the main features?
Right now this is what we've got in store for you:
- For each game: all the key facts such as release dates, game modes, genres, publishers, developers, platforms, storyline, summaries, and much more (example) along with gameplay screenshots and videos, trailers and other types of videos
- A bunch of data for each platform and video game company too, with the list of games for each of these
- The shoutbox has been improved to now support separate discussion threads. You can engage in discussions for every individual game, platform, or video game company that you find on the game center, as usual the shoutbox will be in the sidebar on the right. Also, from the full shoutbox page, you can see the latest active discussion threads.
- A rating system: we're starting from scratch, so right now the top rated games won't look like anything, but it's up to you now to vote for your favorite games, platforms, and companies. And guess what: every time you vote for something, you get +1 XP! So quick, tell us what your favorite games are, you'll gain XP for that and it'll make our scoreboards look a lot better.
- Easy to browse and search: a global search box can be found in the sidebar on every page of the game center. It'll search through the entire game center and return the most relevant results first. Usually returns better results than the forum's integrated search feature.
- You can now use #hashtags in forum posts and other places to mention games, companies, and platforms. It will create beautiful looking links like this: [GAME=/game/new-super-mario-bros.1076]New Super Mario Bros.[/GAME] or [PLATFORM=/platform/switch]Nintendo Switch[/PLATFORM]
- A cool interactive timeline of the upcoming games on the game center home page, on desktop browsers only; mobile users can still see an 'upcoming games' sidebar box.
What other cool stuff may be added later?
This is just the beginning, and we thought you might enjoy it even without the rest of the exciting things we have planned for the future. The biggest of them all is that we're going to use the Game Center to centralize all content currently scattered across the multiple sections of the site. When you open a game page, a company page, or a platform page, you'll be able to find:
- Reviews of the game from the Review center: user reviews, official reviews, and we'll even add OpenCritic scores and link to reviews from other sites
- Tutorials related to the game: as you can see on our tutorial center, there are already a lot of useful guide and tutorials about games (how to use cheat codes in that game, how to apply a mod, etc.)
- Questions from Ask GBAtemp, to view all existing questions relative to that game
- Downloads from our Download Center to get all the files you need for that game (cheat files, mods, saves, and so on)
- And of course, discussion threads from the forums. Every time a game/company/platform is mentioned using a hashtag, the reference will be listed on that page and people will be able to access your thread or post easily.
But that's not all! We have a ton of other ideas in mind, from automatic notifications, to user contributions on data and graphics; we'll also integrate more data that we currently store in our database but haven't yet had time to properly display (e.g. achievements, external links, and so much more). We can't tell you everything but this is going to be good, very good, and we're counting on your creativity: if you have any ideas or suggestions, we're listening!
Check out the Game Center now and rate your favorite games and platforms to get instant XP rewards!
Last edited by Costello,
)
