Talk: Indie Game Bundle Wiki

Archived Topics

Archives of issues that have been resolved can be found here: Talk:Indie_Game_Bundle_Wiki/Archive

Current Bundles info

Anyone may edit the current bundles via the link on the page or by going directly to Current_Bundles

Bundle Tracking

I'm wondering is what is the actual qualification for being included on the front page?

There are packs of games regularly sold on store interfaces (Steam, GreenManGaming, GamersGate, Amazon, etc) that seem like they'd meet the requirements. Like, Amazon has 50% off the Joe Danger + Joe Danger 2 bundled pack right now. Is this an Indie Bundle? It's time limited. The games are independently developed. It's got multiple games.

What are the actual rules for stuff appearing? There's no requirement for games to be DRM-free, there's no requirement for bundles to be PWYW, there's no requirement for a charity listing, there's no requirement for them to being time limited, given some of the publisher-centered bundles there's no real requirement for them to be independent. There are one-offs listed so it's not like it needs to be an ongoing thing.184.175.40.219 18:45, October 18, 2013 (UTC)

I'll try to give my best answers to your questions. These are my opinions, I didn't start the wiki and while I help out administrating it, I don't set policy.

I think where we currently draw the line on the bundles we track is that they are offered by providers that are primarily focused on indie bundles and/or that they are offered on a periodic basis. Big retailers (Steam, Amazon, etc) don't really fit that definition - yes they are "bundling" indie games, but they also sell those games all the time, so it's more like they are on sale (they also usually don't have PWYW, bonuses, etc). This is the same approach that many other sites take such as SteamGifts, IGB, etc. A practical part of this demarcation is that it is a struggle to keep the wiki up to date with the current set of providers that we track.

There aren't really any rules that are set in stone, what we track has evolved from what people are willing to put the time in to contribute as well as what people really find useful. So far those two things have resulted in what I described above. (Redlenses (talk) 23:46, October 18, 2013 (UTC))

I just noticed these bundles in the IndieGala store. (http://store.indiegala.com/index.php/bundles.html) They're separate bundles from their 'promoted' bundles. But they're given a bundle title and are indie. Should they be tracked as well? --Trojobonos (talk) 21:27, 26 April 2014 (PDT)

We haven't tracked "store" bundles historically. While some of them are good deal, they typically don't have new (never been in a bundle before) games, so they are more like sales. On the Indie Gala page there is a section for them, but they are not linked to bundle pages and aren't maintained. That being said, like many things, if you want to create pages for them, I don't think anyone would complain. Redlenses (talk) 22:45, 26 April 2014 (PDT)

Direct links to store pages

So, the main feature of one of the threads I visit (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2981458) is the direct links to all the games if they're on Steam or Greenlight.

This wiki doesn't quite have that.

The only place there's a direct link to the game is on the game page itself, if it even exists. This means we have to click each individual game and then click a link that brings us to the store page for it, provided the game even has any details.

Otherwise, we have to search for it manually, which voids the point of an easy one click list.

I strongly recommend changing over the system so the icons of the distribution sites bring you directly to the page of the game, preventing the need to do manual digging and giving everyone an easy one-click browsing experience.

The wiki hasn't changed in the months I've seen it exist, so I hope this is considered, as I may end up switching fully over to it if that's the case. DAOWAce (talk) 23:48, April 27, 2013 (UTC)

Your idea is good, but the nature of the wiki doesn't make this work well. Rather than looking up links and adding them every time over and over to the Short-lived entries on the current bundles page, resources would be better spent creating the game pages so that when they appear in bundles, the steam links and other info is already there. Given that creating and updating the game pages is already challenging for this site, adding more info to look up when creating a current bundle would be a bit of a waste, whereas putting that energy into the game pages will be useful indefinitely. Yes it's an extra click to get to the steam page, but it's much more maintainable. Redlenses (talk) 00:17, 24 January 2014 (PST)

Steam Cards

I think it would be interesting, financially, to know with games reward you with steam cards you can sell ? With 3 or 4 of these games, you can cometimes lowwer the prive up to 1 or 2 €

What about a special icon by these games ?Jyrmal(talk)

It would probably be most useful to add this to the Game page template first (since these pages last longer than the short-lived current bundle entry) - we already have greenlight info there. I agree it would also be nice if people want to add Greenlight and maybe Steam Card icons to the current bundle entries - the only real issue here is that most bundles don't list this info (steam cards), so it requires and extra step to figure out (so there is a lot of potential for this info not being kept up). Greenlight though, most bundles do list - so that should be relatively easy to maintain. When I get some time I will work on adding templates and updating the legend for these items. Redlenses (talk) 00:23, 24 January 2014 (PST)

Great Thanks ! Btw, this page http://steamtradingcards.wikia.com/wiki/Current_Deals aslo has informations on the cards although it's not being updated very frequently. Jyrmal (talk) 13:49, 12 February 2014 (PST)

I've added support for cards to the individual game template now too. Redlenses (talk) 11:00, 13 February 2014 (PST)

Making a Bot to Add Steam Game Pages

A lot of the work that needs to be done here seems to be just adding steam games to the site. However, the main problem is that this is a very manual long process (have to upload steam picture, get steam ID and other information etc). We should considering making a bot that scrapes the steam page of all games on steam and makes a basic page. An empty page would be better then a broken page no?

Although I'm sure its not as easy as I'm making it sound (how similar is this wiki to wikipedia API? etc.)

Thoughts?

edit: Alternatively, we could get the bot to look at each entry in Special:WantedPages and if the entry is a steam game, create the page and grab all the data. This wouldn't create as many empty pages. Trilobyte (talk)

You know, I think this a really good idea, however I have basically 0 knowledge on creating Wiki Bots! Jmcmatrix (talk) 07:11, 31 January 2014 (PST)

If someone were to make a bot to import steam info (not sure if anyone visiting the wiki has these skills or time to create the scripts and find a place to host them - not sure if MyWikis supports hosting scripts), I think you are on the right path of using the Special:WantedPages, it would probably not be a good idea to have a page for every steam game on this site - besides being wasteful (many of the games are not likely to be in indie bundles), one of the features on the wiki that people use is that you can go to the games category and if a game is listed there it means it's been in a bundle. Same with the greenlight category. If we ever do get bots going on this wiki, some of the ones I'd love to see are:

* one that watches known bundle sites and creates a comment on the current bundle page for new bundles it finds.

* one that goes through bundles and checks that the individual game pages have a link to the bundle page - otherwise it creates a comment in the game page about the bundle and flags it as needing updating (or if there is no game page, it could create a stub with the comments).

* one that goes through greenlight games and checks for a steam store id has been added. If it finds it, it would update the game page with the store id and create a comment in the keys added page in the Future Steam Keys section.

Ultimately though, even with bots helping to create stubs, the wiki will only have complete info if individual people spend time filling in the details of the pages - the best way to do that is for people to go through the Category:Article_stubs and Special:WantedPages. I'm all for finding things to make this easier - the preloads are a good example of a way to make creating new pages quite a bit faster. Redlenses (talk) 05:03, 2 February 2014 (PST)

We would be open to hosting scripts as long as the script is not malicious. --MyWikis Staff (Email us) 19:24, 2 February 2014 (PST)

Probably I can give it a shot at creating one this weekend? --SwordFire (talk) 04:07, 4 February 2014 (PST)

Sounds Good Jmcmatrix (talk) 10:39, 4 February 2014 (PST)

I've just created a new account Bot-DataCollector for this purpose. Please include it in the Bots user group. --SwordFire (talk) 09:50, 7 February 2014 (PST)

Done! Jmcmatrix (talk) 13:51, 7 February 2014 (PST)

Placeholder icon for mystery games

Would it be a good idea to add placeholder spots in bundles? This is so people can be aware that bundles has future unlocks, I made an icon for this purpose. File:Mystery.png Allrot (talk) 20 March 2014

Good idea. I added a new template for mystery games which uses your icon. To include a mystery game in the current bundle's list of games use {{mystery}} (instead of {{includesgame}} or {{includesdlc}}). Eventually I may update the template to take optional distribution and platform icons that would be shown instead of the question mark if specified (since some mystery games tell you the platform). Redlenses (talk) 15:07, 20 March 2014 (PDT)

Typo on InddieGames.com - The Weblog

It's written Indie not Inddie, thanks. --Drakonnus (talk) 20:32, 9 September 2014 (PDT)

Wow, that typo appears to have been there a very long time. Thanks for letting us know, it's fixed now. Redlenses (talk) 22:38, 9 September 2014 (PDT)