I said I never used the site except as a search engine-- that doesn't mean never used the site...
Your post comes off as snarky... and yet, I know, it's mostly very correct :)
The situation sounds pretty dire-- Why did the site need a re-design anyway? It was working fine as far as I knew. (Which, as you prestigeously pointed out, isn't much ;))

Still though, no one can argue the search feature has been destroyed-- can they?

If I may say so, I didn't keep talking, I spoke. You're the one who continued the Convo.
Plus I made it pretty clear that I only used the site for searching-- and that otherwise I knew nothing about it-- so my belief is you (and everyone is) are more angry about the Mobygames problems than you are about my comment. Besides, you were pretty nice anyway. :)

So as far as Mobygames goes-- yikes!
Rest assured that someone will fix it eventually-- however for people who have lost lists or info, I am truely sorry.
P.S. Next time, let's try to keep Mobygames anger directed at Mobygames-- not at the noob who's never used the site except as a search. Thanks so much :)
All this said, thank you for catching me up to speed with your link. It helps :)

Uh-oh.

Seems, they totally broken everything for those who worked on site.

I was simply casual visiter, and it seems, it mostly works the same on this level. It explains, why I didn't noticed too much changes. Thank you for the link.

Exactly. But some features relevant to users also got screwed up (in addition to the generally unfriendly, wasteful and confusing layout that is). Maybe not everyone used those - like manually typing game titles in the browser address field, and the old version would bring up partial matches if you typed something wrong (in some cases this was more effective to use than the built-in search function) - but they got broken anyway, very possibly because the person who did the new design was entirely oblivious to those features' existence.

I - and quite a few veterans of Moby's - would say it only needed few critical fixes, enhancing some features would be cool (like not just a year in search, but year range). Adding a new gaming platform bimonthly wouldn't hurt either (remember my updates here?).
People who were major contributors/approvers were so used to the current interface it simply made things quicker (than learning any new one).

However I do admit the site was a bit dated. My major problem was ancient forum script: no basic formatting buttons, no link autoparsing, confusing quoting etc.

We'd probably all get used to a new design provided it wasn't completely broken as it is now.

If you were a MobyUser, one of the most annoying bugs is... only PM outbox, no inbox displayed! Shows the skills of their designer, probably a typo!
Contributing/approving is nearly impossible without internal communication.
Note how it breaks any attempts of rallying the community!

My anger is aimed at GameFly, the current owners. I hope the website starts generating loses and will drop in value, so they'll be inclined to sell it back quickly... back to the community where it belongs! We'd Kickstarter to get the database back.

I've never liked companies owning non-profit online sites.
It makes we wonder when the day is that they will say "PAH! You stupid non-profit community nonsense! You aren't helping us!" and SLAM the whole thing goes 6 feet under.

I also don't like the idea of a company owning AB, but I guess they seem like a faithful enough company.

Then again, I don't like the idea of a single person owning it either.

That one person goes down, quits, stops caring, whatever, all gone/downhill.

I wonder how a community owned site would work? I suppose 1 person would take care of most of the "Boss" stuff, and when they decided to quit, they would hand it off to another?
And for the other things, the community would do the rest?

All in all, I guess I could say I'd rather have a lot of money and own these things myself than someone else... but I don't think that's going to happen:D

So, to sum up, I don't like the idea of Gamefly, a rather small little game-rental company, owning MobyGames.

I just hope they give it away to someone good if they go out of business.

Gamefly also seems like someone who would be overly concerned with profit.
But not like I know that much about Gamefly, anyway.

That's all for me.
STUVANI

I noticed the old design looked a little old. Also, a little text heavy/ small fonted.

It worked, though, and besides, if anybody's likely to complain about Dated designs, the Dos-Game listing site's community isn't them.(I think)


So did Moby have listings for other things besides the really old stuff? Like did it have new things and such?
^^ Above comment sounds stupid but needed to be said anyway.

Toast to design improvement!

*clink*

It sounds like the best option: a non-profit association. How? Ask those guys:
http://www.oregami.org/en/association.html
http://forum.oregami.org/viewforum.php?f=39


* * *

CornPopper replied GameFly is going to have bi-weekly meetings regarding MobyGames.
Honestly, this corporate smokescreen sounds ridiculous... two weeks, online IT branch, in the age of Internet? nobody told them you can make a conference using Skype etc.? Those two weeks would be probably spent ironing their expensive suits? :palm:

The latest official statement
http://www.mobygames.com/forums/dga,2/dgb,4/dgm,182202/
only confirms my last comment:
*phone conferences ...on an online IT project? how one can describe fine changes on a website by talking on the phone?
*"missing code" - what, were they sending the floppies to a programmer in some third world country?

Screenshots don't load at all anymore. With this new design they used to work for some games a while back but now they all seem to be broken.

Tried about a dozen different games, waited for a few minutes each for the images to load but all I see is the gif animation that indicates the images are loading.

I think screenshots only loaded once for me since the change, weeks ago. :palm: This is going to be a problem. :rolleyes:

Their URLs are still in the page source. It's just that whatever script is supposed to insert them is not working right.