• Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

Alek

Games User Researcher
Verified
Oct 28, 2017
8,467
I know some people don't care about tracking their collection anywhere, and if that's you I suppose this thread isn't for you.

I've been exploring notion recently, predominantly as a productivity app. I've used it to consolidate a lot of stuff into one space for work. But also, I find the templates both really helpful, and aesthetically pleasing, so I thought about using it to track my games list.

Notion has a local client and you can easily export your docs, which I think is really nice so you can use it offline, and you're not reliant on the online service to have access to your data (as you are with places like backloggery).

Here's an example of my list that I've been playing around with

unknown.png


Ignore the windows activation stuff logo at the lower right.

I think the neat thing about it is that you can create nice visual views, which I've always found are difficult to do with excel and google docs. For instance, I created a view that shows all of the games that I've 'favourited' and 'wishlisted'.

unknown.png


Does anyone else track their game collection like this? What are you using? Have you tried using Notion? I learned about notion because a lot of small businesses seem to be using it lately, but the personal plan is actually free and pretty flexible. For me it's replaced Evernote/Onenote + some google docs.
 

Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
38,397
Ibis Island
Way back in the day I did backloggery and that was nice, but then I fell off and just never bothered to go back and update it. I might give this a look as it would be nice to have a list for such things again.
 
Oct 25, 2017
1,893
Neat!

I recently decided to find a site similar to this, but not to track my game collection—rather to finally put together my top 100 list.

The best site I found for it is this one: GG | Video Game Collection

The fact that the site is just called GG | Video Game Collection Tracker wigs me out, but from looking into it I couldn't find any connection to GamerGate. But I can't prove it doesn't have a connection to it either—I legit have no idea what the GG means in the website title.

Still, it's not an opinion site or anything. It's just a very easy place to create a custom list, add games to it, and drag and drop to reorder them. Putting together my top 100 has been something on my bucket list for a long time, and it's really satisfying to finally have it up and running (especially when I get to add new games to the list like Hades and Pikmin 3 Deluxe—being in the midst of new releases that end up climbing to a really high spot is pretty hype-inducing).

To bring this up one more time though, if anyone DOES have any info on what the GG part of the title means, for the love of God let me know. I'll gladly pack my list up and take it elsewhere if it has any affiliation with GamerGate.

Here's their Twitter I just searched for and found if anyone wants to do some sleuthing and/or Tweet at them to ask (which I'd gladly do myself if I had Twitter): twitter.com/TheGGApp

And the account of the website creator if anyone wants to ask him directly: twitter.com/sircharlesw727

EDIT: Just saw the creator has retweeted some stuff from Greg Miller, who is vocally liberal, so hopefully that's a good sign.
 

LinkSlayer64

One Winged Slayer
Member
Jun 6, 2018
2,291
Neat!

I recently decided to find a site similar to this, but not to track my game collection—rather to finally put together my top 100 list.

The best site I found for it is this one: GG | Video Game Collection

The fact that the site is just called GG | Video Game Collection Tracker wigs me out, but from looking into it I couldn't find any connection to GamerGate. But I can't prove it doesn't have a connection to it either—I legit have no idea what the GG means in the website title.

Still, it's not an opinion site or anything. It's just a very easy place to create a custom list, add games to it, and drag and drop to reorder them. Putting together my top 100 has been something on my bucket list for a long time, and it's really satisfying to finally have it up and running (especially when I get to add new games to the list like Hades and Pikmin 3 Deluxe—being in the midst of new releases that end up climbing to a really high spot is pretty hype-inducing).

To bring this up one more time though, if anyone DOES have any info on what the GG part of the title means, for the love of God let me know. I'll gladly pack my list up and take it elsewhere if it has any affiliation with GamerGate.

Here's their Twitter I just searched for and found if anyone wants to do some sleuthing and/or Tweet at them to ask (which I'd gladly do myself if I had Twitter): twitter.com/TheGGApp

And the account of the website creator if anyone wants to ask him directly: twitter.com/sircharlesw727
GG - "Good Game" common turn of phrase to say after a match with someone?
 
Dec 14, 2017
1,351
I use a google doc of late and have been thinking of using excel... but this is very streamlined it seems. Will give it a try for sure.
 
Oct 25, 2017
1,893
GG - "Good Game" common turn of phrase to say after a match with someone?
Maybe so! I hadn't thought of that abbreviation.

I just edited my post above because I saw the creator retweet some KindaFunny stuff, which is hopefully a good sign.

So long as there's no hateful bigotry associated with it, I can't recommend the site enough. Super clean and easy to use.
 
OP
OP
Alek

Alek

Games User Researcher
Verified
Oct 28, 2017
8,467
Neat!

I recently decided to find a site similar to this, but not to track my game collection—rather to finally put together my top 100 list.

The best site I found for it is this one: GG | Video Game Collection

The fact that the site is just called GG | Video Game Collection Tracker wigs me out, but from looking into it I couldn't find any connection to GamerGate. But I can't prove it doesn't have a connection to it either—I legit have no idea what the GG means in the website title.

Still, it's not an opinion site or anything. It's just a very easy place to create a custom list, add games to it, and drag and drop to reorder them. Putting together my top 100 has been something on my bucket list for a long time, and it's really satisfying to finally have it up and running (especially when I get to add new games to the list like Hades and Pikmin 3 Deluxe—being in the midst of new releases that end up climbing to a really high spot is pretty hype-inducing).

To bring this up one more time though, if anyone DOES have any info on what the GG part of the title means, for the love of God let me know. I'll gladly pack my list up and take it elsewhere if it has any affiliation with GamerGate.

Here's their Twitter I just searched for and found if anyone wants to do some sleuthing and/or Tweet at them to ask (which I'd gladly do myself if I had Twitter): twitter.com/TheGGApp

And the account of the website creator if anyone wants to ask him directly: twitter.com/sircharlesw727

EDIT: Just saw the creator has retweeted some stuff from Greg Miller, who is vocally liberal, so hopefully that's a good sign.

I'm almost positive that GG just means Good Game and he picked it because it's a popular video game term that folks will recognise, not because it has any connections to gamergate.

GG no re.
 
OP
OP
Alek

Alek

Games User Researcher
Verified
Oct 28, 2017
8,467
Maybe so! I hadn't thought of that abbreviation.

I just edited my post above because I saw the creator retweet some KindaFunny stuff, which is hopefully a good sign.

So long as there's no hateful bigotry associated with it, I can't recommend the site enough. Super clean and easy to use.

Now that's cleared up I did take a look at the site and it does look pretty clean.

I think my only reservations to a site like that tend to be that they lack flexibility. I enter 1000 games into the list and then I think 'damn, I wish I could filter these by x' but because the site designers set the parameters, for whatever reason you can't. The other reservation I tend to have is whether you can export your list or manage it offline, because the biggest concern really is that someday the site goes offline and then you lose your list.
 

jak153

Member
Oct 30, 2017
110
I think somebody should make a website that you can do the typical manual approach of tracking your collection but also automatically pull in your game collection by grabbing achievement and trophy data like trueachievements and psnprofiles. This would make tracking games pretty easy for games from the 7th gen onwards
 
Oct 25, 2017
1,893
Now that's cleared up I did take a look at the site and it does look pretty clean.

I think my only reservations to a site like that tend to be that they lack flexibility. I enter 1000 games into the list and then I think 'damn, I wish I could filter these by x' but because the site designers set the parameters, for whatever reason you can't. The other reservation I tend to have is whether you can export your list or manage it offline, because the biggest concern really is that someday the site goes offline and then you lose your list.
That's a really good point. My use case is literally as simple as "create and organize a top 100 list," so I hadn't explored how well the site holds up when you're trying to be more thorough and have options for how you filter/collect/manage things.

I haven't checked out the site you've recommended yet though, so I'll definitely give that a spin tomorrow and see if it tempts me to go more in-depth with my game tracking!
 
OP
OP
Alek

Alek

Games User Researcher
Verified
Oct 28, 2017
8,467
I think somebody should make a website that you can do the typical manual approach of tracking your collection but also automatically pull in your game collection by grabbing achievement and trophy data like trueachievements and psnprofiles. This would make tracking games pretty easy for games from the 7th gen onwards

True. That would work well.

Semi-unrelated but I wish that we could also tag and filter our games on their respective services, that way I might not feel I needed a system like this. I know you can put them into folders on a PS4 but a game can only be in one folder so it's quite awkward to manage, I find.
 

Jahranimo

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,008
I was being super old school and had a spreadsheet lol. Haven't updated it much this year.

I'll give this a look and try it out, thanks OP.
 

x3sphere

Member
Oct 27, 2017
973
I think somebody should make a website that you can do the typical manual approach of tracking your collection but also automatically pull in your game collection by grabbing achievement and trophy data like trueachievements and psnprofiles. This would make tracking games pretty easy for games from the 7th gen onwards

That is supported on Exophase. We track almost every major platform and have had an optional manual add feature for years. I will say the manual tracking aspect of the site hasn't been much of a focus though, as majority of our users are just interested in automatic tracking. Example of a profile that has manually added games mixed in with their tracked ones: https://www.exophase.com/user/OPuni/
 

Catshade

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,198
I used to use Backloggery and then Darkadia, but then bundle sites happened. 3000+ games later, the effort to update my backlog database seems like more work than actually going through the backlog itself.
 
OP
OP
Alek

Alek

Games User Researcher
Verified
Oct 28, 2017
8,467
That is supported on Exophase. We track almost every major platform and have had an optional manual add feature for years. I will say the manual tracking aspect of the site hasn't been much of a focus though, as majority of our users are just interested in automatic tracking. Example of a profile that has manually added games mixed in with their tracked ones: https://www.exophase.com/user/OPuni/

That seems really neat. I think it's a bit too focused on trophies for me though. I like using my own lists to get away from that, because I like being able to say when I'm done with a game, rather than having a relatively arbitary list tell me when it's completed or not.

I wish PSN did that type of thing. Instead of just having trophies, mark when a game is complete. I really feel like beating games is what it's all about for me, not jumping through hoops for 8 hours post-credits.
 

Mesoian

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 28, 2017
26,432
Man, I wish the profile apis for the consoles were still open. It's so nice being able to automatically fill these things in.
 

jetsetrez

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,919
That looks pretty nice, but at this point there's just no way I could switch from Backloggery without an easy export/import. My Backloggery is basically a record of my gaming history, and I've put too much time into all of the little details of it.
 

jak153

Member
Oct 30, 2017
110
That is supported on Exophase. We track almost every major platform and have had an optional manual add feature for years. I will say the manual tracking aspect of the site hasn't been much of a focus though, as majority of our users are just interested in automatic tracking. Example of a profile that has manually added games mixed in with their tracked ones: https://www.exophase.com/user/OPuni/
Neat! I haven't really looked deeply at the site besides looking at early trophy lists. And now that I looked at it, anybody remember Raptr? I think it also allowd you to link PSN,XBL and Steam
 
OP
OP
Alek

Alek

Games User Researcher
Verified
Oct 28, 2017
8,467
Neat! I haven't really looked deeply at the site besides looking at early trophy lists. And now that I looked at it, anybody remember Raptr? I think it also allowd you to link PSN,XBL and Steam

I remember Raptr.

Also before Neogaf I used to mainly post on Playfire's forum, which was a similar service. I liked the aesthetic there, it was neat. I used to use the profile cards as forum signatures on other forums.

Heck, IGN used to have a backlog system too. I remember they added up the value of your collection there.
 

phanboy4

Member
Oct 27, 2017
413
I use CollectorZ for physical games and don't have a problem with it - it supports everything I want.
 
Oct 25, 2017
1,893
Any sorting options on this site? Drag and drop isn't working for me for some reason. I'm on Safari, maybe that's why? idk
It took me a minute to figure out the drag and drop feature too!

So once you have your list set up, click on the icon of a square with a pencil in it (to the left of the three dots toward the top right). From there, click "ORGANIZE." THEN you'll be able to drag and drop. It's pretty unintuitive that you can't just do it from the jump.

And after you have reordered your list, be sure to click the "SAVE" button! I learned that the hard way.
 

Manu

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,120
Buenos Aires, Argentina
It took me a minute to figure out the drag and drop feature too!

So once you have your list set up, click on the icon of a square with a pencil in it (to the left of the three dots toward the top right). From there, click "ORGANIZE." THEN you'll be able to drag and drop. It's pretty unintuitive that you can't just do it from the jump.

And after you have reordered your list, be sure to click the "SAVE" button! I learned that the hard way.
Thank you!
 
OP
OP
Alek

Alek

Games User Researcher
Verified
Oct 28, 2017
8,467
If anyone is interested in setting this type of thing up in notion you can view my list via sharable link here

www.notion.so

Game Tracking | Notion

This is a list of many of the games that I play or have played. Check out the favourites tab to see what my favourite games are.

Then if you click duplicate at the top right, you can delete my game entries and create your own.

It's still a work in progress for me, I'm still customising things as I go. I like how the favourites view looks more now, as I made the icons smaller, made ratings visible and also began to add comments on some of the games.

B4HMAm7.png
 

Jintor

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,406
Neat!

I recently decided to find a site similar to this, but not to track my game collection—rather to finally put together my top 100 list.

The best site I found for it is this one: GG | Video Game Collection

I must have made an account last time this topic popped up, but seems like I can't set 'date completed' or anything in this one, so abandoned.

I basically just need a goodreads/letterboxd clone with a visual wall of images... i'll go through the other ones and see i guess

At the moment i just keep everything in google sheets lol
 

Micro

Member
Oct 28, 2017
793
That looks cool, there are a ton of sites great for tracking collections. I used to use a Google Sheet for mine, but eventually made my own website/database and imported everything. I constantly update it with everything from PS+, Games with Gold, free Epic Games Store games. It's been a fun side-project just for myself (localhost only, the site isn't visible to the outside world), though having full control is a double-edged sword.

On one hand I get all the features/sorting/reports I want with fully custom art and game-specific features (like a racing game lap time feature I'm working on). On the other hand, you have to code it all yourself and do a TON of Photoshop lol. I guess it's a similar idea to working on your car yourself vs. taking it to the shop.

Just make sure to have a test environment and take database backups often!
 

Kromis

Member
Oct 29, 2017
6,502
SoCal
I've been using Notion.so for other productivity for several months now and I never thought to use it to track my backlog. What a great idea!

GungJoe Off-topic but have you been using Notion.so for UX/research work? If so, how do you like it? I see it's been getting more and more traction in the design world.
 
Last edited:

bunkitz

Brave Little Spark
Moderator
Oct 28, 2017
13,515
Ooh, that looks really neat! I saw notion.so before, but only just now saw the free personal plan at the bottom. Might check it out. I used to only track my wishlist on a super simple Google Keep note, then recently moved to Google Sheets. I think I'd enjoy expanding that to more than just wishlists but to also track backlog titles and the like, so something like OP's list looks very appealing to me.

Will check out some of the others in the thread, they seem like pretty good choices as well.
 
Oct 30, 2017
13
I think somebody should make a website that you can do the typical manual approach of tracking your collection but also automatically pull in your game collection by grabbing achievement and trophy data like trueachievements and psnprofiles. This would make tracking games pretty easy for games from the 7th gen onwards

rawg.io
 

ILPUMAGUERRIERO

Avenger
Oct 28, 2017
342
I use CLZ Games on iOS, it is a godsend. I just scan the barcode and it's added. I just want to track my (500+) physical games, not digital.
 

WyLD iNk

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,234
Here, duh.
That looks pretty nice, but at this point there's just no way I could switch from Backloggery without an easy export/import. My Backloggery is basically a record of my gaming history, and I've put too much time into all of the little details of it.

Yeah, me too. I've been there for twelve and a half years now. It also makes it easy for me to track my completions and helps motivate me to play games. I can't imagine leaving at this point unless something is paradigm-shifting better.
 

Xadra

Prophet of Truth - One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 26, 2018
1,983
Neat!

I recently decided to find a site similar to this, but not to track my game collection—rather to finally put together my top 100 list.

The best site I found for it is this one: GG | Video Game Collection

The fact that the site is just called GG | Video Game Collection Tracker wigs me out, but from looking into it I couldn't find any connection to GamerGate. But I can't prove it doesn't have a connection to it either—I legit have no idea what the GG means in the website title.

Still, it's not an opinion site or anything. It's just a very easy place to create a custom list, add games to it, and drag and drop to reorder them. Putting together my top 100 has been something on my bucket list for a long time, and it's really satisfying to finally have it up and running (especially when I get to add new games to the list like Hades and Pikmin 3 Deluxe—being in the midst of new releases that end up climbing to a really high spot is pretty hype-inducing).

To bring this up one more time though, if anyone DOES have any info on what the GG part of the title means, for the love of God let me know. I'll gladly pack my list up and take it elsewhere if it has any affiliation with GamerGate.

Here's their Twitter I just searched for and found if anyone wants to do some sleuthing and/or Tweet at them to ask (which I'd gladly do myself if I had Twitter): twitter.com/TheGGApp

And the account of the website creator if anyone wants to ask him directly: twitter.com/sircharlesw727

EDIT: Just saw the creator has retweeted some stuff from Greg Miller, who is vocally liberal, so hopefully that's a good sign.
I personally use Backloggd, it has my favorite UI of the bunch!

LcqLPpv.png

ukxt1OC.jpg


Thanks for the recommendations, I'll definitely try them out.

I used My Game Collection App since it has a updated database (pulls the data from igdb.com ) and a nice grill view. But because it's only on mobile I find that a little impractical, and some problems with my phone ended up deleting everything I got in there (thanks God I have a backup website).

The main problem I find in a LOT of these websites is that they don't have a big or updated database, and some niche games doesn't appear in them.
 
OP
OP
Alek

Alek

Games User Researcher
Verified
Oct 28, 2017
8,467
I've been using Notion.so for other productivity for several months now and I never thought to use it to track my backlog. What a great idea!

GungJoe Off-topic but have you been using Notion.so for UX/research work? If so, how do you like it? I see it's been getting more and more traction in the design world.

I actually haven't! I was inspired to use it after seeing how they're using it on the wecanfixitinui discord.

I'm terms of user research work, at the moment the stuff I'm working on is very sensitive so I'm very concerned with protecting the data of my participants. I'm working with people with disabilities. So I don't want to put user research information into someplace like notion, because it is technically an online space. I know that you can keep documents 'offline' but I prefer local files for that type of thing. I wouldn't want to mess up and accidentally drag some participant data into a shared area or something like that.

Perhaps that's just my anxiety causing me to be overly concerned, after all I have used google docs for participant data in the past, but the difference I think is that google docs can't be found without a link, while notion is navigated as an interconnected wiki.

Here's the wecanfixitinui notion, kind of useful if you're into ux and games user research.
www.notion.so

WE CAN FIX IT IN UI (Archive) | Notion

⚠ Migration Notice ⚠
 
Last edited:

SnazzyNaz

The Wise Ones
Member
Nov 11, 2019
1,872
I keep a database in Google Sheets just for games I've completed (tracking my backlog would be a nightmare). Here's a snippet of it:
FfpPkSG.png

Platform, name, full game or DLC/expansion and ownership status. I also usually just leave it organized by platform but this makes for a more interesting image. I have 594 entries, 507 of those being full games and 228 of those were on PC.
 

ghibli99

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,728
For visibility of my collection, I have everything in GOG Galaxy; it's saved me a lot of money so far when I feel the urge to impulse buy something and then realize I already have it via one of my PC platforms or consoles (no Switch support yet though).

For tracking, I just use Excel. Tracks title, release date, completion date, rating, hours played, and some notes. It's what I use for GOTY voting and I've done it for 8 years running now. I've never been able to stick with any of the online apps.
 

BossLackey

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
2,789
Kansas City, MO
I need to redo my game catalog. Been a few years since I've touched it. I have my entire comic collection catalogue (took fucking forever). Luckily games will be a lot easier.
 

Mr.Deadshot

Member
Oct 27, 2017
20,285
I tried a lot and used a lot. I think playnite is the best for me. It's offline, I can put it on a stick or in the cloud or wherever I want and it has all the features I need. It also looks amazing and can be used as a launcher on PC. Still busy with filling all my games into it from a huge ass excel list. But it's fun and a pleasure to look at.
 
OP
OP
Alek

Alek

Games User Researcher
Verified
Oct 28, 2017
8,467
I tried a lot and used a lot. I think playnite is the best for me. It's offline, I can put it on a stick or in the cloud or wherever I want and it has all the features I need. It also looks amazing and can be used as a launcher on PC. Still busy with filling all my games into it from a huge ass excel list. But it's fun and a pleasure to look at.

This seems very cool.

This thread is really interesting. Everyone has different solutions to the same thing, and some of these sites really stand out.
 

honavery

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,369
Phoenix, AZ
Last edited: