Digital Press /Portable/ Rarity Guide

[allyourblood]

Read by Ben Kingsley.

That's Sir Ben Kingsley, to you!

[skaar]

That's Sir Ben Kingsley, to you!

Good point.

[wingzrow]

You know what would be cool? A free app where any time you find a game in the wild you add one copy of it to the database, and if you sell it online, you put down what you payed for it. Eventually you could get a good average rarity & price rating from the entire community if it were a group effort.

[Matt-El]

Here here kid ice . I agree with your sentiment. I think that'd be the right way to go with it.

Imho, a beta and/or basic version with the basics, ie title, rarity, price, etc for free with ads would be a good starter with this kind of app.

Also, an alternative to money contribution: what are the items the developer would need, ie specifications of the devices needed and why. Because someone can just as well donate that way.

The developer can get things done with a cheaper and more advanced computer or device than what he can find, thus saving money and avoiding some of the problems with their vague monetary contribution list.

[Cornelius]

I mostly agree with Kid Ice's post. Well said!

I'll also add that I hate hate hate paying for data updates, esp. when it is a significant percentage of the original cost, doubly esp. when it is unclear to me who is doing the work for those data updates. This is a major impediment to my donating or future potential purchase.


The app will be sold through the popular commercial app stores. The app itself will be priced at $4.99 with yearly data updates available for an additional $2.99. However these updates will not be needed for the app to continue to function and are only required if the user wants the latest prices and rarity information.

[PapaStu]

You know what would be cool? A free app where any time you find a game in the wild you add one copy of it to the database, and if you sell it online, you put down what you payed for it. Eventually you could get a good average rarity & price rating from the entire community if it were a group effort.


Problem with an app like this, is that it'd need to have a 'complete' list of all the games, which can and will never happen. Besides, whats going to stop people from spoofing prices, using eBay buys and the like to try and jilt the 'value'. There is no way to really regulate things.

Thats why our values were built on way more than what eBay used to bring, what stores sold it for in one area. It was a general pulse, that when the net was young, older systems were being less influenced by bloggers and multiple collecting sites and what some kook posting A copy of a game well over value completely changing a base value practically overnight.

What i'd hope for from an online phone guide, besides being on iOS is there is a rarity guide and a blurb on the game. Prices could be updated, but as the DP guide was set up to be, its a price that had been designed not to be the top or bottom, but in general, a price that wouldn't get you pimp slapped for offering it. The online phone guide doesn't need it, because people have conditioned themselves so much to just 'check' eBay and similar places that have become the go-to's for pricing.

[Flashback2012]

http://media.fukung.net/images/25844/ef67414e232bfb0c3179afa506cdea0a.jpg

Picture not related.

Bo Peep and that French maid are sooooo going to make out... :onfire::onfire::onfire:

I skimmed past a lot of the mud slinging but I found Kid Ice's post to be spot on.

[Nz17]

(Whole buncha good ideas about sponsors and such.)

That's a potentially practically perfect possibility, Dangerboy. Get a bunch of companies who have sponsored in the past or would be interested now. I think this is the path I'm going to take! Does anyone recall or can easily research who the sponsors were in the last printed Guide?


You know what would be cool? A free app where any time you find a game in the wild you add one copy of it to the database, and if you sell it online, you put down what you payed for it. Eventually you could get a good average rarity & price rating from the entire community if it were a group effort.

Inspired, wingzrow! I think the right approach would be to take a page from Valve's book and collect data over a year or two. Don't add it into a simple average, congregate it over time, and then remove the far outliers to get a mean price and scarcity. Then make these aggregate values available alongside the DP guidelines.

Of course, such a thing would require more effort than a mere collection tracker and info set, but it's a good idea for a long-term goal.

[dvidbrown]

I have been programming since elementary school. I am well versed in C++, PHP, and Python. I have also created some programs in Java C# (http://www.onbarcode.com/products/iphone_barcode/), JavaScript, and scripting languages such as DOS batch and Linux Bash. I have programmed cross-platform graphical programs using SDL and FLTK. I have also created a small yet unreleased Android application.

The estimate of three months for development time is not "just" for writing a database front-end. If that was the case I've already written a database front-end for the Collector's Guide using MySQL. The time period is a purposeful overestimation to account for learning the finer details of the knowledge I'll need to refine an application that is not just a connection to a SQLite database but is also easy, intuitive, and dare I say it, fun to use. This is also to allow for the required time to learn two API's (PhoneGAP and its underlying JavaScript API, JQuery) which I do not normally use.

And of course I'll be asking for feedback from our beta testers to not just eliminate bugs, but to make the GUI a friendly, good looking, and native-feeling experience. Getting lots of feedback and releasing often to our beta users in an iterative release methodology is a high priority to me to maximize ease-of-use. Don't worry, I won't let this look like "programmer art" nor will I compromise my code to cut corners to save time in the short term which will cost much time in the long run.

Pretty good!