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The Decide-o-tron App
Robert Khoo
Registered User, ClubPA staff
Registered User, ClubPA staff
http://www.decideotron.com
http://penny-arcade.com/2011/08/22/decide-o-tron-lives
In short, we've been working on this app for about a year. The two-second pitch is that it's like Pandora for games (console/handheld/pc), but it also has a built in library functionality (which was sort of a necessity since the app needed to understand your gaming preferences).
The behind the curtain magic is done by EEDAR, which is pretty much a data analysis company that focuses on games. The methodology they use is pretty nutso, where they have tens of millions of data points to cross reference and over 10,000 games in the database... so doing some pretty heavy lifting on the backend by looking at what you already love or hate makes for a pretty useful app.
Some interesting things to note are:
1. It's free.
2. Yes, it's on the iOS right now, but we're looking to expand on that.
3. We're essentially monetizing on ads, but something that will NEVER be on sale is the recommendation. That data is pure.
4. It should be available to try out in the next few weeks, but we'll have beta builds available at PAX up by bandland if you're there.
5. We did all of the design and played a very heavy role in the production portion (90% done by Erika as an fyi), but all the technical development was done by an awesome studio called The Binary Mill out of Australia.
OKAY ENJOY.
http://penny-arcade.com/2011/08/22/decide-o-tron-lives
In short, we've been working on this app for about a year. The two-second pitch is that it's like Pandora for games (console/handheld/pc), but it also has a built in library functionality (which was sort of a necessity since the app needed to understand your gaming preferences).
The behind the curtain magic is done by EEDAR, which is pretty much a data analysis company that focuses on games. The methodology they use is pretty nutso, where they have tens of millions of data points to cross reference and over 10,000 games in the database... so doing some pretty heavy lifting on the backend by looking at what you already love or hate makes for a pretty useful app.
Some interesting things to note are:
1. It's free.
2. Yes, it's on the iOS right now, but we're looking to expand on that.
3. We're essentially monetizing on ads, but something that will NEVER be on sale is the recommendation. That data is pure.
4. It should be available to try out in the next few weeks, but we'll have beta builds available at PAX up by bandland if you're there.
5. We did all of the design and played a very heavy role in the production portion (90% done by Erika as an fyi), but all the technical development was done by an awesome studio called The Binary Mill out of Australia.
OKAY ENJOY.
Some guy.
Robert Khoo on
0
Posts
:^:
Even though I have more than enough games to play, have a pretty good idea of what kind of games I like and what ones I'd like to play in the future, and have never found services like Pandora or iTunes Genius more than very marginally useful in making worthwhile recommendations on music, I still think it's hilarious and awesome someone has made something like this for games.
So you're not selling recommendations, but how about user data?
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
Or are the back end costs high enough that you want to keep the continual money stream coming in to offset them?
STEAM
(only asking cause I got me a TestFlight account)
Also is it a universal app (with iPad-scaled graphics)?
Retina display support?
Is the information you add to it about your own library isolated to the device, or would it say, sync between iDevices?
Maybe "Sequel Reminders", like "Hey, Deus Ex 3 is coming out, you should replay Deus Ex."
Or would that be too contradictory to the marketing aspects of the app?
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
Edit: Even better would be all those things plus descriptors like dark, ambient, isolation, etc.
My problem with most recommendation code is that it seems too shallow. If I tell Netflix I liked the 80's animated Transformer movie, it's like "You'll love these michael bay flicks" and I go ew, no, never show me those again, and then it just thinks I like old cartoons instead of G1 Transformers specifically.
To answer your questions,
We will have demo stations at PAX but won't be sending out betas to users.
It does not have iPad scaled graphics but it can be installed on your iPad
It does have beautiful (completely unbiased) retina resolution graphics
Your data can be linked to a facebook account so if you were to login to facebook on your iPod touch and your iPhone, they would have the same library.
This also ensures that if your iPhone was lost or had to be reformatted you wouldn't lose all your data.
The latter would be more accurate. It factors in many datatypes, not just simply genre so it gets pretty specific.
Awesome, thanks!
I'm actually wondering about the opposite. I don't see anything in the screenshots about marking a game as complete, so it will be fairly useless for working on the backlog as-is. Not to mention there doesn't appear to be an option to recommend only library games.
edit: Needed to look harder at the second screenshot... >.>
Yes.
I have this difficulty with Pandora. I put in a bunch of songs that have, say, syncopated beats, and it decides that what I really want are songs with female vocalists (because I happened to put in 3 songs with female vocalists and only 2 with male vocalists) so then I put in a song with a male vocalist and syncopated beats and it starts giving me songs with tonal harmonies because all 6 songs happened to have tonal harmonies and I'm all "Pandora y u no give me syncopated beats!?" I really wish I could just click on "syncopated beats" and have it add weight to that criterion over all the others.
Similarly, I would
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Its fun to watch Penny-Arcade grow as a brand.
I'm currently keeping my 'games I'm interested in but will forget about if I don't write them down somewhere' list on Goozex which is less than ideal. As such I keenly and optimistically await the Decide-o-tron.
Because while it sounds cool, I am incredibly lazy.
Satans..... hints.....
And Steam ID.
Although I'm not that lazy.
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
Can we post bugs/issues or whatever here or should we send an email somewhere? Ive seen a few bugs but as I said before they are just minor.
(though could you answer my question like three posts up?)
Satans..... hints.....
Thanks! Didn't see that until you mentioned it.
From what I can tell yeah it does. I added my PSN and it had Dragon age Origins and Awakening, so from there it went ahead and recommended Dragon Age 2. It also added the first resistance which in turn had it recommend the second one. Mind you it added the PSN versions of Dragon age and of course resistance to my library.
actually i cant seem to find how to go back and add my psn ID now that i've been using the app; where is that option hidden?