Lifebar.io - Your gaming life visualized

@simplypanda: We have fixed the search bar now so it will no longer close when you click on it. We have further plans to have the search bar expand a bit more on desktop, and then we can add a proper close button. For right now though, clicking out of the search box will close it, but keep any text that you entered in tact.

I will make sure to keep you updated on the progress we make regarding your other suggestions.

Having messed around with the site some more, I found that the summary isn't really what's holding me back as much as the fact that I honestly just don't remember when I played or watched most games. I only remember that I played or watched them, not when, and I don't like to add them all to Q1 2016. Maybe consider adding a "Don't remember" option or something?

Also, as I was adding more games it got me thinking about that concept of your own personal "golden age" for video games. The site already tracks what year these games came out... maybe you could do something cool with that? Like, I remember 1998 being the best game in video games for me, but is that really the case? Maybe I had more "Tier 1" experiences in 2015? Just a thought.

Wow, I love websites where you track various data tidbits about your collection (Backloggery, HowLongToBeat, etc). The concept of Lifebar is really neat! It seems like it will be fun, once a ton of info is in my profile, to receive charts and data about my experiences with games over the years.

Here are my immediate thoughts after entering one game into the system. I understand the utility of the summary but also do not feel it should be mandatory (otherwise you'll probably see people going "." just to quickly add many games). If the goal is to have people's feeds not look samey (aka: tons of games showing 'Default' summaries) then why not filter it so that people who opted for default/no summary do not show up as readily as game additions with one?

Someone mentioned having a "don't remember" time frame for the Quarters. I agree with this, and think it should be extended to year played as well. For example, if you select a "don't remember" checkbox then both of these can be turned off. Or, just have a "don't remember" option for both separately.

I would also personally like the potential to import an Excel spreadsheet of games (if for nothing else than to get a bunch of game titles added quickly to my library). From there, it would be a lot less daunting to look through my list and add comments as desired (assigning tiers, writing summaries, etc).

Finally, as someone who writes video game reviews on a variety of sites I would also like to inquire about the process of getting involved in Lifebar from that perspective.

@xymox: A "Don't remember" option sounds reasonable. We were originally depending much more on a timeline view when we first started the site, so that is why the dates are mandatory, but I agree, it's better to just say you don't remember versus have to guess a random year/quarter you played or watched a game.

Regarding analytics such as predicting your "golden age" of gaming, I also think that would be interesting. We are planning to present information such as that once we establish a good baseline of user info that we can work with. It was hard for us to spend the time on analytics when it was just the two of us entering experience, but now that we have finally opened it up to users and are getting the great participation that was beyond our initial expectations, I think doing something along those lines is very possible.

@theps2collector: I like your suggestion regarding a potential filter for users to avoid the repetition of default/no summaries. That is something I will have to talk to @ka_tet19 about. I do know that currently our backend is very dependent on those summaries, however, so if we were to do something like that, it would take a little longer to get to than some of the other feedback we are getting. We are however hearing that from enough users where we know there is a strong case for it, so it will not go unaddressed.

Importing is also something that we have been hearing from users, we would just have to try to figure out a good standard format so that we could take an import. I don't want to rush that functionality, because I want to make sure to be as inclusive as possible with all of the different use cases out there and all of the different formats where users might be exporting out of other systems, so we will have to do some serious research around that.

We will be sure to get in touch regarding the potential for future involvement with Lifebar. As we mentioned to @redsoundwaves, converting critic's profiles to an active user profile is something we are very excited to tackle, we just weren't expecting that there would be this much interest in it so soon, but it's a good problem to have!

@tobbrobb said:

We have now made the quarter you played/watched a game optional if it was played/watched anytime before the current calendar year. I know this doesn't solve the entire problem of not remembering the year you last played or watched a game, but we are trying to take steps in the right direction to make entering your experiences easier.

We could possibly make the year optional in the future, but for now we do filter out the list for played experiences to start from the year of official release , up to the current year. I generally remember if I played a game on the year of release, or a couple years after, but there is some guessing involved.

For watched experiences, we start the list at 5 years prior to official release to account for trailers and early access games. We realize that you can also play these early access games well before official release, but that was the best universal solution we could think of at the time. If you have any other ideas other than making the year played/watched completely optional, we would love to hear them.

Thanks for all the feedback katet!

Here is my profile for anyone who wants to follow me.

http://lifebar.io/#profile/9540/redsoundwaves

Glad we could get you all setup @redsoundwaves. We are also in the process of getting @theps2collector setup with a Verified Account. It wasn't a use case we had originally conceived, but hopefully we can provide a platform where you can easily promote your work in one comprehensive profile/portfolio.

We have had other members asking if there will ever be capability to write a full review or opinion piece on a particular game, instead of only having the 140 character summary. We are currently looking in to possible solutions such as hosting a Ghost instance so that we can provide a fully featured publishing platform. Is this something any of you think you might use if we were to implement it?

Missed this the first time around - I've signed up, will take a look deeper into it when I get the chance. I like the idea, I'm still an avid last.fm user so anything designed around tracking habits is definitely going to appeal to me. I'll be interested to see where you go with the site! Good luck, I imagine it's a fairly mammoth task!

EDIT: At a glance, I really like the "played/watched" distinction. Definitely a nice option to have given where games are at these days.

EDIT 2: One minor notice - on the drop-down boxes (such as for which year you played a game) you can't click the down arrow to open the drop-down, seems like you have to click the box itself. Not a huge issue, only a problem the first time I guess, but it was slightly counter-intuitive to me.

Good catch on the drop-down arrow. That is the first I have noticed that. We should be able to get that fixed without too much problem.

I am happy to hear you appreciate the distinction between played and watched. That influence really came directly from Giant Bomb. Both @ka_tet19 and I just wanted a place where we could easily track and share our thoughts on all of the Quick Looks and UPFs we were watching, and maybe even see if it could say something about ourselves. We have a ways to go on the analytical side, but hopefully we will get there!

Nice. I've added a few games, will have more of a play in the future. Only other small thing I noticed is that you have an option for "I streamed this game" - I presumed this means twitch-style, not in the sense of PS Now. If so, did you consider having a similar YouTube option (or including it in the phrasing)? I've put quite a few videos of games I've played up, but streamed much fewer.

Looks like you took my afternoon away, duder! I'm definitely going to spend some time putting in my library (and the games watched feature is fantastic)!

@otogi:Thanks for taking a look! Let us know what you think after you hammer away it!

@y2ken We intentionally kept the "I streamed this game" option pretty open for the reason you are describing. Streaming could mean twitch, could mean PS Now, could mean youtube, etc. I had considered taking it one step further and providing an option for users to include the URL of their stream. Would that be something you are interested in?

Wow, I like this a lot. Very smooth, lets me store the information that is important to me. I usually give up on these sort of tracking systems because they just lack the usability I want. This seems great.

I like the immediacy of the tweet style reviews, but maybe a section for more profound notes, at least visible to yourself, would be nice. I took several pages of notes on Oxenfree, and I'd love to store that info digitally for future reference.

Almost right on cue! I actually asked about this earlier this morning:

It sounds like you would be interested in this then? Would you say you might be more interested in it for personal record keeping opposed to publishing for others to read though? Just trying to get a feel for what kind of features would be needed to get the most value out of this.

Totally with you. I don't remember what year I played Rampage on NES, but it was still significant enough for me to want on my 'played' list. I think filler options on the drop down menus, or not making it mandatory to fill those in, would be great. It'd also allow people to increase their lists more quickly.

EDIT: I feel like arcade needs to be added as a platform.

@xymox @hatking

Good feedback! I agree, sometimes it can be hard to recall when you played a game 20+ years ago. @rewphus and I will take a look at what we can do about adding an option like "don't recall" so you can at least enter you experience when you aren't sure when you played it. We had decided to make when you played mandatory to start with because we will have some analytics driven by that kind of data. If the vast majority of your entries are missing a date then those graphs will probably be less valuable to you. At the very least, if you picked "Don't recall" we could flag those games so you could come back to those later and fill in the blanks. Do you think that would be a better workflow?

I don't necessarily remember when I have played or watched a game. Before very recently, I didn't keep up with game news or buy games right as they were released. I think in the dropdown menu for year, there should be a "I don't know" option. Same for quarter.

EDIT: Whoops, already mentioned.

@ka_tet19: I think that works. I like the site, and it'll be interesting to use going forward, but the biggest hurdle for new users is going to be getting a decent backlog up. I'd definitely take the minute or two punch in a game after I finish it going forward, but I don't know if I necessarily want to go through the hours it'd take to do that for every game I've played in the past.

Maybe it's a lot to ask, but some sort of quick add feature where it just keeps suggesting games to the user based on the stuff they've played, with a sort tinder style swipe left/right on whether or not the user has played them. Just ask the basic info there without making them click through to a different page, then pop up the next game. If the user wants to fill that in later, maybe some sort of flag for incomplete game profiles or something could be there.

I like this idea quite a bit, and the site seems pretty well laid out. I had a glitch, I think. I wrote an 'experience' playing for the game Bike Mayhem 2, but when I clicked save I got a server error. Now, that update has gone through, but I can't edit or delete it, and if I go to add another, it will only let it be for watching.

Not sure if any of that is intentional.

I think it might be useful to allow multiple additions per game, say if I played it on multiple platforms in different years, or to differentiate between watching 20 minutes of a game from watching hundreds of hours over time.

A suggestion: please clear the Search box. I have to select and delete every time I look for a new game.

I'm greatly enjoying the site. I haven't ever really recorded my gaming progress before, and this feels like an excellent tool to get me started. I have a few suggestions:

• This might be difficult to implement, but perhaps a function where you can add the Let's Players or streamers you watch? I know that when you get watch xp for a game, you can type in the name of a LPer if you want, but I'm talking about a whole new section. It could possibly be called Party Members on your profile? And there could be a system where users suggest the LPers or twitch streamers, so that the devs don't have to add countless of LPers manually. I'm not sure if I'm saying this correctly so forgive me.
• Under settings, you can add your gaming IDs and handles, but maybe you could make a way for people to link their twitch or Youtube channels if they themselves are streamers.

That's all I've got. Keep up the great work!

@hatking said:

That is a great idea, and one that I personally have already started toying with on the side. I put it on the back burner as other projects/priorities came up, but I do agree with you that this could do wonders for lowering that hump to get started.

We'll make sure to take a look in to the error logs for when you saved your Bike Mayhem 2 XP. We do currently only allow one Played XP and multiple Watched XP. That is intentional, but we understand we need to refine the system. The thought was that you would continue to update your singular played experience, but we understand that our current system doesn't allow you to clearly differentiate between multiple played experiences. You should be able to enter multiple watched experiences, however, such as watching 20 minutes of beta coverage pre-release and then a number of hours of a full playthrough post-release.

Regarding clearing the search box, I think we could do that after navigating away from the search results, but we want to make sure to keep what you entered in the search box immediately after a search so you can refine it if needed. I'll make sure to put a ticket in for it.

Party Members was actually a concept we originally had for the profile, but in a slightly different sense. We were thinking of possibly surfacing certain developers, artists, voice actors, etc.. that could be found here in the Wiki for the games you play, and show them as your Party Members. I like the idea of allowing users to create their own Party Members, however, and I could see that possibly being certain video game personalities that you follow, etc... Good idea! We'll make sure to toss that idea around.

Regarding the linking of Twitch and YouTube channels, yeah, that seems like a no brainer that we just overlooked. I think the idea was that we put that on hold until we decided which third party services we were going to allow for user authentication, etc.., but there is no reason we can't add those couple fields for the time being.

I hope this doesn't come off as insincere, but I have to say, this community is AMAZING and we continue to be surprised by how much participation and feedback we get from a simple forum post. We may not be able to immediately act on every request, but I promise we are documenting everything very thoroughly and hope to be able to respond to each and every concern/suggestion/opinion personally.

@ka_tet19: For sure. If I pick "Don't recall" and it's flagged so that I can edit it at some point that's much better.

Edit: I also really like hatking's idea. Maybe the site could let you add a bunch of games, but you won't get XP until you actually fill in the summary?
A similar "reminder" feature can be added to that kind of system.

@rewphus: Maybe development studios and gaming companies could be called Guilds? And individual devs and other gaming personalities could be Party Members. Those could be neat features indeed.

I also like the 'fill in later' idea as presented earlier in the topic.

I just added a watch to Street Fighter V based on the GB Quick Look, and it seemed really weird to need to place a game I haven't played into a tier. Maybe this should be optional, or even disabled, for Watch XPs.

Well, it sounds like the "fill in later" functionality is a pretty common request. We would have to build something like this anyways when we get around to integrating game history from third parties, so I will have a serious heart to heart with @ka_tet19 and see if I can convince him to push this up in the pipeline.

Thanks again for all of your feedback, even if it is already repeated in this thread, as the more we hear from you regarding a certain feature, or lack there of, the easier it is for us to prioritize.

@shaunage We just rolled out a change to clear the search box after performing a search. We still need to tweak it so it remains there until you navigate away from the results, but hey, baby steps!

I also wanted to note that with this update we also rolled out a change for the Activity feed where you can now view played percentage as well as a little more context around watched experiences.

The border around watched experiences also varies, but is a little more complicated so we would appreciate any feedback.

All of this is displayed in tooltips, but we are hoping to add more interactivity to the button itself when you click/touch it. Once again, baby steps.

@cale: Thanks for the feedback and providing us with a clear direction. We will be looking into how we can simplify quickly adding games to your profile and adding the rest of the details later.

Would you simply want to pick the game and "Save for later" or would you want to do a little more with it before moving on? That question goes out to @shaunage@xymox@hatking and others who requested that kind of functionality.

@ka_tet19: I think getting it to some sort of semi-complete state would be fine. Like the text blurb, played/watched, and maybe on what device you played it? Maybe that's a little selfish though, because that is mostly the pertinent information I really want to keep track of.

Have you given thought to adding "Owned" alongside "Played" and "Watched"

I'd love to use this to catalog my collection but I'd like to differentiate between games I own and games I just rented or played at a friends place or something.

We actually do, or did, have that option, we have just relabeled it:

It is now labeled "Save for later", which we still might change. The main problem with this option is that it is only accessible from the game page, so we are working on designs that would make it more accessible. We also need to make sure serves a distinct purpose outside of bookmarking, which is another option you have in that list.

Our thought process is that bookmarking would be used to track games that either have just been released, or have a future release, and you want to be notified of any activity on those games (new reviews, release dates, etc...) while the save for later option would be used to simply add that game to a queue so that you can take action on it later.

Ultimately I think it would be great to have a collection feature, similar to User Lists here at GB, where you could name your collection(s) anything you like (i.e. Owned Games, Rented Games, etc...). The one problem with having a dedicated Owned option is that even those lines are becoming more and more blurred. For example, how would you mark PS+ games?

@mechakirby would you agree that a customizable collection option might meet your need to catalog games differently?

@mechakirby: Yeah, we originally had an owned option, but the way it was implemented didn't make much sense with how people were using it (or not, because it was buried and not easy to find). When you add a "Played" experience do you think the option to check "Owned" or "Rented" would work? Or are you looking to say you own a game without having played it?

@hatking: I will have to think about that. I think the overall response has been more flexibility when you fill out your XP details, but as you said, everyone has slightly different wishes for what would be a minimum. Thanks for your feedback, @rewphus and I will have to discuss what the best approach will be. If you have any other thoughts on the matter let me know!

@ka_tet19: Thanks for taking all this feedback! I am really looking forward to seeing where your work goes. Not sure if I said it earlier, but you guys did a great job with this thing.

I can understand your concern about judging a game based simply off a Quick Look, but we do want to handle watched with the same importance as played. We are really hoping that the tier system will come to represent a very personal categorization of your experience, and not be directly correlated to the quality of a game. It's a difficult mold to break, as tiers tend to appear very similar to reviews, but we are working hard to make sure we display and explain them in a different light. For example, we will never aggregate tiers or display them as a single value to represent all experiences, such as Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, etc... We intend to only show them as an abstract sense of how one user experience differs from another.

I also understand how important context is when reading someone's opinion on a particular game, so that is a big reason why we made the change to the icons I highlighted above with played and watched. Do you think if we stay consistent with that, you might feel a little more comfortable assigning tiers to something you watched?

I am planning to highlight this concept in our weekly newsletter to see if I can get further thoughts on the matter, as it is a difficult concept to explain, and even more difficult to execute on.

Quite a slick site. Looking forward to game services integration.

Yeah, we are too! :)

Signed up and checking this out now. One quick thing I noticed was that MMO's required adding in a percentage complete. The closest I could come from was to use multiple playthroughs as I think percentage complete is an arbitrary number in a genre like that.

Definitely like the feel and responsiveness of the site though. Definitely will be using it a lot more in the future.

We are using the same form for every game right now, but do hope to add more customization as we go along. I originally was thinking that we may have to do this on a game by game basis, but you bring up a good point about MMOs. @zirilius It looks like the game you entered is assigned a genre of MMORPG here on GB's wiki, so do you think it would be safe to say any game with a genre of MMORPG shouldn't have percentage complete? I think customizing the fields based off genre is a great idea, I'm just wondering how inclusive that would end up being.

@rewphus: I think gauging completion in an MMO is difficult as we all play them for different reasons and supported MMO's generally have new content coming out regularly which makes the percentage thing constantly shift. I've rarely met someone playing an MMO that finally get's that last piece of gear and rides off into the sunset.

MOBA's might be the only other genre of game that are similar to MMO's in that fashion.

Good call on MOBA's, I think that would be pretty safe to exclude.

I know there are many other games where completion percentage doesn't make sense, Rocket League for example, but those games are much harder to identify on a global basis, as I don't think it would make sense to exclude all Driving/Racing games from being able to mark completion percentage. It's something we will definitely work on, it just might be a gradual process.

Since my GB list is bugged from going over 100 items, and can't be updated at all to be fixed, I decided to try this out. I'm really liking it so far. The plain text on my 1440p monitor is kind of hard to read. Items like the "Save" in account settings seems very plain and could use a bit more emphasis? Is there a spot to just straight up rank the games you've beaten? What about a backlog section? If not, these features would be great to see. I like the direction this website is heading.

Edit: is there a way to mark games as 100% completed? Like not just finished but platinumed? Maybe an idea could be allowing users to add their own tags to games.

@flashflood_29 I'll have to check out the higher resolution displays, so thanks for bringing that to our attention.

Regarding the desire to tag games, do you think adding some functionality similar to user lists here at GB, where you could add games to particular collections such as Platinumed, Backlog, etc... would meet that need? I know that's not much different than tagging would be, it would just be a slightly different way to display the information. Essentially it sounds what you are looking for are more customization options for organizing your catalog of games, would you say that is accurate?

Yeah, something like that. Being able to make your own categories and reordering/ranking the lists within those categories.

I'm happy to report that @ka_tet19 worked is butt off to create third-party login capability, starting with Twitter, Google and Facebook. We still have some polishing to do, for instance, if you login via Twitter it will create a new account since we can't pull an email address from Twitter. The same holds true if your email doesn't match in Google or Facebook.

We are working on ways to seamlessly merge accounts, similar to how it works here at GB, when you login using a third-party it asks if you want to merge with an existing account or create a new one. In the meantime, feel free to send us a PM if you need your account merged, as it's not too difficult for us on the backend.

We are looking to allow Steam logins next, but with that we also want to create the ability to pull in your Steam library, so there is a lot more planning and testing to do before we get to that point. Hopefully we will have more information on that front soon.

@slag said:

Well @slag, I do want to congratulate and thank you for being our first member to have documented over 200 played experiences on a single platform:

So I really, really hope you stick with it!

Other than third-party integration, is there anything else you can think of that could increase the chances that you will continue to come back and update your thoughts?

@rewphus: Oh hey thanks!

I probably got a little carried away, I wanted to see how many games I could remember I've played off the top of my head. I think that's most of them, but I know there's more. Don't think I'm going to mess with adding many games I've watched, that could add several hundred more I think.

When I made the original comment you quoted I wasn't planning on trying your site. But I've seen you guys be hyper responsive to people in this thread (and now on your site as well) and I thought that was admirable, so I figured I'd give your platform a whirl.

I've been compiling my thoughts about what you guys have built, but I want to think it over a bit more so I can articulate it usefully before submitting feedback.

Thanks again!

Sounds good. I look forward to hearing what you have to say, especially being someone who has used the system so extensively.

Well retention is a difficult one. In a way all sites that aren't a generalized social media platform are fighting uphill against places like Tumblr/twitter etc for a user's time.

I guess I'd say some function that gives me something to do or to check on a daily/weekly basis. I'd personally love to see more visualizations and stats since your site is very pretty, but if I'm being honest that's not something I'd need to check more than quarterly or so.

e.g. I created a GB account back in 2011 because I liked all the social features/wiki/achievement tracking/quests and such. If it didn't have that I probably would have just continued lurking watching videos, but because those things were there there was a reason to log in ever day and something to do. I mainly continue posting here now despite some of those being gone or diminished due to inertia.

Probably my favorite feature you guys have in that regard is the critic function. It is neat to see reviews kinda fly in on a new game, I didn't expect to like that as much as I did. Now that I've added the games I can think of, that's about the only thing for me to do on the site until I play/beat something else. I can see other users add their thoughts, but there probably isn't a critical mass yet of those to make that super interesting yet (though it does seem markedly more active than when I first joined) since the only interaction you can do is give a +1. I don't envy any site that offers social interaction given the moderation headaches (nightmares?) that inevitably creates, but since your site doesn't have that it does feel quiet. +1 and you're done. Know what I mean?

I do think your idea of adding impressions based on Let's plays is smart. It's not something I personally have much interesting doing, but I do think a lot of ppl might.

I do think the primary potential issue the site has in the long run is user acquisition and that might easier to solve first. It took me a super, super, super long time to add that many impressions to my profile. I think most people just would not be willing to do that. It's be nice to have a way to do like 10 or 20 at once somehow, instead of search, click, click, select completion, select platform, select year, select score, select modes, type thoughts. That doesn't sound like much to do, but it really really adds up when you adding dozens of games at a time. Especially since for whatever reason the site will load slow occasionally (I noticed this usually only shows up when I've added 20+ games in a session).

If some of those settings could be saved somehow and not have to re-enter that every time I think would help a lot. If maybe be able to view a franchise page and select 5-6 games out of that.

doesn't have to be that, just something that streamlines the process.

Hope that helps! You guys have definitely made a well functioning, pretty website!

@slag: Thank you for taking the time to write down your thoughts and provide some great feedback!

@rewphus and I have a lot to consider based on what you said. One of the core ideas we have for Lifebar is to provide interesting graphs and visualizations of your time playing games. Unfortunately, it's difficult to do without data, making it something harder to do earlier in development. Now that we have had a good influx of users and data, we are starting to design and build those things.

Glad you like that critics show up in Lifebar. I knew I wanted to do it from a very early stage of development, but wasn't sure if others would find as interesting as I did. So, good to hear you enjoy it.

Adding dozens of experiences at one time is time consuming and we certainly have gotten feedback that hitting the ground running is one of the biggest hurdles for people. We are exploring options to make that easier. I like your suggestion of grouping entries to streamline it (by franchise for example).

Thanks again for the kind words and giving us a shot!

I'm wasting way too much time on this site so you must be doing something right! However, I have one little complaint, which is the inability to right-click open a link in a new tab. For example: I'd like to add the Spider-Man games I've played, so I research Spider-Man, and I click on the first relevant game on the list. Buf if I want to add a second game from that research, I can't just hit 'Back' and go on the previous page, I need to submit another research, add one game to my library, and so on. I know that's very minor, but that's been messing with my OCD.

Thanks for reading, now I'm heading back to this timesink of yours.