Listal User Opinions - Should Special Editions be Merged?

Before I continue merging more "Game of the Year" or "Collector's Edition" video games, I want to know everyone's thoughts on whether these games need to be merged at all.

The two perspectives are:

1) Merge them - they're not altogether that different and don't qualify as new games in themselves.

2) Don't merge them - They often offer new content, and users might want to list the separate editions that they have.

Here we will reboot the discussion from the Deletion of whole articles thread - how should we go about this in the Games section, merge these titles or don't?

Now the main thing here is to get everyone's take. If any gamers out there want to come in and just give which you'd like, that'd be appreciated. We can also discuss the merits of whichever one we go for, but for the sake of the community let's try not to be aggressive with our choices or take any counter-arguments personally. This whole "What to merge?" business is an imminent thing to have to deal with, and it's no one's fault that there are different people on different ends of it. That's why I think it's best to get as many people's opinions as possible - we want to know what the general consensus is.

Personally, I'm neutral on this issue because I don't own any of these types of games and don't feel too strongly about it either way.

P.S. If this thread works out well enough, I'd be all for starting a discussion for Music/Books (because I know that's another issue).

well, my opinion is that they shouldn't be merged. they aren't the same price in stores, they don't have the same upc codes on the boxes, they are considered to be separate entities on store shelves...so why should that change when they get purchased? the special editions of games almost always include something extra...from something basic like a gold cartridge for the special edition of legend of zelda: ocarina of time to extra content like the game of the year edition of fallout 3 to a bonus disk with a compilation of some of the previous games in the series like metal gear solid 3: substance's collector's edition.

as a collector, i own both the basic version and the collector's versions of a few games...i'd like to list the specific version of the game that i own....whether it be the basic edition, collector's edition, or whatever. or in the cases where i might own both, i'd like to be able to list both. afterall, this is a website for listing our collections.

i can state more arguments if needed, but for now, i'll leave it at that. :)

What ape said. I've been pretty vocal in the past about why I think the current system is horribly broken, but it's become pretty clear that I'm part of an unwelcome minority of users on that issue.

At the risk of sounding dramatic, the way the games section has been handled, along with certain other aspects of the site, is a big part of why I barely use Listal anymore.

The advantage of marging games is that ratings, reviews, tags, videos are all contained within the same game page rather than split between lots of pages. It stops people accidently rating or adding multiple copies of the same game because they were viewing different version listed and didn't realize they were different versions of the same game. It stops people being recommended games they already own.

You can list the version of the game you own, the main thing you can't do at the moment is list multiple versions of the same game.

I am going to be improving the merging system to allow this, I am working on preliminary work on this now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to merging in general, I just think the current system is not the way to go about doing it. I would disagree that you can list the version you own though, to some extent. It's too difficult in many cases to know which is which in the list of editions, mainly because the ASIN and cover image are the only ways to differentiate them, and there is nowhere to specify more detail after its been merged...and in fact, the current system typically junks info like the barcode in favor of whatever is in the main entry.

So you're forced to pull up Amazon, punch in the barcode for what you have, look up the ASIN, and see if it matches, which it sometimes doesn't, or some of the editions listed don't have an ASIN at all. The "edit" button" for that doesn't work, so you're often just listing an approximation of what you have. You also wind up with redundant entries because if someone lists something on Amazon marketplace outside the entry Amazon has, it also has an ASIN assigned to it, potentially different title, varying degrees of accuracy between them, etc.

Then there's the titling issue, like Fatal Frame/Project Zero, which makes sorting/listing kind of frustrating. If I own Fatal Frame II, I shouldn't be forced to look for it every time under Project Zero II, nor should UK users have to look under Fatal Frame II, etc.

If you were to apply this kind of system to another section, like DVD/Blu-ray, music, or books, it would be an even bigger mess due to the often large number of regional variations, special editions, etc. I own the director's cut of Hero, for instance, which I imported from Hong Kong, so no ASIN exists. Jumbled in with dozens of versions from around the world, including others from Hong Kong and China, many of which have no barcodes, and you just wind up with a junk pile and people have to take a wild guess as to which one is the one they're looking for. That's often what happens with the games section.

I'm all for merging, where you have a main entry that contains reviews, ratings, cast lists, etc. and sub-sections containing the various editions, provided that there's an adequate distinction between those different editions and we have the ability to freely add more detail, see the correct cover image for the version(s) I've listed, etc...but I've said this stuff many times before and usually just wind up put on the defensive for doing so.

I'm working on restoring the individual profiles for each game so you can fully edit them, the reviews, videos, update feed will be shared between all of them.

Looking forward to seeing the changes, Tom.

This sounds like it'll please everybody. Good thinking, Tom!

Just tell me when I can start merging the duplicates again.