I've been scratching my head about why the database seems to be missing so many titles that were published in 2009. Since newer games tend to get much more online play, this discovery has been a little embarrassing.
I have finally discovered the culprit: Planbeast's source for getting new game data, 360voice.com, at some point last year changed the numeric IDs of their game database, as part of the process of merging their data with their new parent company, GamerDNA. Since Planbeast's database uses 360voice's game IDs in order to figure out which games are new and which it already knows about, this led to Planbeast getting confused, and effectively ignoring a lot of new titles.
I certainly don't blame GamerDNA for consolidating their own DB, and recognize the responsibility is wholly mine. This is simply the sort of thing that can happen when you leave a project with external dependencies alone for several months, as I did with Planbeast. There's little for me to do about it other than clean up the mess, and I sincerely appreciate all the help y'all are giving me with pointing out games that ought to be in our database. I add them as fast as I can, when you do, so please keep them coming!
After a year or so of letting it sit around undisturbed, I've started to more actively promote Planbeast. I began with this post on GeezerGamers.com, a web-based community for grown-up video gamers, many of whom love online play.
The Geezers have so far been invaluable not just in making some nice suggestions about the site, but calling out its flaws as well. For one thing, our registration system wasn't allowing recognizing addresses with two-letter TLDs (such as .uk or .ca) as valid. Just as alarming, the magic elves who populate our database with new titles had somehow managed to overlook both Modern Warfare 2 and Borderlands, two of the most popular Xbox Live games right now. I patched these errors as fast as I could, and extend my gratitude to those who report them to me. Please keep the bug reports coming!
New members, especially those who frequent web forums, should check out Planbeast Cards. Paste these little code snippets into your forum signatures will let everyone else on the web know what online games you like, and when you're next scheduled to play an online XBL game. (Yes, I should make that page more obvious to this site's users somehow...)
One one user's request, I have also created a game entry for Halo 2, even though it's technically not an Xbox 360 game. Microsoft has announced that it's pulling the plug on XBL support for original Xbox title (including Halo 2) in April, and Planbeast can help you get your last licks in before the servers go dark.
Happy planning!
Just added a new feature to every game page: you can now opt to receive an email whenever anyone creates a new public event of that game.
Take Schizoid's page, for example. If you dig that game enough to want to know when someone else creates a public event, check the checkbox labeled "Email me when anyone creates a public Schizoid event", which you can find underneath the "Stay notified of upcoming events" header (if you're logged in, that is). Every game page has a checkbox like that.
In some ways this feature is redundant with the RSS feeds already attached to each and every game, but I'm operating under the hypothesis that signing up for emailed announcements is, for many people, a friendlier (read: less nerdy) way to stay informed about things like this.
Follow Planbeast on Twitter! Every time someone schedules a public Xbox Live event, it shows up as a tweet, with a link to the event's page here on planbeast.com. We hope that it's a fun way to keep track of what people are playing, and an easy route to jump into games that interest you!
We'll also use it make short posts on other stuff of interest around the Planbeast-o-sphere. See you there...!
I am in the process of sprinkling pretty little RSS icons around the site, attached to pages and page-sections that have their own feeds. The ability to subscribe to notifications about upcoming game events is one of Planbeast's key features, and I've been concerned that it just hasn't been obvious enough.
Got ideas for other kinds of feeds we should support? Let us know...
As described in the previous post, Planbeast cards are graphics you can post and share which contain information about the next public Planbeast-planned game you're playing. Here's what mine looks like right now (relative to the time you're reading this, versus the time of my writing it):
You can get one for yourself by logging into planbeast.com, clicking "Account", and then following the link to the card page under the "Other Stuff" header. Or, if you're already logged in, just go here.
What do you think?
Tip of the hat to MyGamerCard.net, whose approach to turning Xbox Live Gamercards into sharable images I used for inspiration, here.
Two cool features we're working on right now:
Planbeast cards. That's my working title for it, anyway. This will be, essentially, a little blob of HTML you can paste into blogs or forum signatures and the like, resulting in a nifty dynamic image that will let people across the web know which online games you've got coming up, by way of Planbeast.
We have a working design, but I made it myself, and so it's pretty ugly. Rather than foist them upon y'all as-is, I'm talking to Rob, the fellow responsible for the beautiful punched-out look that this site's miniviews sport. I hope to get some solid advice from him, and then turn this feature on next week.
Facebook integration. Through Facebook's new Connect API, websites can rig themselves up to allow users to log in and even create new accounts using their Facebook credentials. This can lead to a lot of cool stuff, such as having Planbeast stamp a notification on your Facebook wall whenever you create or join a game event, letting your friends know about your online plans.
We'd been talking about doing something with Facebook from way back when we were first plotting out Planbeast, so I was happy to discover the Connect API earlier this month; it really looks like the best way for us to hook into it. This is a more involved project, but I hope to see it happen before summer.
In other news, I totally just picked up Left 4 Dead, mostly due to peterb's review of it, which spoke directly to my totally-not-into-the-whole-zombie-meme self. (As well as my desire to go blow 50 bucks at Amazon, I guess.) Anyway, so long as I'm pretty much the only person making public events on this thing, I've made a few of those. Want to come shoot zombies with me?
How did we manage to get this far and not realize that we were lacking a basic password-recovery feature? How embarrassing. Well, it's a moot point now, because I just added it. Sorry about that! If you forgot your Planbeast password, and for some reason are reading this blog anyway, please visit the login page again and enjoy this friendly new feature.
Also fixed a bug where users' XBL online-status in event miniviews were getting pulled from the wrong cache, which often resulted in these miniviews claiming that online users were offline.
Took a break from bug-fixing to attend to something friendly we should have done before we launched. Added a section to the bottom of our About page which credits the services that supply Planbeast with its data, the people who helped build the site, and the software projects that the site runs on.
If I cannot also resist making an egregious plug for my day job, well, so be it.
