So today I discovered Lifebar.io. The site is currently in alpha and at first blush may appear to be incredibly similar to all manner of game collection sites. What is interesting, though, is their goal is not to cater to the typical users of those sites (in my opinion).

The goal of the site is for people to capture their lifetime of gaming in a way which focuses on each individual game rather than cataloging. So, when you "add" a game to your profile you actually have to summarize the experience with it, and assign a "tier" to the time. Basically, you are saying a few words about the game and saying if the experience was any good or not. Based on the game genre/platform/etc they will also then recommend you more games in a similar vein to play or add.

I'm not sure that I love it, as adding games takes a long time due to the required fields. With that said, it is in alpha and the site devs are currently taking in all manner of feedback. It could become a neat thing, so I've signed up and am keeping tabs on the place for now.

Some of the metrics they track are interesting, like how many games you've played from a specific company, what genres you've "experienced" most, etc... and it definitely looks sleek in it's presentation from what I've seen from previews so far.

It's nowhere near as "complete" as what this site aims to be (especially once the database gets filled out and can make more use of the platform, genre, developer/pub stats) in scope, but hopefully it pans out for them!

I think this kind of makes me want the Bounties to have a level system.

This is an interesting idea / site. I couldn't help but be reminded of the "gamer thoughts" idea I had in another thread, but they're obviously doing a lot more than that. I love the idea of getting statistics on companies, genres, etc since I'm big on learning more about a developer when I play and enjoy a game from a company for the first time. It's amazing what you'll find out when you do that! As @dhobo mentioned, it's a matter of getting the database filled out before this can really happen.

I'll go ahead and briefly toss out a couple of other ideas I've had in the past few months, but I don't think I've posted about them yet...

The first one is simple (at least in concept), which is a timeline of activity. So you could easily see what you've done, be it adding games to your collection, completing games, etc. This is one of the reasons I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the activity feed.

The other one is something I'm calling your "story". It would be a report-esque type of page that would attempt to describe your collection and gaming history in a unique way. For example, it could say stuff like...

"moho_00 owns 2,000 games, with 75% of them being physical. They have more games on PC than any other system. They tend to add 27 games to their collection each month. And so on..."

Here's the catch though. I want this to be unique (or at least as much as possible) for everyone. So it's not just some boiler-plate text where I swap in your numbers. I want it to highlight the unique and / or interesting things about your collection, your completions, your everything. It's a matter of figuring out all of the possible metrics and then really nailing down the logic for determining what to show, how to word it, etc. The main reason I haven't done anything with this is because while I think it's a cool (and unique) idea, it doesn't really provide a lot of value. I mean, it's not like you'd check this out everyday or anything. It might be fun to share, check every once in a while, whatever. And given the development effort, it just hasn't bubbled up.

[Created my own thread ( http://completionator.com/Forum/PostList/2266?page=1) as I didn't see this one earlier.. ]

As said I like the site for what it does in a flashy way which looks pretty ok to me. I like the short 'review' you need to add, bit in the way the Steam curators have to do. Fiddling around a bit now to see how it works and curious how they will continue.

As to your idea's, an activity feed would be nice, but not just filled with 'static' facts like 'added a game', 'posted a forum message', or 'finished a game'. Perhaps add a twitter-like message system where you can add short messages linked to a game\company\whatever to share your thoughts\experience at that moment. It will be easy to troll or abuse, but can also add a lot more dynamics to the site. This way you as a person can have an activity feed, but also a game\company\whatever (tag? genre?)

Adding graphics is cool but requires data. I personally am too busy right now to contribute (baby etc..) but you need that to get that running. Lifebar uses the Giant bomb meta data and that gives them an easy start even if that data is pretty flawed.

Anyway, I will keep updating my 'lifebar' @ http://lifebar.io/#profile/9833/Marcelloz just to see where it ends up. Perhaps i'll abandon it in a few days\weeks but i like the general idea. It gives me at least a bit of focus on what to play :)

I've been thinking about the "Twitter-like" messages for a while now. I know I'll be playing a game and encounter a really cool part or maybe a really frustrating part and I'd like to let the wold know. I think providing an easy way to post a short message that's tied to a game would be a nice addition. I think it's independent of the "gamer thoughts", which is more of something you'd do after you're done playing a game. I think all of this stuff fits nicely in the upcoming social / community initiative :D

Hey guys, I hope you don't mind me dropping in. I am the lead designer at Lifebar and I noticed some traffic coming from completionator.com so I thought I would check it out.

Wow, this site is amazing and you have done some great work here. I was wondering if Completionator would have any interest working with Lifebar on some projects? Considering how much overlap there is in our work, but from what I can tell our focus is very different. Marcus summed it up great in the OP, we are really focusing on the individual's experience with video games throughout their life opposed to the cataloging of their library. I think this could be a great opportunity to see if we could benefit from each others work at all.

Let me know what you guys think, and keep up the great work!

Hey @rewphus, welcome and feel free to spend as much time as you'd like here :D

The backlog for the site is pretty full these days, but I'd be interested in hearing some of your ideas on how to integrate the sites. I agree that there's some overlap (even more so with the recent social enhancements I've added), but I think our sites are on different trajectories overall. Feel free to shoot me an email at info@completionator.com

And congrats on the site, it's a really slick-looking design!