RF Generation Message Board

Something I have added to the description field of each of my games is Purchase Date.
But just now thought it would be really good as an actual field that you could sort your collection by.

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I have always liked viewing my collection in order of purchase so I know what games I have had the longest.

I think it would be really cool feature; one could see how there collection has progressed since a certain date.
But what happens when you buy two of the same game? Or you buy the box, manual, game at separate times?

That is a good question actually, and I'm not sure what will happen about that.

A solution might be to only have the option to fill in a date for game first purchased at (date here).

It's a good compromise having one date but not making the collection page seem too cluttered with a bunch of dates for "game", "manual", "box", etc.

Or!!! Perhaps a release date? Yeah! That would be cool! A field for release date.

Hmmm, I don't know. Will that add alot over the field for release year that's already there?

just extend the release year. Call it release date, and have it in the day month year format.

You mean for database info? If you do then you have to consider multiple release dates for different parts of each region and/or retailers.

But of course. You could tailor each region in the same way that a Canadian game may have a different Part # than its American counterpart.

If a Canadian game has a different part number, it gets a separate entry in the database. Otherwise 95% or more of all games sold in Can/US/Mex are North American games. Even though I may buy the exact same game that comes from the same factory as you, I may have a different release date up here or if I bought it in Mexico City. Same applies with European region wide games. So many countries fall under that banner with so many street dates for releases governed by import, ratings and retailers.

Not to mention online shopping release dates versus brick & mortar ones within the same country.

Wouldn't it be easier if you just typed [11/20/07 - $69.99] in your comment box? :P

Of course. I'm not talking about a purchase date. I don't think it would be a good solid 'field' to have. But release dates, on the other hand, could be cool. You could, for the games that have no different regions, but different dates, select the country, then input the date. On the game page, it would look like:

Release date(s)-
USA: 10 January 1997
CAN: 15 December 1997
MEX: 09 March 1998

ETC. You get the point.

Well, we already have a partial release date, we have the release year. So games can already get sorted by this. However as for purchase date (the topic of this thread after all) does not exist, so there is no way to sort your collection by order of purchase.

Sirgin's strategy may be the only solution, just having your initial purchase date.

Then you'd have to add variations like:

Amazon.com - 9 January 1997
Best Buy - 11 January 1997

Because there are always multiple instances of release days now and one is as important as another. I.E. the NES being sold in New York 4 months before the rest of the country, the INTV being sold in California in 1979 or how confusing a broken street date would make the "official" release date look. See you have the placeholder release date used for tracking and media purposes, the day the game is stocked and sold and finally the day you bought it which of course doesn't apply here.

Of course the trivia section has great potential for this kind of extra info as well so feel free. :)

Well I just thought of it as a compromise between having something and having too much dates making everything look like a mess.

Lol that's a bit rediculous in my honest opinion. Who is going to track all of that? And it won't be easy to review these submissions either.
The release date thing is pretty doable for older games (IF you can find the correct info, that is!) but not for current games. Like Tan pointed out, there's too many places you can buy games from now.

You'd end up with:

USA: regular stores - 10 January 1997
        Amazon.com - 9 January 1997
        Best Buy - 11 January 1997
CAN: regular stores - 15 December 1997
        Canadian website - 17 December 1997
MEX: regular stores - 09 March 1998
        Mexican website - 10 March 1998

I can think of 4 reasons not to do this:

1. I don't see what value it adds over the release year field that exists now. Do you really need to know whether a game was released in March or May 1987? Isn't it enough to know it was released in 1987?
2. Submissions would be (too) hard to review resulting in errors being accepted.
3. It would look very ugly on a game page.
4. I don't see how you could make it fit in the "my collection" page. Obviously, it would replace the "year" collumn but it would take up more place so how would that get squeezed in there?

Not to mention it isn't easy to track down exact release dates for games long dead, believe me, I know, I do it for GameDB.com

I'm sorry, maybe I am thinking to 'literal' about this. I kinda ment adding another section at the bottom, along the lines of Game Trivia, etc. But if you all hate this idea SO DARN much, then I'll go ahead and add release dates (OFFICAL ONES!!!) to the trivia section.

I think that's a good idea, adding them to the trivia section. Making a new section for it would cause too many dificulties if you want to do it completely.

And we don't hate your idea. What makes you think that? The more ideas the better the site will become. But it's only natural to critically look at an idea before starting doing something without knowing what we'd get ourselves into, don't you think?

Honestly, no pun nor hate intended. :nod:

Sarcasm? ;)

The sarcasm was hard to spot. You seemed truly upset to me. I just wanted to make sure you knew your idea wasn't hated or anything like that.

The idea definitely has merit. Unfortunately this would be a major change to the submission/edit scripts and a big job for our coders to perform. On top of the coding it would require testing, bug fixing, an edit to the guidelines and time for the staff to get used to it as well as the members. So needless to say every idea like this has to be criticized, explored and covered from all angles before we jump in with both feet or table it for the time being.

Sorry, just now getting around to this thread because my powers been out the past 2 1/2 days.  I just browsed through the thread and I think a purchase date for when you aquired the game would be a good addition to make.  I'm not sure how many people would fill it out, but I can definately see the merit.  Maybe have it default to the date you entered it into your collection.

I have been running short on the amount of time that I can spend coding RFGen as of late.  I'd like to implement this with my next update, but I can't guarantee when that will be.  Rest assured I think this is a good idea, just can't give a solid date on when/how it will be added.  I'll have to discuss it with staff as well to figure out all the details and stuff too.

That sounds like an awesome idea, and would even save time having it default to the date you add it, as unless I had to add the game to the DB, generally the day I add it to my collection is when I got it.

Yeah, me too, although some people might not agree because they may add their games days/weeks after they get it. And what about new members? All their games will be "aquired" on the day they list their collection.

I do understand Eddie's idea though, rather than just having a couple of members fill it out, having it automatically makes sure everyone uses the feature. I'm not sure which is best yet, though.

I think he means it defaults to the current date, but you can change it before adding it.
So it really is win win :)

Oh yeah, that'd be the best of both worlds :D

Exactly :)