Adding "SteamPrices" and "Is There Any Deal?" to the infobox

[Nicereddy 109]

SteamPrices would be relatively easy to include because their URLs already use AppIDs (http://www.steamprices.com/us/app/244730/). "Is There Any Deal?" covers multiple storefronts including Steam and GOG, both of which we already have implemented in the infobox. I'm not sure how integration with the latter would be, or if it would be possible, but I'd imagine it is.

 

My argument for these being useful is simply that users may browse the wiki to see if a game is a good port, works on their system, to see if they need to install any mods to use the game, etc. It could be a tool for making educated purchases, and allowing users to more easily find the cheapest option of purchase, I feel, would be useful. Whether or not either of these sites are fully unbiased is debatable, however I don't believe they're notably biased in any way.

 

I've included a poll, please select Yes or No for each service so we can decide the general consensus on including these.

 

NOTE: These would (theoretically) be implemented the same way SteamCharts, SteamDB, and Wikipedia already are. They would require no extra work on the part of editors, as they would hook into the already-existing Steam AppID/GOG perameters.

 

SteamPrices Link

 

IsThereAnyDeal? Link

[Andytizer 269]

This is a very interesting proposition as price comparison is a very useful too for our users. My vote is for SteamPrices as it's totally focused only on Steam prices, and is less biased than IsThereAnyDeal which uses affiliate links to third party resellers. These links interfere with our own affiliate schemes (if a user clicks through a different website's affiliate link, it overwrites our own) which affects our income and development budget.

 

There may be space to broker a future deal with sites like IsThereAnyDeal or CheapShark or other price comparison websites to provide banner space in a slot above or below a future 'revised' Availability table which we are working on, although that is another conversation.

[Newmansan 30]

Again, another feature that is handy, but in no way aids in getting a PC game to run/run better.

 

Do we want to become a general PC gaming wiki? Or continue to just focus on getting games to run?

[Pridit 39]

Have to agree with Newmansan, I can't imagine a large amount of people coming to the website looking for sweet deals. We're a wiki, primarily focusing on PC game fixes and providing technical information. Websites like these should be adspace, not plugged on every article.

 

Regarding what Andytizer brought up about it possibly being included above/below the Availability table is absolutely preposterous. There's enough advertisements already, I count 4 on each page. Having an additional above/below the availability table is excessive to say the least. The one below the header on the right already adds a ridiculous amount of whitespace. This might be for another discussion, but considering the success rate with developers/PR providing review code which is what I assume this ad revenue is primarily spent on aside from hosting/servers and such I don't think 4 ads per page is necessary any longer.

 

[Andytizer 269]

I've fixed the white space issue on Intake and Giveaway template which you can see if you log in and log out (which will refresh the cache for you on that page).

 

Regarding ad policy/strategy, I'm open to suggestions about this. However, the site benefits from more funds for further growth - my plan has always for PCGW to rank at the top of searches for PC games. Ads can be disabled by logging in, or using an ad-blocker.

 

Soeb and I will be mocking up some new ideas for Availability table this evening.

[Nicereddy 109]

Personally I can see the wiki growing out from simply fixes. Not in any major way at the moment, just simple things like this. SteamCharts, SteamDB, and Wikipedia don't really assist with fixing games, but they're listed nonetheless. We, of course, don't want to clog up the wiki or take on too much work, but I think limiting ourselves will allow for other projects to pass us up.

 

Currently IsThereAnyDeal is clearly not getting added and after reading the responses I definitely agree with that. SteamPrices is mostly yes with a 9-3 split. If anyone has any major rejections to SteamPrices please do voice them.

[Pridit 39]

Well I think this has been outstanding long enough to tally the votes, it seems most are in favor of adding Steam Prices into the infobox. For the record I'm completely against this for the reasons I previously mentioned. Only links that lead to relevant information about the game should be included, not sales or arbitrary statistics - but who am I to argue against the many. The people have spoken.

[JPulowski 1]

I agree with Pridit. Maybe "cheapshark" could be added to the availability section but adding prices directly to the wiki pages is not this wiki is about I think.. We should focus on technical details.