Articles - Indie DB

We've noticed that the vast majority of games (and mods) on our site are listed as "unreleased" despite being available via "early access" or as an alpha. This is problematic because apart from being misleading, it means you cannot search for these games to play or review them.

Whether you like early access or not (we are undecided as it seems to be a perpetual thing with many games hiding under the guise of early access), it is clearly here to stay.

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Whilst our release system needs a major overhaul, the first small step is to start supporting the "Early Access" category, which we have done immediately. We encourage all developers to:

• Update their game or mods profile to "Early Access" if suitable
• This will automatically categorise reviews as "Early Access" or not
• It will allow your game to be searchable in the releases section

Let us know what you think of this change. Also worth noting our Github features / bugfixes board is public for all to contribute to.

The DBolical sites have undergone a number of design changes over the years with the current design (v4) launching in 2008. A lot has changed in the past 7 years with mobile, adaptive and flat designs currently dominating. Whilst we haven't adopted any of this hype, we are exploring how we can deploy a smarter, easier-to-use design.

There are a number of big areas we are focusing on, with the primary being putting the important information within a profile first. This means download buttons, watch buttons, videos, key details to appear above the fold. Step one was to consolidate our gallery system from adding a lot of vertical height into a simple bar:

This removed a lot of vertical height and duplication (the same video sometimes appeared multiple times in a profile). We know this bar of images isn't the best as it is quite small, we will work to address that in a future update. There is more coming, and we've started a public Github page for our community to report bugs and suggestions. So if you have ideas for us, send them in. Hope you like the changes, more are on the way!

A little known fact is that our DBolical plans for ModDB, IndieDB and SlideDB originate from Australia. A sunburnt desert full of snakes, spiders and a strong love for mods and indie games! For the Sydneysiders visiting, are you attending EBGames 2015 Expo on this Thursday to Sunday? We are and might be able to find a chance to say hi, as we try out assorted games and some of those fancy VR gadgets.

It be great to talk to some visitors and pick your brain. We are quietly working away on ModDB/IndieDB v5 (still many months away!) and look forwarding to hearing everyones thoughts about what they like / dislike about the sites right now. Oh and we will also be at PAX in Melbourne next month for those attending it too.

With our annual award events closely approaching, we are looking for a new logo for this years event. As in the past we invite our community to help create an award winning new logo for use across this years events and promotional content. Here's what our community has created in the past:

Tips for a great logo

• Keep it clean and crisp and simple
• Use solid colors keep them as close to possible with the sites primary color theme (red for ModDB)
• Clear easy to read font using capitals, ideally with the words "2015 ModDB Mod of the Year"

Creator of the winning logo will receive

• Their work showcased to over 6 million+ visitors a month
• 3 games of their choice from our #modlove promotion
• Your logo engraved into a pocket watch
• Bragging rights and a warm fuzzy feeling everytime they come online
• A years subscription to our network (ad free viewing)

Willing entrants have 30 days to send their logos to awards@moddb.com. The winner will also adapt their logo for IOTY and AOTY and supply high res layered images to claim their prize. We look forward to seeing your creations and unveiling them December 1st!

UPDATE: To help out, we have added a mediapack with assets to help you design and edit your logo

UPDATE #2: We have closed the contest and will be emailing everyone soon. So many entries received - sit tight!

It is hard to believe that ModDB is 13 years old and IndieDB is nudging 7 years. We are as strong today as we have ever been serving up 35 million pages to our 4 million monthly users. It is a massive labour of love for us, helping so many mods and indie games on their way to success.

We want to keep doing this for a long time, and provide the best community on the web for developers to share what they are working on, whenever and however they want. We succeed when we help you reach a large audience, we have big plans and look forward to putting them into motion over the coming months and years.

Today marks an important day for us, as we welcome our new media representative Gamer Network. Gamer Network specialise in marketing for all games (especially those in the PC and indie space) where we find ourselves strongly positioned. They run Eurogamer, EGX and work with our friends over at Rock Paper Shotgun. We hope this partnership will allow us to display relevant and most importantly friendly ads - and reverse the trend towards adblock.

Let us know what you think, we believe that mods and indie games are only going to become more and more important, and by working with a company that understands their importance - it'll help us secure our financial future, remain independent and provide a better service all in one go.