[HN Gopher] Show HN: A website/app to help manage your game library
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Show HN: A website/app to help manage your game library
So, me (dev) and my friend (designer) have been building a
website/mobile app to help users manage their game library (think
MyAnimeList, but games) for a little over a year. We launched with
a very basic set of features, and have been slowing expanding since
then. All the code is open source, and most of the things we
implemented were direct feedback from users (e.g. being able to
import games from Steam/PSN, and the Posts feature). We don't show
ads or have any kind of subscription. This is just a hobby project.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, as honestly the hardest
part is getting people to actually try it out. Link:
https://gamenode.app You can also reach out to me via
cassiolamarcksilvafreitas@gmail.com
Author : lamarcke
Score : 22 points
Date : 2025-04-08 17:35 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gamenode.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (gamenode.app)
| pvg wrote:
| Repo link https://github.com/game-node-app
| system2 wrote:
| Isn't Steam Library already doing this?
| hoten wrote:
| Steam can list/launch your non-Steam games, but it isn't open
| source. Listing non-steam games is also a manual process and
| there probably isn't any library art associated with the entry
| if it comes from Battle.net or whatever.
| nottorp wrote:
| GoG Galaxy can handle Steam games too...
|
| Probably not the proprietary launchers for the top
| predators... Blizz, EA, Ubisoft...
| metalliqaz wrote:
| I have been using GOG Galaxy to try and track my entire
| collection but of course its connections to other gaming
| services are always broken.
|
| I've heard that other tools like Playnite work better but
| I've not gotten enough motivation to try as yet.
|
| I prefer Steam's well-integrated interface. It would be
| nice if it could scrape other launchers too.
| nottorp wrote:
| Tbh my problem is not with launchers, I can live with
| separate launchers, but with having a full list of games
| I already bought on my phone when i'm digging through the
| console bargain bins.
|
| At the least I have two copies of Mass Effect Andromeda
| and two of Valkyria Chronicles because they were very
| cheap and I forgot I already got them :)
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Yes, same. When a deal pops up I have to check Steam,
| Epic, GoG, Humble, Itch, and so forth.
| lamarcke wrote:
| After my endeavours with various store APIs and trying to
| get all of them to fit with our constraints, i understand
| why GOG Galaxy is always broken
|
| Most of their external APIs suck tbh. Steam and PSN were
| the best experience i had, and the PSN one is not even
| officially documented. Epic doesn't even let you use
| their user library endpoints if you are not a partner
| unfortunately...
| whisman wrote:
| Yes but it's a pain.
| hoten wrote:
| Have you used Playnite? Have you built features / plan to make
| features that would set this apart from Playnite?
| lamarcke wrote:
| To be honest, we don't even have a desktop app currently,
| though we do plan to make one. IMO Playnite is a behemot and
| it's very hard to overtake it, so maybe the best course of
| action would be to create a plugin to help sync their library
| data with ours (?). We both use IGDB data so it shouldn't be
| too hard. They also have a more robust store sync system going
| for them.
|
| But feature wise, the main difference is that we're targetting
| all platforms instead of just PC. You could have GameNode in
| your phone when you only have a Xbox/PS console for example.
|
| If you have any suggestions on what we may do to set us apart
| aside from this, please let me know
| StrangeSound wrote:
| Hey, I'm actually in the process of building a desktop
| application that does this. Perhaps we could chat? I'm also
| leveraging IGDB. I have focused mainly on windows/Mac/Linux,
| with my main driver being steamdeck compatibility
| lamarcke wrote:
| Sure! Do you have Discord or anything similar?
| kikki wrote:
| > IMO Playnite is a behemot and it's very hard to overtake it
|
| Why do you need to overtake it? Playnite is open source, you
| could contribute to it to make it better.
| lamarcke wrote:
| I meant that in a "we're building our own alternative" kind
| of way. That's why i said it makes more sense to contribute
| with a plugin for it.
| nottorp wrote:
| Pretty actually. How hard would it be to include physical
| Playstation games by scanning the barcode or something like that?
|
| For consoles it still makes sense to buy discs... they're
| discounted a lot more and faster than the digital versions.
|
| And with me having a more than respectable backlog, I almost
| always buy on disc and almost always after it's discounted by
| 50%.
| Adachi91 wrote:
| Pretty trivial, I built a browser scanner for my phone using a
| QR scanner library[1], while browsers are contemplating adding
| an API natively.[2] You would just need to use a lookup service
| for the UPN of the game title.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/mebjas/html5-qrcode [2]:
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Barcode_Det...
| nottorp wrote:
| No offense but it's not the barcode scanning that's the
| problem for this feature :)
| lamarcke wrote:
| That looks really cool, and i believe we could do something
| by trying to match the game title's with our database. Thanks
| for the heads up!
| lamarcke wrote:
| I would guess that's pretty doable for our mobile version, but
| I can't promise without doing some PoC fist
|
| But it would probably to this: - Scan the Barcode - Fetch the
| product name from it and try finding a match in our database
| (ManticoreSearch does a good job in finding matches with
| similar names)
|
| It all depends on if the product name would even be there at
| all, or if it can be retrieved easily
| lamarcke wrote:
| Since i don't have a Playstation console currently, can you
| tell me if disk games are also featured in your library?
| (E.g. other users may see them when they enter your profile)
|
| If they are, you could import them directly from our PSN
| integration.
| nottorp wrote:
| Hmm the disc games don't show up in 'purchased' but do show
| up in 'played'.
|
| Not sure what the api offers.
|
| Of course, that only goes for discs that have been in the
| console at least once. Believe it or not, I have some still
| shrink wrapped.
| lamarcke wrote:
| Hmm i understand. I'm going to add this to our backlog
| and see how it can be done in the next weeks. Thanks!
| dangond wrote:
| Does this do anything differently from https://backloggd.com/?
| I've been using Backloggd a lot over the past year and I'm not
| sure how this is different (aside from being ad-free, which is
| nice)
| lamarcke wrote:
| Backloggd is our main "competitor", and we know most people are
| already familiar with it. But going from their roadmap
| (https://backloggd.com/roadmap/), we already have: - A mobile
| app - Steam and PSN integration - A recommendations system -
| Social Page (?) not sure what they building, but we're trying
| to keep most of our stuff shareable. For example, you can share
| a nice Letterboxxed-style image of your game reviews. We're
| also close to shipping something like this for recent played
| games, similar to what these third party tools do for LastFM.
|
| We both use IGDB as source, so there's no difference in the
| actual catalogue of games.
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| As the data comes from igdb and igdb has a collection feature, is
| the import from steam/psn the main USP?
| ryu2k2 wrote:
| I built mal for videogames too over 10 years ago. A friend also
| did individually. And I know at least 5 other sites that are
| "mal, but videogames" or have similar features.
|
| Imo the concept is a waste of time until there are APIs for each
| console/store to fetch user data and automate libraries. Most
| users don't bother and the few that do already have accounts
| spread on like 10 different sites for this kind of thing.
| Personally these days I just keep csv files of my collection and
| play history and turn them to HTML via a ssg.Turns out that I
| don't need anything more than this.
|
| But good luck!
| lamarcke wrote:
| Thanks! I understand where you're coming from, when we launched
| the first open beta we honestly didn't have any feature that we
| could use to argue "hey, you should use this instead!".
|
| I personally think there's a overlap between people willing to
| manage their anime library, and people willing to manage their
| gaming library. Both have tons of options, and most will choose
| none.
|
| But take MyAnimeList, for example: A mainly English-speaking
| audience, so we could assume most users are either using
| Crunchyroll/Netflix/Hulu, or the hundred possible options for
| piracy. But they still come back to update their profile in MAL
| every once in a while, despite all the options they have - and
| we have users which do exactly that too. We're trying our best
| to offer a solid management experience (e.g. mobile users may
| press and hold in any cover to manage a game, and desktop users
| have that directly at hover, and other QoL), and offer features
| on top of that. Our PSN and Steam integration are very recent,
| we only launched them ~8m in, and so is our mobile version. All
| of our users are basically early adopters, but they still log-
| in once or twice a week, and our only way of changing that is
| offering more reasons to stay online. That's why we're also
| building social-related stuff, like the Posts system, the
| reviews, and etc. We think users are way more likely to stay
| with us if they can interact with other people. This is kinda
| what Anilist is doing too.
| Rumudiez wrote:
| why is the black background a 1.5MB JPG[1]? and it even has a
| responsive counterpart[2] that's half a megabyte for mobile.
| surely it could have just been `background: #000`? I didn't go
| looking for issues, I just noticed the image load in jaggedly
| (not progressively encoded) and couldn't believe my browser would
| do that for a solid color fill. did you use AI to make the
| website?
|
| [1] https://gamenode.app/img/desktop-bg.png
|
| [2] https://gamenode.app/img/mobile-bg.jpg
| enumjorge wrote:
| The background is not solid black. There is a very subtle
| background image that is most visible on the top right corner.
| The contrast is so low though that it's very hard to see.
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