Is there any documentation or discussion on the Games Database model, specifically how game variants should be recorded or merged? Thinking specifically the original release, remaster, HD versions, etc representation on the Lutris games search.
One example is the 2000 game Majesty which was released as Majesty, Majesty Gold, and Majesty Gold HD. In the IGDB it is listed separately, but for the function of finding installers and metadata management would it make more sense (or is it common practice) to merge to the concept of the game for search purposes ie “Majesty” and have releases under that specifying the release variation. Metadata on the specific releases could be listed. In some ways this would map well to Wikidata and example of this would be how OpenLibrary (openlibrary.org) represents the work as the primary source and editions as specific versions for different release variations.
From a user perspective this could allow looking for the general game then specific editions/releases. It could simplify the search experience and help also with cross linking. It could also help in ensuring ids are associated with the correct variant, like the gold edition for majesty has ids that are associated with the gold hd, but no clear mechanism to report these should be moved to the other game.
An example where it is unclear if these should be one game and different releases (lutris domain removed due to link limit for new user post):
majesty-the-fantasy-kingdom-sim/
majesty-gold-edition/ (this page links to the gold HD steam identifier, but the correct IGDB page for this specific version.
games/majesty-gold-hd/
This really brings two questions as a new to Lutris user and not finding any documentation on the practice or rational:
- is the expected practice for these to be separate games in Lutris?
- Might it be worth reconfiguring the game representation to a game concept as the primary listing with child relations for each release and their respective metadata as a longer term reconfiguration?
- There looks to be existing work for crosslinking with Wikidata by the Wikidata community - https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q75129027 and it could be a way to leverage the public domain metadata to help maintain the games metadata and allow additional linking. I have experience with wikidata and metadata workflow designs if this is something worth looking into.
Coming from a UX background and dev experience I was trying to understand the project design decisions and also understand why I was having trouble locating games. I would welcome orientation and insight on the games data.