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Google Search Finally Adds Information About Video Games

Posted by timothy on from the where's-my-danged-atari-2600?! dept.

An anonymous reader writes Google has expanded its search engine with the capability to recognize video games. If your query references a game, a new Knowledge Graph panel on the right-hand side of Google's search results page will offer more information, including the series it belongs to, initial release date, supported platforms, developers, publishers, designers, and even review scores. Google spokesperson: "With today's update, you can ask questions about video games, and (while there will be ones we don't cover) you'll get answers for console and PC games as well as the most popular mobile apps."

7 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. I don't like by NotInHere · · Score: 2

    the current trend of google to create a "smart search" that directly answers your questions. Not because this isn't useful, but because projects like wikipedia suffer from it. This is even a direct competitor to wikidata. I still don't understand why wikidata isn't copyleft, its a bad descision in my eyes. Or isn't there any copyright on databases? Then i'll look forward for open google scraping projects.

    1. Re:I don't like by redmid17 · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's not really a direct competitor. The smart search answers have 3-4 sentences topically explaining something. Wikipedia has, almost always, exponentially more data.

      'Smart search' is great for questions like "Who won the World Series in 1987" or "How many Grand Theft Auto games are there". It's not so great for "What is the plot of GTA V".

  2. Re:results rather lame by _xeno_ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Since you mention it, if you search for "Doom", you get (amongst others):

    Doom (Video game)
    Developers: GT Interactive Software
    Designers: Tom Hall, Shawn Green, John Romero

    Doom (Video game)
    Developer: id Software
    Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

    So I guess John Carmack never did exist.

    And, yes, "Doom (Video game)" appears twice. The second one is actually "Doom 4."

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  3. Re:We still have video games? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Why do we need new games? Everyone knows Quake 3 attained perfection in 1999. It's a scientific fact.

  4. Slidebox Bob by epine · · Score: 3, Informative

    Google didn't do this to make the gamers happy. They did it to make the non gamers happy, because video game culture is ladden with a rich and repurposed vocabulary that constantly shows up when people don't want to see video games in their search results.

    They have to recognize games in order to remove games. Once they've gone that far, throwing up a positive infobox is Slidebox Bob.

  5. Re:Tough market by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

    Turbo Pascal from Borland? What about it?

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  6. Re:We still have video games? by jones_supa · · Score: 2

    Why do we need new games? Everyone knows Quake 3 attained perfection in 1999. It's a scientific fact.

    Heh!

    But hey, 1999 was a great year. CPUs and 3D accelerators were powerful enough to run games like Quake 3 or Half-Life. All games released after that has just been about adding more fidelity.

    Sound quality of music albums reached also a pinnacle point: we got great digital audio workstations with lots of tracks and good signal-to-noise ratio, and the dynamic range compression madness had not yet begun.

    Windows 2000 was released, which is the other of the two non-sucky graphical operating systems Microsoft has released (the other one is Windows 7). Linux also got popular on the desktop.

    Gooood times.