Some additional intelligence ideas for improved game matching

[tastyratz]

Some game naming seems to get in the way of finding possible matches. I would like to propose solutions and examples below:

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I've noticed that matches are often not found when there is a special character in the middle, like a colon or dash in place of or alongside a space.

In addition, sometimes they are not found when there are extended common titles, such as "The video game" "The movie" or "Edition” or SE vs “Special Edition”. Acronyms like GOTY vs 'Game of the year" don't seem to exist as aliases for matching either, but, should.

Example x360 games with no matches in search:

Lego pirates of the Caribbean

Matching Launchbox game title:

Lego pirates of the Caribbean: The video game

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The walking dead GOTY edition

Launchbox title:

The walking dead: Game Of The Year Edition

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I feel like certain words should be ignored when determining a match as well as certain acronyms detected as an alias and matched with alternate names when found. This will improve match accuracy and reduce manual matching efforts.

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The same can be said about games with region codes with non- delineated formatting (like parenthesis).

Example as imported (no match found):

Bratz.Kidz.party.EUR for Nintendo DS

Launchbox title:

Bratz Kidz: Slumber Party

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If I change the title to

Bratz Kidz party - I can successfully match.

If I change the title to Bratz Kidz party EUR it does NOT find a match. Since EUR/USA/JAP are region codes, if they are found, maybe they should be eliminated if a match isn’t found to see if an alternative is available as well?

Another example might be “101in1megamixUSA” for PSP which finds results after removing the trailing “USA”

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The same can be said for company name branding in game titles that are sometimes represented without the company name.

Example in Gamecube (no match found):

Disney's Meet the Robinsons

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Launchbox Title:

Meet the Robinsons

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Maybe if publisher name and aliases for the publisher name are found in the title, ESPECIALLY when they are popular common brands, they can be dropped in match searches (such as removing Disney and Disney’s as the pluralized form)

This naming is also inconsistent across platforms btw considering “Disney's Aladdin in Nasira's Revenge” for Sony Playstation.

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You could also say the same for games imported under a platform with the scraped platform or platform alias in the name.

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Example (no match found):

Animal Crossing Wii

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If I take “Wii” off the end of the title, I get a match

Launchbox Title:

Animal Crossing: City Folk

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All of this is manual slog work that could be avoided if titles without a matching name but matching a known alias or condition are re-searched against the local db with alternate names or conditions.

Unfortunately, matched and unmatched is not a filterable option by platform either. You can SORTA find them if you sort by empty fields like publisher but every match changes your position in the game list and you have to find your way back to where you were again.

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All of this seems to me like it could improve the likelihood of a match and reduce manual work should it be implemented.

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