New Features on IFDB

This is a summary of recent additions and changes to the site. The list isn't comprehensive - we report only the more visible and significant changes, so you might notice some minor changes from time to time that aren't reported here.

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6 January 2025

New in December: The team has been hard at work on improvements to IFDB.

"Played Games" now displays your play times: When you go to My Activity you can find a list of all of your played games (games where you've checked the "I've played it" checkbox). If you submitted a vote for how long it takes to finish the game, we'll now include your play time there, as well.

Sort search results by Estimated Play Time: You can now sort game results by their estimated play time–from shortest to longest, or longest to shortest. When you sort this way, each game’s estimated play time will display as part of the results. (IFDB's search API and viewgame API will also include estimated play times, where available.)

Multiple "Play Online" Links: Now, games can have multiple "Play Online" links, if we have multiple external links that can be played online. (The big blue "Play Online" button will link to the first "Play Online" link on the list.) We've also updated IFDB's viewgame API to match. The API now includes a primaryPlayOnlineUrl as well as separate playOnlineUrl links on each external link.

16 December 2024

"Plonking" is now called "muting": IFDB has allowed you to hide a user and their reviews, comments, lists, and polls since 2008. At that time, the feature was called "plonking," which is an old term from Usenet. Now, we use the modern standard term, "muting." (This is just a rename; the feature works the same way it did before.)

How muting works

If you mute a user, all of her reviews, comments, lists, and polls will be omitted throughout IFDB.
This only affects you - it won't actually delete the user's reviews or hide them when other members view the same game pages.
Muted accounts will not know that you’ve muted them.
You can change your mind and un-mute someone later via the user filter editor.

23 November 2024

Add a time note with your time vote: When you submit a vote for estimated play time, you can now include a note about your play time. For example, you can mention that you played with or without hints. (Note that we're still in the process of de-anonymizing time votes. If you submitted time votes before November 19, check your email before December 19!)

19 November 2024

Estimated play time votes are now publicly attributed to you:

When we first launched the new estimated play time feature, each player's votes for a time were private and anonymous. But we have improvements planned that won't work well with anonymity, so we've decided to change our approach and to publicly attribute time votes to the player who posts them, just like reviews and ratings.

Here's how the transition will work.

All 373 existing time votes are temporarily marked "Anonymous."
All new time votes will link to the user who posted them, like this: "8h30m — Dan Fabulich"
We've emailed all 34 users who have submitted time votes, asking their permission to link their votes to their user name. (The email includes a list of your existing time votes.) Check your spam folder or email us at [email protected] if you haven't gotten an email from us but you think you should have gotten one.
If you decide that you're not comfortable linking your time votes to your user name, we'll delete your time votes from IFDB. (You'll still have your private copy in email, so you can always repost them at any time, but, if you do, the time votes will be publicly attributable to you.)
After 30 days, on or around December 19, we'll delete any time votes from users who haven't granted us permission to link them publicly.
After December 19, all existing time votes will be publicly attributed to the user who posted them.

If you have questions, please reach out to us at [email protected].

9 November 2024

New this week: The team has been hard at work on improvements to IFDB.

Estimated Play Time (now searchable!): You can now use the "Estimated Play Time" form on any game to submit a "vote" for how long it takes to finish the game.

Vote only if you've played the game.
Vote on how long it would take to get to one final ending without hints or a walkthrough.
Time spent away from the game doesn't count.
Times don't need to be exact. Good-faith estimates are fine.

We'll display the median time vote near the top of that game's page.

(EDIT: Nov 15) You can also search for games by play time using the new playtime: search filter. For example, here's a list of games that have an estimated play time of six hours or more.

playtime:minimum-maximum lists games with an estimated play time in the given range. After each number, use h for hours or m for minutes. For example, playtime:2h15m-3h shows games with an estimated play time of anywhere from 2 hours and 15 minutes to 3 hours. Hours may include decimals (for example, 3.5h). playtime:1.5h- lists games with an estimated play time of at least 1 and a half hours. playtime:-45m lists games with an estimated play time of 45 minutes or less. playtime:1h searches for games with an estimated play time of 1 hour. playtime: with no text after it searches for games with no estimated play time.

This feature is very, very new. We've got a lot of ideas for improvements, and we've got a public discussion going on the intfiction.org forum.

JSON APIs: Most of our IFDB API endpoints now support JSON.

You can search for games and get JSON results
You can view an individual game and get JSON results (now including tags and complete, unstripped HTML!)
You can tag games by posting a JSON array of tags

All of the old APIs still work in XML mode, but JSON is the preferred format for all new code. (The API to add/edit games is still XML-only, for now.)

In addition, we deprecated the gametags API. You can view tags on an individual game with the viewgame API, or view your own tags with the search API, like this:

https://ifdb.org/search?json&tag&searchfor=tuid:xxx+mine:yes

Removed Clubs: The IFDB "clubs" feature has been removed. Nobody was using the feature, partly because clubs didn't do very much.

2 November 2024

Redesigned Home Page: The "New on IFDB" section now contains only site news, polls, competitions, and lists for the past three days. Games, reviews, polls, and lists each have their own section on the home page.

22 October 2024

New this month: The team has been hard at work on improvements to IFDB.

New Star Rating Control:

There's a new star rating control, designed for accessibility. We'd love to get your feedback on it on the intfiction.org forum.

The new star controls are designed to be bigger, easier to tap on on touchscreens.
They’re also designed to be keyboard accessible. You can use tab to focus on the star control, and then use arrow keys to select a rating. (When you do this, you have to tab over to the new “Submit Rating” button to submit your selection.)
Under the hood, they’re secretly radio buttons, so users of screen readers will interact with them like radio buttons.
We’ve replaced the little star icons with new SVG icons. I think they’re nicer to look at, especially on high-resolution screens (like phones).

Performance Improvements: You should see a number of performance improvements on the site. Especially note that clicking your browser's Back button now shows the previous page instantly. And on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, we're now downloading certain links before you click on them, especially "See full review" links on the home page and the first few results on searches, so when you click on those links, the page loads instantly.