Post by YUART in itch.io API for Game Metadata

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Hi, thanks a lot for your input. You are correct that this will be nearly impossible to get data about all all games with direct access to DB with no throttling and etc.

I like your idea about accessing only subsets of data, especially when this data is “filtered” by users themselves through the process of reviewing and buying games.

And it already is a bit normalized by only counting paid games that actually sold enough to be in the “top-sellers” list.

Yes, exactly, great idea. I would like my system to find “hidden gems” but right now I have too small amount of time/money to implement such a system properly.

Right now, I’m building a prototype of the system that can find similarity between the game genres. So, for example, we have game X with a game genre “FPS” and Y with a game genre “Third Person Shooter”. Very simple systems will say that those games have nothing in common. I try to build a system that would say “X is 0.7 similar to Y” (based on game genre only) because FPS and TPS have a lot in common, and people who enjoy FPS may enjoy TPS too.

That’s why I need tags. I understand that the data may be incorrect, but for now, I really need a small subset of any sane data to be able to do my calculations.

Anyway, thanks for your help and fresh ideas. Hope to return with some results soon.

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redonihunter49 days ago(+1)

“hidden gems”

That is highly subjective. One user's gem is another user's trash.

If I understand correctly you want an algorithm to detect underrated games. Not in the factual sense that they have a low number of ratings. But in the sense that they should be more famous.

I do not think you can do that with tags. And not really on Itch. One of the best games I know on Itch in a special sub sub category. It does not even have a tag. (I shall not name it here, but let's say, I knew that game before I knew Itch, so to me, the game is more famous than Itch itself.)

To give a real world example. https://tomorrowcorporation.itch.io/human-resource-machine

The game has 4 ratings currently. It is from 2018. Has a single comment ... from 2025.

The plot twist is, the game has 3000 reviews on Steam...

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YUART49 days ago

That is highly subjective. One user’s gem is another user’s trash.

Yes, I agree with that point, and that’s what my system tries to do (or at least it will try to do that when it is implemented 😅).

If I understand correctly you want an algorithm to detect underrated games.

Now, I don’t want to create the system that does that. My idea is to create a system that suits every user’s tastes. The original post was about the small part of that system, so I didn’t bother to describe the whole idea because this is not the topic of a discussion. If you are interested in more context, see my reply to @user22 below.

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