New Feature On Criticker: Video and Board Games Recommendations

Image by JD Hancock licensed under Attribution 4.0 International

Our official announcement:

Criticker, an online recommendation engine which assists users in finding new movies
and television programs, has released a new version of its website, designed to work
with video games and board games. Criticker Games uses the same algorithm as the film
version, generating recommendations by matching users to one other. A unique “Taste
Compatibility Index” (TCI) is calculated for every possible pair of users, and
recommendations are generated by looking at the rankings for each user’s top TCIs.

There are already over 1000 games in the system, and dozens more are being added
daily. Criticker Games spans multiple platforms, from the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, to
legacy systems like the original NES. There are PC games as well as mobile games, and
even board games.

“The decision to include board games was something we came up with really late in the
development process,” says Michael Powell, one half of Criticker’s two-person team.
“We figured, if you have a compatible taste in games as someone else, it probably
doesn’t matter if those games are being played on a smart-phone, a nextgen console or
in real life. That’s our theory, anyway; it will be interesting to see if it turns out to be
true.”

Users are able to set their preferred platforms, indicating that they’re only interested in
games for Linux and Android, for example. And all the features which were already
present in Criticker have made the port, including the ability to create collections, leave
mini-reviews, remember games for later, and mark other users as friends.

Does the existence of Games Criticker mean that Books Criticker is right around the
corner? “Maybe,” says Powell. “We’ve added a lot of customizable abstraction to the
recommendation engine, meaning it will be easier to adapt for other mediums. We’re
excited, but let’s see how Criticker Games is received.”

Criticker has been around since 2004. One of the oldest independent movie websites still
online, it has a small but highly dedicated user base which has kept the site running
without any outside financing.

Criticker Games: https://games.criticker.com/