With Google search taking a huge nosedive in the last few years, I’ve been thinking about how effective specific search engines and databases could be. There’s still plenty of general search engines like DuckDuckGo and Ecosia that I’ll keep using but it feels like AI grift stuff may be coming to them as well. So anyway, I’ve started building out a list of more specific databases. I might eventually turn it into a standalone page so I would love to know what databases you like. I’m avoiding Fandom wikis since they’re an awful company and I don’t have a lot of confidence in them in the long term, but please recommend other wikis that aren’t owned by big companies. I’ll keep updating this over the next few days as I think of things and more suggestions come in.

Anyway, here’s a few that might be worth looking at:

Academic Journals
JSTOR
OpenAlex
OpenEdition

Board Games
BoardGameGeek

Books
The Conjuring Archive – Search for books about magic
Demian’s Gamebook Web Page
GoodReads
The Online Books Page – Links to archives of magazines, journals, newspapers, and other periodicals
Standard Ebooks – Public domain books
StoryGraph

Comics
The Grand Comics Database

Fanfiction
Archive of Our Own
Wattproject

Film
IMDB
TMDB

Global Myths/Folklore
The Mythology and Folklore Database

Guitar Tabs
Ultimate Guitar

Icons
Font Awesome
Noun Project

Internet
Internet Archive

Language
Online Etymology Dictionary

Local
LocalWiki

Music
All Music Guide
Discogs

Open License Content
Openverse

Other/General
Basenotes – Fragrances
TVTropes

Podcasts
Podcast Index

Search Engines
A look at search engines with their own indexes
List of alternative search engines
Marginalia – independent DIY search engine focused on non-commercial content
OpenOrb – Personally curated search engine focused on blogs

Tabletop RPGs
RPGGeek

United States Art
Library of Congress

Video Games
The Adventure Games Database
Bundle Browser – Search for games in Itch.io bundles
IFDB – Interactive Fiction Database
IGDB
Game Making Tools Wiki
Michigan Games Database
MobyGames
Point and Click Adventure Games Database on AdventureGamers
Solution Archive

Went to the Detroit Zine Fest yesterday and had a great time. I haven’t been to one since the last Detroit zine fest, since I wasn’t able to go to the Grand Rapids zine fest last August and I should probably go to whatever ones are in Toronto since that really isn’t that much farther than Grand Rapids for me. It’s always a good time and it’s a chance to catch up with people I haven’t seen in a while. One nice thing is that while they don’t require masking (which they used to do), they do have a sign saying masking is encouraged and people do it anyway. I wish game conventions would do this. Narrascope does but everyone else has given up on it.

I got a lot of cool stuff too. I’ll try to link to all the artists, although there’s one or two that I wasn’t able to figure out. All the stickers and pins are for my kids. I wasn’t sure if I could bring my oldest to the zine fest or if there would even be anything for her there but it turns out there was and other kids were there as well, so I will have to bring her.

• The Snoopy and Ditto stickers and Snoopy fashion zine are by Brenda.
• The Sonic stickers are by Lauren.
• The orange zine and vintage cats zine are by Hale. Also check out their Itch.io page that is in that link!
• The sketchbook at the bottom and zines and painting by the right are by swanchime, also a game designer.
• Stereotypical Diaspora Poetry is by The Reza Minute
• The brown bag is a subscription to the Floral Observer quarterly about nature and gardening
• The Sonic stickers are by DROSE ATTACK.

Someone told me I should table with the Locally Sourced zine I made two years ago and still have a lot of copies of, so maybe I’ll do that, get another issue made along with some small $1 ones about FMV games or whatever, and then do one of these? That could be fun.

Out of boredom and curiosity, I decided to finally try streaming on Twitch and it turns out I actually think it’s really fun? It’s a bit chaotic right now and I don’t have a schedule since I have a baby, so it’s just whenever I have the time and feel like it, but I didn’t realize that I would actually really enjoy having people to talk to while playing games that are sitting in my backlog. I highly doubt it will ever be A Thing where I stream things that are popular or have a fancy setup or anything that will make it feel like a second job, but feel free to follow me. As expected, I’ll mostly just play old stuff and indie games on there.

Downpour is a new-ish app for making little games on your phone using photos and text. I have made a literal walking simulator in Downpour where you go on a lunch time walk on a trail with me

https://downpour.games/~Michael3000/a-relaxing-walk

​Go check out Downpour for making games. It’s good stuff. ​Making little things in it has been really fun and is helping me finally break whatever game making rut I’ve been in​​

Well, if you’re reading this then it means my site has successfully moved hosts and I’m finally self hosted. I still have to style the site and stuff but everything seems to have copied over and I will be able to do more.

I was already thinking about moving away from wordpress.com to self hosted because of the limitations of this and the CEO being weird and shitty to trans people, but I guess I have to move a lot faster now that the company wants to sell shit on here to AI companies. Technically there’s an option to opt out and I’ve done that, but I don’t really trust the company. Definitely not deleting the site but there might be some weirdness transferring everything once I figure out how to do that.