When I started Questlog a year ago I never thought I would have more than 20 users. Not after a year. Ever. But this imaginary boundary was crossed after just a few weeks. Now a year later Questlog is the home of 178 users and it’s constantly growing. Without ever advertising it more than posting updates.
The way my brain works “forbids” me to advertise it more than that until reached a certain point. Questlog is still in development so you all are beta testers. For a long time you were alpha testers.
I know the industry works this way today and sells unfinished alpha versions, but I started this hobby in the early 2000s and back then everything was free and my mindset never really changed. If I don’t have many costs, I don’t expect you to pay. This is the way Questlog is offered today too. The exception: for the first time I allow tips via Ko-fi. Not because I wanted but because you asked me to.
And holy cow. This changed the dynamic for me. My little hobby project just became something people wanted to pay money for. Not because they had to but because they believe in Questlog. This was such a motivational boost that I invested much more time in the project than I initially planned. And it was such a fun experience. Especially as I got so many feature requests, improvement suggestions and just compliments.
I’m extremely bad at seeing what I creating. For me everything I build is something every person could do probably better. I know this isn’t really a healthy mindset but I don’t really found ways around it. Until you helped me. I still think Questlog could be MUCH better. Especially from a UI/UX perspective. But it’s the first time I’m proud of something I built in my free time.
For a moment I stressed out as I wanted to please everyone. That blocked everything and I had to take a step back. Gladly that was just for a few weeks. So I’m still highly motivated. And the moment I have a bit of free time again, I will definitely work again on one of the most requested features. Import of your Steam library.
But my private life is a bit wild currently and I do everything in my free time next to handling a small family with my wonderful small child that was born just a few months prior the launch of Questlog. And every parent knows: Winter is hard from a health perspective for every family member. So I can’t get an ETA here but it’s not far off.
Questlog in numbers
I have no analytics tools or something like that, so I cannot brag with high visitor numbers or so. But I can share what I can read from the database without affecting your privacy. Questlog doesn’t collect data and it won’t do it in the future. So if you don’t see the feature there is no additional data.
I can give you information about games in the database. User count, playlists, likes and stuff like that. I have no idea which game is the one with the most clicks. I have no idea which game is the most searched (although I think about tracking “something” about it for better search results. But without connecting it to users or something). I don’t even know how many active users I have exactly, as I have no metric for this. I could probably look at how many users tracked at least one game in the last 30 days.
Anyway, here are some numbers.
Some raw data from the database: There are 227,754 games in the database currently, distributed across 23 genres and 200 platforms. These games have 77,193 videos and 475,532 links attached and belong to 48,869 studios. In regards of alternative names: There are 90,969 which improve the search a lot.
Some raw data for users? Questlog is now the home of 178 users that have created 78 reviews (66 in english and 12 in german) and 289 playlists. In case of play statuses there are 12,539. 7,092 finished games, 2,718 games you want to play, 1,356 games you don’t want to play anymore, 697 games you’ve paused und 676 games you’re playing right now. Access these 12,539 connections are 4,866 games and the game most tracked is Cyberpunk 2077 with 30 people finished it, 11 currently playing and 17 still want to play it (you really should, it’s awesome!).
That the paused status has overtaken the playing status is a small surprise as it was added only end of March 2023.
Playlists have on average 21 games on it and the average user has 1,62 playlists. But we all know averages are not as interesting as some numbers from the upper spectrum. Currently 6,067 connections exist between games an playlists with 3,696 unique games. The game that is on most playlists is Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, followed by Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur’s Gate 3. No surprises here. The most liked playlist is currently Cyberpunk-Themed Games from the user Revengeday with 106 awesome games.
Future plans
One of the more frequently asked questions is if I have a roadmap. Not exactly. I have tickets I created after I had ideas or you shared your ideas with me. Some of them are complete projects already and definitely planned others have to be fleshed out before I know when/if I can develop them.
I thought about how I could build a proper roadmap and over-engineered too much of it. So it never went live. I guess I will just make a page here with some infos what I’ve planned. I could certainly automate all of this. But it would probably take much longer than simply writing everything manually. For a long time. And I want to use my coding time for Questlog itself.
Before I get the time to create the roadmap, here are a few things I’ve planned for the nearer future (in no particular order):
- Better profiles with social links and maybe some metrics and maybe you favorite games?
- Steam integration (import your Steam library to get a quicker start)
- Add date and platform for a status (When did you finish a game and on which platform, etc.)
- Follow games for updates
- More languages and automatic translation of reviews in your language
- Upload your own screenshots for a game (Here are some thing I have to check first. Copyright-Stuff costs of hosting these etc. But I’d like to do this)
I have a ton more ideas myself or submitted by you, so I definitely have a lot to do here and I’m really looking forward to start developing these features for you (and me). Questlog is already so much better than I thought it would be thanks to your feedback. And I’m curious what will Questlog look like in exactly one year.
Thank you!
Thank you for your ongoing support and I hope you’ll have fun with Questlog in 2024 too!
If you want to get in touch, the best way to reach me is via Mastodon, which enabled the way Questlog runs currently. The official Questlog-Account is on mstdn.games and my personal profile can be found on corteximplant.com under the name kaiserkiwi.