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Unfortunately I can't discover who added those alternatives. Thanks for report it :)

actually it is still not fixed most games have all games as the alternative. for eg angry birds should only have angry birds seasons crush the castle (1 and 2) and demolition dude nut it has a plethora of games.

Then I will inquire further into the matter. Please continue to report these "bad" alternatives.

just noticed this. I am assuming that there is a behind-the-scenes tracker for these sort of cases. I can see how somehow can sabotage the site with this

That's work for Ola!

I did add quite many games as alternative to each other.

Eg, why can't Super Meat Boy be alternative to Angry Birds? They're both sidescroll games. Or Plants vs Zombies as alternative to Left4Dead, they're games involving zombies.

I don't see any rules anywhere about what aspect makes 1 game an alternative to other - is it genre (eg FPS), theme (eg horror), purpose (eg entertainment) or playercount (eg singleplayer) or something else - so I guess we all just gotta use common sense, which I have done.

@Rajliv: So it WAS you. I started suspecting something when the alternatives to Minecraft got weird, right after you submitted a whole bunch of games. ;D

Really, this just highlights the flaws of adding games to AlternativeTo in general. What determines whether a game is an alternative to another? Unlike normal applications, a game doesn't perform one specific function, so how you compare games is really a matter of your opinion.

But seriously, CounterStrike is not an alternative to Minecraft.

/sarcasm

The whole gaming debate is wearing thin. While there are no proper guidelines for submittions, we are working on solutions, and of course, the community trims what isn't welcome, and report/remove suspicious users.

What really makes applications an alternative to each other? There was some confusion when AltTo really started supporting websites. What makes Facebook the alternative to MySpace? Only the social network tag, which includes Twitter, and every other thing vaguely related service.

Games are identified by how they aren't the same as another. Quake is not the same as Call of Duty, except to a complete layman, who aren't usually adding alternatives.

Would you rather complete removal of games, or less emphasis on adding them. If AltTo were to add Film support, what really make one an alternative to another? Anything arty is harder to categorize, and to say what is alternative to any other isn't as simple. The reason the games were spammed with fake alternatives was not that the user didn't understand guidelines, but because they wanted to screw with the system. They could have done the same with any other app. It looks like they didn't. This is no reason to stop supporting a category.

I suspected that you was the "guilty", Rajiv ;) However, it doesn't matter.

In my opinion, two games are alternatives if one is inspired to another one (Ex. Quake and Jake) or if are similar, ie if have in common genre and theme. For example two fps involving zombies are alternatives (Resident Evil and Left4Dead are similar, IMHO).

Imo, CoD is excellent as alternative to Quake because of being FPS and and highly competitive gaming.

I guess you removed it from Quake's alternatives. So I knowingly might have put something random for MineCraft's alternative in return, thinking "every game is an alternative to each other because of the aspect of entertainment" as excuse.

That's just your opinion if you think Quake isn't alternative to CoD. There's also many other real alternatives which I added, according to my experience with games. But you qualified them as "fake" too.

I'd prefer no games. As a gamer, I can say that I really don't care about what alternative there is to my favourite games. There's probably 1000 of other games in that same genre that could be alternatives. Besides that, there's infinite number of games out there, and games are big in filesize because of huge amount of texture graphics, music, videos, whatever. Who can check and say it's not an alternative? And I mean actually checking out the game. You can't decide about games just by reading up on Google about it, there's also custom content.

There's also special platforms (eg PSP, Wii, PC).

If someone needs an alternative, they can check "similiar games" or something like that on some major gaming site (eg IGN, Steam).

Facebook is an alternative to Myspace. I don't think the community has any disagreements about that.

PS. Sorry, if I did cause trouble. I love Alt2 and have contributed as much as possible.

I just think there need for some rules or something especially when it comes to games. Maybe a textbox where user has to type why he thinks some app is alternative to another?

Also the added alternatives should go to app's changelog. So the user who added an alternative could be found.

I try not to add any games anymore... but every action has an reaction, so if you're going to punish me, goodbye.

Rajliv, I guess this was some kind of 'activism', was it? Whatever, it definitely worked!

Usually it takes ages to get comments from all admins on a certain question :D

I don't think anybody is going to 'punish' you. However, I recommend you don't make a habit out of demonstrating shortcomings of the system, or start 'edit wars' because you are upset that sb changed your edits.

That said, back on topic!

What makes a game an alternative to each other? I recommend discussing this with specific examples, e.g. CoD vs Quake. We should agree on a basic strategy in order to avoid edit-wars in the future.

Btw, here is a previous discussion on the topic of 'games on altTo'

http://alternativeto.net/discussions/about-alternativeto/42/pc-game-alterntives

Here another one on a lot of things, and games as well:

http://alternativeto.net/discussions/about-alternativeto/129/what-can-i-add-to-alternativeto

And it doesn't come as a surprise that the last post in the thread was by Rajliv - voicing his concerns about the difficulties of what game is an alternative to what...

:D

Back then we rather ignored the problem than discussing it. Let's see what we do this time ;)

Nexuiz is an alternative to quake there are loads of other alternatives to quake. crush the castle or demolition dude is the alternative to angry birds. hedgewars is an alternative to worms. speed dreams is an alternative to need for speed and flightgear is an alternative to ms flight simulator.

it ain't too hard to understand what is an alternative to what.

We don't want to punish anybody, Rajliv.

On the contrary, I invite you to add other games :)

Maybe a textbox where user has to type why he thinks some app is alternative to another?

Well, for now you can write a comment where you explain because that game is an alternative.

CoD and Quake could be alternatives (I played both), however you have to shoot somebody XD, but I think that CoD is more realistic, since it is a war game, and Quake is like a science fiction movie, since it involves aliens (even if it "contains" soldiers). It is the second aspect: the theme, war vs aliens. IMHO, they are not alternatives!

Anyway there was things like Crash the Castle alternative of Quake and Motorama alternative of WoW: THAT was "a bit" Ridiculus, no? It seemed you saw all games as alternatives.

We have talked about this today and we will set a pretty high priority on fixing a log for adding and removing alternatives so we can tell users who do things wrong how to do it and so on. And logs is always fun ;)

And about games in general

I think games has a place on AlternativeTo. Some perfect examples of this is OpenTDD as an alternative to Transport Tycoon. FreeCiv as an alternative to Civilization.

We also have Tower Defense games like RoboWars and Defense Grid as alternatives to Fieldrunners.

And Alaukik also have a couple of good examples.

But then of course it's harder with games like CoD vs Quake and so on. But i think the most important thing is to remember that just because its the same genre or "Kind of similar" it should not always be an alternative. We rather have much less really accurate alternatives then a whole bunch of "is similar in some aspects".

So basically i do not thing Quake is an alternative to CoD. It's a whole different playing style .. Unreal Tournament is an alternative to quake.

I would call Medal of honor, Battlefield Bad Company an alternative to CoD. But im not a expert in the genre.

And one more thing

Just as Rajliv is saying. Sites like IGN, Gamespot probably does a better job with alternatives on those really big commercial titles. AlternativeTo is here to find obscure Linux alternatives or crazy basement projects like Minecraft and so on. Doesn't say we should not list games like CoD but i think it's better to think like that.

Another trick i use is to think "What do you think a person googling for 'alternatives to Call of Duty' wants to find". Probably not Quake. More likely Medal Of Honor.

Punishments

We are friendly nice people and we do not punish people that we can discuss with.

It's nice that you're nice. So basicly the rule is that alternative has to be from same genre (eg FPS or 3rd-person) and theme (eg horror, realism or sci-fi)?

By the way, is MMO a genre or theme or what? Do they have to be separate? Or, for example, can a realism fps mmo shooter game be an alternative to just a regular realism FPS shooter?

About plugin system

There's also mods for games. I think it'd be nice if you could tick the "plug in/addon" checkbox and choose it's parent game.

For this is suggest renaming the "plug in/addon" box to "part of" or something. Or another button. Another example: Opera Dradonfly (http://alternativeto.net/software/opera-dragonfly/). It is no plug-in or addon, it's a feature of Opera.

And when "part of" displayed as alternatives, you can see them differently and see they're "parent" application. And when the "parent" application's page is viewed, users could see whatever extensions/plug-ins/mods there are for it.

Just an idea.

About categories

There needs to be more categories, eg PSP or whatever for games. Or sub-categories or something. Eg put all the cellphone OS platforms as subcategories to "Mobile".

I actually discovered Minecraft via AltTo, a little before it really hit the big press. I then discovered one of the games that inspired Minecraft, and so on. I wasn't going to Google this, as I wasn't playing Minecraft at the time, but it gave some nice indie games some attention.

AltTo isn't a game website, I realise that, but that isn't to say games don't belong, but we do need to create some structure for them, ie, submission guides.

The Quake vs CoD scenario. Their genre is the same, and they both allow you to shoot each other, but the theme is different, gamestyle, game mechanics, gamespeed even. If Quake is an alternative to CoD, and CoD is alt to CounterStrike, then by proxy, isn't Quake alt to CS? No. Not at all. And fanboys of either would go crazy.

The MMO thing, this is tough. World of Warcraft isn't alt to, say, Oblivion, dispite its similarities. But there are games that are practically the same game, one is MMO, one isn't. But if the the multiplayer is the only true difference, then yes, its an alternative. But I don't expect many of those!

Anyway, it good we got a lot of us together so quickly. Discussion is hard over weeks.

Okay, I got your point already - alternative game has to be from same genre and have same theme.

Hence, Quake isn't alternative to COD, but CS is, right? CS and COD, both FPS shooters and have realism. Also both of them are esport games.

So MP and SP make no difference? Otherwise similiar games can be alternatives to each other even if one is MP and another SP only?

I personally think some SP game can't be alternative to an MP game. Multiplayer is a whole new aspect, and a lot of gamers don't care about single-player games at all. For example, the point of Unreal Tournament games lies in multiplayer. I don't think the fans are interested in some SP sci-fi game as alternative.

What about the mods system I mentioned? I think it could be useful for non-game softwares aswell (not just for mods, but whatever "child" apps).

PS. The post formatting doesn't seem to work well. When I press the "B" button for bold, it just places asterisks in a random place in my post. When I try HTML "b" tags, the post can't be submitted. Using Opera.

@Rajliv: You make words bolded by putting them in between the asterisks. The post editor for AlternativeTo doesn't seem to take HTML stuff.

Anyways, I wish we could just advocate using common sense when submitting game alternatives; unfortunately, everybody's common sense is different. :P

Haha, that's the problem with common sense ;)

But i want to say this again. I think the most important thing is to really think alternatives to game through before you submit an alternative. Less is more.

Ps. And i should add some kind of help about the formatting here.

I've been trying to do some clean up amongst the game today but it's kind of chaotic. I almost feel like removing all alternatives to all games or something and start again. But well .. hopefully we wont come to that.

I think we came to pretty good conclusions here and it would be awesome if you guys could help out and remove games. I really think it's better to have few alternatives that is good then many that is "kind of alternatives".

* For example Unreal Tournament* It's a arena-sport-action shooter in kind of the same fashion as Quake, Team Fortress. It's not an alternative to more simulation type games like Modern Warfare, Battlefield and Counter Strike. Of course you can make the argument that they are simular on some levels. But that is not the point.

And Half Life .. This is mainly a Single player game and alternatives should be games like Bioshock and other story driven single player games. Maybe we should split for example Modern Warfare in one "multiplayer" version and one single player version?

And Civilization .. For example Age of Empires should not be an alternative to Civ. Maybe Alpha Centurion, Colonization and so on?

Games should be listed as series if they not change dramatically in game play Now we have 3 different versions of Unreal Tournament. I really thing we should just have "Unreal Tournament (series)".

And again .. We want games listing to be able to give android user alternatives to popular iPhone games, to give people free alternatives to popular commercial games. We do not have to have every single FPS, RTS and so on. We should have games that fit our forum. My favorite examples are FreeCiv, OpenTDD, RoboDefense to Fieldrunner and so on and so on.

We really hope we can communicate our thoughts about games. And please help us keep the alternatives good and narrow!

Future plans .. We have some thoughts and we will try to build some features to support the game category in a better way in the future. We do not know when and how we are going to prioritize it but we will communicate our plans the best we can :)

UT definately isn't alternative to TF. Atleast not for TF2. TF2 is a Steam game, you have classes, hats, and whatever usual Steam-game nonsense in it. It also looks cartoony, so I'd rather put it as alternative to Warsow or something. UT however doesn't require Steam and is not protected with any kind of extra DRM than cdkey. It's also a game that has a high learning curve, unlike most of the games these days (eg CoD). Unlike TF, UT is also heavily sci-fi. TF2 characters, environments and everything seem to look a bit too "human" and non-futuristic. In UT a lot of action takes place in deep space and you have tons of sci-fi chars like aliens, cyborgs, etc. Some alts for UT: Tremulous, Cube, Quake, Cube, Cube 2, AssaultCube (freeware examples, since you seem to like free games).

Oh, and listing games as "series" is a bad idea. While people might like UT2004, we all know UT3 was a epic fail. So I wouldn't be able to click "like" button because the whole series is not great. There can be also differences in games in series. Eg, main gametypes currently in UT2k4: vctf, invasion, realism/sniper gametypes, trials, igib, racing. Many of those aren't even in UT3. Or eg there's no vehicles in UT99, unlike 2k4 and 3.

Listing game's mp/sp separately: I don't see the point - just because it will overcomplicate things. Most of the mp games have some sort of single-player mode.

Just my opinions...

Ok :)

You sound like a pro on the subject. My main point is to has as narrow alternatives as possible.

But i don't understand why the fact that you can play the game through Steam, and the DRM stuff should make a difference? In my opinion gameplay, gametype and so on should be the only factors?

As I said that those were just my opinions, there's probably a lot of people who don't think so. :p

Yeah you're right, DRM and game platform (eg Steam) stuff would be probably too narrowing. But that's why I brought out other differences.

TL;DR: do whatever it takes to make it easier for people to find alternatives to %q

Another trick I use is to think "What do you think a person googling for 'alternatives to Call of Duty' wants to find". Probably not Quake. More likely Medal Of Honor.

Agreed, it may be the most common use case. Maybe such recommendations or even direct questions should be presented to user when they add alternatives?

For this is suggest renaming the "plug in/addon" box to "part of" or something. Or another button. Another example: Opera Dradonfly (http://alternativeto.net/software/opera-dragonfly/). It is no plug-in or addon, it's a feature of Opera.

"Part of" is a good idea, but plugins are not "part of" and maybe that should be emphasized.

"Game (series)": I, personally, dislike idea. Some games are very different and likes would be different for them too. And one searching for alternative to X may be not aware of X2, which is very strong argument, I suppose.

Steam: it is a distribution platform. It matters about as much as PSP vs XBox and Open-Source vs Freeware. Why would one care about game being open source? And still some people care about that.

DRM, for some people is show-stopper

More categories/subcategories - this is an issue that should be addressed in some way, i think

On genres and "is X alt. to Y?": I think, users should have some way to put restriction on tags, then there would be more use cases. I think, that every pair of alternatives is connected via tags. So [Colonization * Civilization = Sid Meier, 4X, Isometric, Historical, Game].

It is really semantic graphs problem, folksonomy will not do it as good, but still. We need at least something now. But if we will do it differently, it would be possible to query something very specific, like "3D-Action with RPG elements and high replayability which I could play with my 2 friends", heh.

Or we could try to reach consensus on every bit. And have some holywars too =) Maybe some kind of weighting of similarity, based on how many people think those two games are similar. Or even better - make some game, like google's image tagging game (google it, I won't be able to describe it as good now). Some kind of relevancy rank, based on how much people switch from one thing to another or (Also, I think those two are different use cases. If I used product, I usually more inclined toward more similar, narrow alternatives)

BTW, looking at Hunch, I could say that not only game properties make one game/software alternative to another, but people make those connections too, even if genre etc is different. It's more of correlation thing, bottom-up, rather than up-down.