leafo
commented
7 years ago All the example collections you gave had something to do with the tool being used. I have a work in progress project to fill out our database with all game development tools. This would then let our regular browse page be using for filtering by the tool used. I think this might be a better use case for what you're trying to accomplish.
This tool feature would also come with some other things as well, such as a dedicated page for your tool on our top level site. Any one would be able to register a tool as well.
Tell me if you're interested in this, I'd like to get it out sometime soon.
Regarding auto collections, I think it's best for someone's own script using our API. I would say it's a more advanced feature, and building a user interface for it would be non-trivial so it's best to let someone just run their own script to do it. We would need a public API for adding things to a collection, then the RSS feeds provided by the browse pages could be used someone's script to crawl games for new content.
ilexp
TangentFoxy
Summary
Collections currently seem to be 100% curated with a specific owner and a list of contributors. It would be nice if there was a way to semi-automate the inclusion of games in a collection, in addition to manually added games.
Analysis
A few notes by someone who has absolutely no idea about any of itch.io internals or design philosophy. Just making some guesses and hoping that some of them might be useful.
Technical
User Experience
Examples
Notes on potential usage scenarios for a feature like this.
From my side
I maintain the collection Duality Games to include games that are made with the Duality engine. Some of them are tagged with "Duality" and having some sort of auto-add functionality would allow users to add themselves to the second part of that collection, which I could then review and decide to either feature as a permanent item or not. Until I get around to do that, or when I decide not to take action, others could still find those games using the list. Given the low number of games to manage, this feature is by no means necessary or critical, but I figured it might be helpful in similar cases and also help open up collections that are aimed to be open in the first place.
In general
Other collections with a very similar use case are Projects using Kenney assets and Games with public source code made with Superpowers, to name two that randomly popped up in my "related collections" feed on the game browser.
There could also be lots of other examples that could benefit from a "smart collection" like feature that is half curated and half automatically filtered / searched - like a genre-specific list of games that is open to automatic additions for matching games, but also includes a curated subset of games that have been reviewed, rated and commented by owners and contributors. It could then act as a starting point for users who are looking for the specific kind of game that matches the collection.