One of the main recurring criticisms of MobyGames - despite all its
serious flaws in other parts of their data model - is the naming of the
game entries. As MobyGames is, and always has been, a US project, every
game is only accepted into the database using its US release title as the "main title".
Missing that, a release title of other English-speaking countries is
accepted, and only if there's no English title available, the original
title of release is allowed, regardless of origin. When a main title is
found for the game, every other title is only accepted into the database
as an "alternative title".
There's
one big problem with this approach. It may well be that the rest of the
world doesn't care one bit about the US release title of a game.
Imagine a Japanese player browsing MobyGames, only to find the fourth entry of the Final Fantasy series listed as "Final Fantasy II",
just because it was the second FF game released in the US. There must
be a better way to do this, so, let's conduct some research about how
other game sites are approaching this issue, and allow me to introduce
you to the planned Oregami solution. For reference, I will always link
Final Fantasy IV as an example game.
