Anthology of the Killer - Excessively Granular Categories
Anthology of the Killer (2024) (PC/Steam) is, to my mind, a single game that is divided into 10 chapters and a bonus chapter. However, if one attempts to set their stream category to "Anthology of the Killer" one will rapidly discover that the category does not exist. The game is on IGDB but it is classified as a "Bundle." The names of the 10 individual chapters within the game are the available "categories" as they exist on Twitch. This is a deeply unhelpful level of atomization that genuinely makes no sense from any perspective.
To begin with, is Anthology of the Killer actually a "bundle" and what does that really mean from the IGDB perspective? The individual chapters, Voice of the Killer, Hand of the Killer, etc have never---at least in as far as I can tell--been released as individual games on Steam nor have they been released individually on Itch.io. If one wishes to play them, then one must purchase and run ONE (1) single game: Anthology of the Killer.
The individual chapters are accessed within the auspices of the game itself. We don't atomize Quake 1 into separate Twitch categories for Dimension of the Doomed, The Realm of Black Magic, The Netherworld, and The Elder World. Moreover, those separate episodes of Quake are all accessed from within Quake itself. All of Anthology of the Killer's episodes are accessed from within Anthology of the Killer. So why that double standard?
Furthermore, that level of categorical atomization (or perhaps Balkanization) is deeply unhelpful for the user experience. Many streamers who are more concerned with engagement than metadata are already loath to stream outside of larger categories such as Retro because it potentially hurts their reach. Having a single game split up into 10 separate categories certainly does nothing for those folks.
Yet it's worse for metadata people (which is to say people like me) who DO like to stream in the game-specific category for the game they're playing. Now I have to do a bunch of pointless book-keeping at a minimum of every 15 minutes if I want my categorical metadata to remain accurate even though I'm playing the same game I was playing 15 minutes ago.
It doesn't help anyone who might potentially want to follow Anthology of the Killer as a category. Instead of following one category for the game they're suddenly burdened with following 10 categories. This probably counts against their follow limit, which is also no good at all.
The only reason I can assume that someone did this is that each chapter in Anthology of the Killer is accompanied by a movie poster representing the chapter. These posters happen to be formatted in such a way that they make theoretically interesting category cover images on Twitch. I say "theoretically" because in truth the posters don't visually parse when reduced to the size of a postage stamp. This is an example of aesthetics over practicality where even the aesthetic goal doesn't bear out in the end product.
Whether or not Anthology of the Killer remains classified on IGDB as a "bundle" (and I question whether that state of affairs should remain as is; it probably shouldn't but I'm hesitant to be the one to change it), it should be turned into a single category on Twitch. Having it split up into 10 separate categories with no obvious interrelation to each other is terribly unhelpful for users trying to find streamers playing the game, irritating for streamers attempting to stream in the category (categories--plural--at this juncture), awful for metadata overcomplication, misrepresents the structure of the game itself, and is a nightmare to deal with all around.
The situation must be amended; it should all be rolled up into a single "Anthology of the Killer" category even if a special exception must be made within the IGDB -> Twitch uptake system. The present state of the matter is wholly untenable with nothing whatsoever to commend it.
MasterBismuth
shared this idea
-
Antaeus000
commented
Funny thing is, following how Twitch is doing this you'd think that Quake (Shareware) or Doom (Shareware) would be categories but they're not.
-
MasterBismuth
commented
I have, since posting this, learned that these games are, in fact, available as nine (9) individual games on GameJolt under the @garmentdistrict account’s offerings. I had unfortunately failed to account for this fact. However, even on GameJolt all 9 (but not the bonus, and this represents a critical point) are available wrapped up in a single game, which is Anthology of the Killer. Making Anthology of the Killer available as a Twitch category, though not to the exclusion of the individual games, would still represent a saner data management and categorization practice. I remain steadfast in this assertion.
The singular bundle, Anthology of the Killer, represents the game in its ultimate and final form. It is a single narrative of which each individual game represents a single chapter in that continuous narrative.
Even an anthologized book has its own ISBN number to which one must refer in one sense or another to purchase said book. Such a book might have its own forward or even stories that have never been individually published. Anthology of the Killer represents such an arrangement in and of itself.
Furthermore, I had the count wrong in my first post. There are 10 total episodes/chapters in Anthology. Nine of those are represented on Game Jolt along with the Anthology, which is to say that the 10th chapter, Bonus Rooms, represents content that is only available within the auspices of the combined Anthology of the Killer executable.
Without being able to stream in a proper Anthology of the Killer there is no way to categorically represent a stream intending to undertake that specific chapter in the series, which represents a rather dire oversight in choosing to exclude the Anthology from categorization.
Thus, despite my misapprehension of certain facts in my original posting, I believe that there is still value to provide in offering Anthology of the Killer as its own category on Twitch proper.
Prior to understanding these facts I might have argued that the individual chapters should be decategorized but I would now argue that this would be detrimental and amount to a destruction of useful metadata.
In conclusion, Anthology of the Killer should be its own category that streamers and users may select in addition to the individual _ of the Killer chapters.