The game bundle SEGA Mega Drive & Genesis Classics (https://www.igdb.com/games/sega-mega-drive-and-genesis-classics) contains a large amount of games on the webpage, but in the API only one game is returned, sonic:

'fieldsname, url, bundles; where bundles = (80185); limit 50;' https://api-v3.igdb.com/games

[

{

    id: 3192,

    bundles: [

    4157,

    7189,

    20502,

    20621,

    22297,

    46204,

    80185,

    86067,

    96393,

    99953

    ],

    name: Sonic the Hedgehog,

    url: <a rel="nofollow noreferrer" href="https://www.igdb.com/games/sonic-the-hedgehog">https://www.igdb.com/games/sonic-the-hedgehog</a>

}

]

If you pick one of the games listed on the web page as in that bundle that is missing from the API, for example Gain Ground, the web page for Gain Ground says it is available in the following bundles:

Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, Sega Genesis Collection, SEGA Mega Drive & Genesis Classics, SEGA AGES Sonic The Hedgehog

But the API responds that the game appears in the following bundles:

'fields name, url, bundles.name, bundles.url; where name = "Gain Ground";' https://api-v3.igdb.com/games

[

{

    id: 3129,

    bundles: [

    {

        id: 7189,

        name: Sonic\u0027s Ultimate Genesis Collection,

        url: <a rel="nofollow noreferrer" href="https://www.igdb.com/games/sonic-s-ultimate-genesis-collection">https://www.igdb.com/games/sonic-s-ultimate-genesis-collection</a>

    },

    {

        id: 20621,

        name: Sega Genesis Collection,

        url: <a rel="nofollow noreferrer" href="https://www.igdb.com/games/sega-genesis-collection">https://www.igdb.com/games/sega-genesis-collection</a>

    },

    {

        id: 91043,

        name: Duplicate SEGA Genesis Classics,

        url: <a rel="nofollow noreferrer" href="https://www.igdb.com/games/duplicate-sega-genesis-classics">https://www.igdb.com/games/duplicate-sega-genesis-classics</a>

    },

    {

        id: 96393,

        name: SEGA AGES Sonic The Hedgehog,

        url: <a rel="nofollow noreferrer" href="https://www.igdb.com/games/sega-ages-sonic-the-hedgehog">https://www.igdb.com/games/sega-ages-sonic-the-hedgehog</a>

    }

    ],

    name: Gain Ground,

    url: <a rel="nofollow noreferrer" href="https://www.igdb.com/games/gain-ground">https://www.igdb.com/games/gain-ground</a>

}

]

There is the coming soon section which can be filter by platform but there is no way that I can find to see if there are upcoming games for a specific genre. Having the feature will be a nice way to discover upcoming games of a specific genre a person might like which they are not aware of.

Easiest solution I can think of is in advanced search it would be nice if there was a field for "not released" or "coming soon" in the years section. Any game which is not cancelled and is not less than or equal to the current date would be included.

Currently keywords are just a dumping ground for any word or phrase that is somewhat related to a game.

Perhaps what is needed is a re-definition or splitting up of keywords into:

Game mechanics (keywords)
Atmospheric/visual (keywords)
Player character (keywords)
Other/Minor (keywords)

Let's take the "rain" keyword for example. Currently there are 310 games with this keyword assigned. These games feature rain to various degrees for various purposes:

Gameplay: Rain (Game) - a core mechanic where your character is invisible unless they stand in the rain.
Atmospheric: Deadly Premonition - it rains for most of the game, and the raincoat killer only kills when it is raining. The storyline and atmosphere are driven by the rain.
Character: Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 - Rain is the name of a playable character.
Other/Minor: GTA Vice City - it features rain in terms of a weather cycle but it is not a core gameplay mechnic, nor used as an atmospheric/story related tool.

Why the current set-up is a problem:

Example 1: I am a user who liked the rain mechanic in Rain so I check the keyword to see other games that use it as a mechanic: to be given a list of 310 games such as Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, Wario Land 3, God of War, Donkey Kong Country. Most games are irrelevant to me.

Example 2: I am a user who enjoyed the way that rain was used in Deadly Premonition as an atmospheric and story telling device and again I'm given the above list of games.

Currently the games associated with a keyword are overloaded to the point that they are not useful to a user

So essentially, keywords becomes a pot of everything and anything related to a game with no way to distinguish WHAT about a game it refers to. This ambiguosness reduces the ability for these keyword tags to mean anything or be helpful to users.

I understand that is difficult to alter the way keywords are assigned/used but as an idea, during a transitionary period, the current "keyword" attribute and its contents for each game could simply become "Other/Minor Keywords" (so they still exist and are useable, searchable etc.) but at the same time the new keywords attributes (game mechanics, atmospheric, player character etc.) can be added and users encouraged to build them up.

Currently IGDB's release date options don't allow for tracking both a game's initial early access release and the date at which it was declared to be in full release — e.g. Hades was originally released in early access for Windows on 12/6/18 and went into full release for Windows, Mac and Switch on 09/17/20. Currently, there can only be one Windows release date. Not only does this create ambiguity as to which date a page should go with, but ultimately both are valuable information and should be included on the page – there are contexts in which users will want the initial date, there are contexts in which they will want the 1.0 date, and there are contexts in which they will want to compare the two.

If desired, accommodations could be made for additional release date types as well (alpha, beta, multiplayer-only, etc)

This is only a minor pet-peeve and super conditional, but there are times when Titles with the same name are released in the same year. This makes it fairly difficult to differentiate titles from each other when you are adding titles into various lists in the Edit menus. (Bundled Games, Versions, etc.) Most of the time you will see a year of the release in these menus, but there are examples of different versions released in the same year.

I will sometimes add the platform to the title of a game to help this, but this isn't the cleanest look I'll admit. It would possibly help with the cover art was previewed before selection, but I don't readily have a suggestion of what would be a better suggestion for this.

Examples:
- Aladdin (SNES, Genesis)
- Godzilla (over 10 different releases with this name)
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis, Game Gear)
- Columns (Master System, Genesis)