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About the QBasic Games Directory
The main objective of the QBasic Games Directory is to collect, archive and offer to public all worthy QBasic games. Worthy is a rather clumsy term but I'm trying to avoid the word "all" since trying to archive all the QBasic games ever made would be a foolish. First of all, it's an impossible task. Many QBasic games were never made public or were on the Internet for couple of months before some site went down with it. Second of all, the number of unworthy, unplayable, difficult to start and absolutely terrible QBasic games is staggering and archiving them would mean disrespecting mine and your free time, in case you decide to download some of these game. Also, it would mean decreasing the overall quality of the QBasic games in the directory and giving a bad image of QBasic games.
The QBasic Games Directory is primary meant to host and archive GAMES not DEMOS but does feature some demos. Why the directory is not quite opened to demos is because of the same reasons why a large number of bad games will never be included. Many of demos are nothing but a game engine showcase and are unplayable. They don't feature any progress and don't result in a rewarding experience. And often, many of them are uncompiled and difficult to start. One group of demos that are included are the ones that feature something special in any perspective. A great game engine, spectacular graphic, etc. Second group of demos that are included are the ones that basically work as a complete game. The are playable but lack some feature which the designer originally imagined. A demo that features one episode out of three or something like that. The most important is that the game engine has to be finished. The perfect example for such kind of demo is Lost 2. If features one episode out of three planned. The game engine is finished. The game has challenge, beginning and the end. Gaia is another example. It does feature one level but offers more than many finished QBasic games.
If QBasic Games Directory has goals that would be preserving QBasic games and popularizing them. The second is probably a more difficult task but the survival of this site does not depend on activity. This site will be online as long as I can host it or I'm able to find someone to host it. QBasic Games Directory is about QBasic games not about someone's vanity. ;)
Why the QBasic Games Directory?
The biggest motivator for creation of this directory was the arrival of FreeBASIC, a 32-bit BASIC compiler around November of 2004. The majority of people in the QBasic community were switching to FreeBASIC over night, abandoning their QBasic projects and sites and turning them into FreeBASIC projects and sites. The situation in the QBasic community wasn't bright even before the arrival of FreeBASIC with VPlanet, a great QBasic games reviewing site, being in re-construction for months and with QB45.com not being updated for years. The situation did change in the middle of 2005 to better but the fact remained that QBasic will become less and less popular and hosting QBasic games less and less interesting to people. Anyway, an all-encompassing QBasic games database was always something that was missing in the community. A history of the QBasic game design scene had to be archived and written down. QBasic game design scene was always something special and unique in the programming world. Never such a tight community involved around a single programming language existed.
The second motivator is my wish to popularize playing of QBasic games. There are many prejudices about QBasic games and without a site that tries to introduce them to a broader public this will never change. And it's not a secret that playing QBasic games even in the very QBasic community was/is not a very popular sport. The prevailing number of people in the community were always the game designers(or game designer wannabes) and game designers are always more interested in their own baby(project) than in anything else. No harm in trying to change this.
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