A member on Reddit by the name of BugNinja has brought to light an issue that’s fast becoming a problem on the Android Market and is asking users everywhere to help.
The problem? Apparently the Android Market place is in bad need of better and more app categories for gaming apps. As gaming becomes bigger and bigger on the Android platform, its time for the categories list to expand as well. The current small list of genres is causing some Android developers to miscategorize their apps. This is actually making it generally difficult to stumble upon new and great games when browsing through the Market by your favorite categories. I’ve experienced this firsthand while trying to browse through the Market for RPG’s and noticed a complete absence of the category altogether.
So what’s the good news? Well, a Google employee has already responded and acknowledged the issue but- if we can make more of a ruckus, I think we can make it a bigger priority to Google’s Android Market team.
What can you do to help? Simply hit up the link supplied here, and chime in by leaving a comment that you feel like this is an issue that needs to be addressed. If we can’t make the world a better place, lets at least start with the Android Market.
Andro-bots…. roll out.
[Via Reddit]
Let’s do this.
Did anybody else notice that the Market got updated recently and now has Content Filtering in the settings menu?
I didn’t but cool to know… thnx
Unfortunately, it only allows you to filter based on age group. Still no customizable filtering or filtering by dev or star rating.
Yeah, maybe with the newer version that is coming in a few weeks.
Android market is getting a big update very soon. Check out this Google I/O session:
http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions/android-market-for-developers.html
I don’t remember them mentioning anything about new categories though. This is a good initiative.
If they’d improve search and add tags I wouldn’t care what kind of categories they had for browsing.
Tagging is more-or-less categorization. The problem is that devs will tag their apps with anything just to get noticed. I see some devs listing names of popular games in their descriptions just to come up in searches when people search for other popular titles.
Thanks for the lead. I added my contribution to the Google forum.
You’re a good man! Thanks for your time =)
I don’t think games are the only place in the market where this is a problem.
How about some sorting and filtering options?
Agreed. Would love to filter out anything with the words “fart” “soundboard” or “japanese school girls”
Wow, thank you so much for linking to my Reddit thread / Tech forum thread!!! A post from you guys is like a tidal wave of support. Amazing!
You are VERY welcome. Thanks for trying to make a difference =)
It is nice Google employees (well one anyway) are now responding in the Market forum but I think it is a little optimistic to read too much into it. Then again I’m not exactly an optimistic guy at the best of times. Maybe the times are a changing. Maybe.