Zenning
09-03-2005, 03:14 AM
When I see that online stores like Amazon.com offer recommendations wizards for their products, I believe it'd be a good idea if game music online stores would, too.
Game Music Online (GMO) does have a recommendations wizard, but it doesn't work particularly well.
An example? Do a search for Final Fantasy X Original Soundtrack, and look for the section that says, "Customers who bought this item also bought:"
and what do you see under that section? "Legend of Zelda ~ Ocarina of Time, OneUps Volume 1, Final Fantasy IX Original Soundtrack."
Final Fantasy IX Original Soundtrack is only there because people who like the Final Fantasy series are going to pick soundtracks from the same series. The only other two are there because someone happened to pick them up along with the Final Fantasy X Original Soundtrack.
If you're going to have a recommendations wizard, the items that should be related are items obviously by the same composer, but should also try relating items of similar style, that you otherwise wouldn't look at.
I mean, that's the purpose of recommendations wizard, is to say, "if you like this, you'll probably like this, too," right?
If customers had a little questionaire to fill out when they buy an item, with questions like, "what other works do you find to be similar to this item?" then matches made by a recommendations wizard would make more sense.
Then, for example, I'd actually get Gradius V and Chaos Field when looking for works similar to Einhander. (Can you tell what relates these three works? That's right, they could all be filed under the genre "trance" together!)
Having good recommendations wizards would make shopping much more pleasant, and allow me to find things that I'd otherwise never find, that cater to my personal tastes.
Game Music Online (GMO) does have a recommendations wizard, but it doesn't work particularly well.
An example? Do a search for Final Fantasy X Original Soundtrack, and look for the section that says, "Customers who bought this item also bought:"
and what do you see under that section? "Legend of Zelda ~ Ocarina of Time, OneUps Volume 1, Final Fantasy IX Original Soundtrack."
Final Fantasy IX Original Soundtrack is only there because people who like the Final Fantasy series are going to pick soundtracks from the same series. The only other two are there because someone happened to pick them up along with the Final Fantasy X Original Soundtrack.
If you're going to have a recommendations wizard, the items that should be related are items obviously by the same composer, but should also try relating items of similar style, that you otherwise wouldn't look at.
I mean, that's the purpose of recommendations wizard, is to say, "if you like this, you'll probably like this, too," right?
If customers had a little questionaire to fill out when they buy an item, with questions like, "what other works do you find to be similar to this item?" then matches made by a recommendations wizard would make more sense.
Then, for example, I'd actually get Gradius V and Chaos Field when looking for works similar to Einhander. (Can you tell what relates these three works? That's right, they could all be filed under the genre "trance" together!)
Having good recommendations wizards would make shopping much more pleasant, and allow me to find things that I'd otherwise never find, that cater to my personal tastes.