Replacement IFDB recommendation algorithm

General IF Community Resources
41

OK, I had some inspiration and updated the scoring model to do as best as it can to incorporate information from tags. The update changes the output, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s an improvement.

Since Victor has (more or less) volunteered to be a guinea pig, here’s a new-and-improved recommendation list (now with more entries):

top 100 recommendations 
+----------------------------------------------------------+-------------+
| title                                                    | MODEL_SCORE |
+----------------------------------------------------------+-------------+
| Counterfeit Monkey                                       |    143.0130 |
| Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom                          |     96.3102 |
| Midnight. Swordfight.                                    |     90.6840 |
| The Wizard Sniffer                                       |     90.3440 |
| Lost Pig                                                 |     88.4620 |
| Blue Lacuna                                              |     85.4540 |
| Coloratura                                               |     83.4651 |
| According to Cain                                        |     81.3200 |
| Toby's Nose                                              |     80.6778 |
| Inside the Facility                                      |     80.0299 |
| Cannery Vale                                             |     79.9992 |
| Hadean Lands                                             |     78.2000 |
| Photopia                                                 |     76.5000 |
| Violet                                                   |     74.8008 |
| With Those We Love Alive                                 |     73.5660 |
| Foo Foo                                                  |     73.1510 |
| Shade                                                    |     69.9804 |
| Alias 'The Magpie'                                       |     69.8176 |
| 1893: A World's Fair Mystery                             |     68.0000 |
| Cragne Manor                                             |     66.2662 |
| Bogeyman                                                 |     66.2099 |
| Detectiveland                                            |     61.5000 |
| Galatea                                                  |     61.3815 |
| Worlds Apart                                             |     61.3536 |
| A Beauty Cold and Austere                                |     61.1996 |
| Curses                                                   |     60.0000 |
| Birdland                                                 |     59.9998 |
| The Gostak                                               |     59.9494 |
| How Prince Quisborne the Feckless Shook His Title        |     59.5829 |
| robotsexpartymurder                                      |     59.5000 |
| Zozzled                                                  |     58.8966 |
| The Wand                                                 |     58.6488 |
| Even Some More Tales from Castle Balderstone             |     58.5000 |
| Vespers                                                  |     57.1116 |
| Trinity                                                  |     56.6423 |
| Repeat the Ending                                        |     56.5716 |
| Sub Rosa                                                 |     56.1600 |
| Rameses                                                  |     56.0000 |
| Taco Fiction                                             |     55.7592 |
| A Mind Forever Voyaging                                  |     55.6569 |
| Trigaea                                                  |     54.0000 |
| Bronze                                                   |     53.9864 |
| Delightful Wallpaper                                     |     53.5288 |
| A Long Way to the Nearest Star                           |     53.4000 |
| Fallacy of Dawn                                          |     53.1432 |
| Endless, Nameless                                        |     53.0328 |
| Brain Guzzlers from Beyond!                              |     52.7228 |
| And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One |     52.1148 |
| 4x4 Archipelago                                          |     52.0003 |
| Exhibition                                               |     52.0000 |
| Grimnoir                                                 |     51.9996 |
| Varicella                                                |     51.6000 |
| SPY INTRIGUE                                             |     51.5004 |
| HUNTING UNICORN                                          |     51.0000 |
| Worldsmith                                               |     51.0000 |
| Wishbringer                                              |     49.6668 |
| The Impossible Bottle                                    |     49.3658 |
| Skies Above                                              |     48.8568 |
| Andromeda Apocalypse — Extended Edition                  |     48.6312 |
| Three-Card Trick                                         |     48.5712 |
| Six                                                      |     48.5220 |
| Hunger Daemon                                            |     48.3756 |
| Absence of Law                                           |     48.2306 |
| Sorcery! 4                                               |     48.0000 |
| Chuk and the Arena                                       |     47.3847 |
| Weird City Interloper                                    |     47.1933 |
| Cryptozookeeper                                          |     46.9337 |
| The Edifice                                              |     46.7364 |
| Harmonia                                                 |     46.2649 |
| Will Not Let Me Go                                       |     46.2500 |
| Sorcery! 3                                               |     46.0000 |
| What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed                       |     45.9415 |
| The Little Match Girl 3: The Escalus Manifold            |     45.5560 |
| Sunset Over Savannah                                     |     45.3750 |
| Open Sorcery                                             |     45.0000 |
| Charming                                                 |     44.9163 |
| The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy                     |     44.3663 |
| Overboard!                                               |     44.2860 |
| A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things                         |     44.0000 |
| 1 4 the $                                                |     44.0000 |
| Known Unknowns                                           |     43.8710 |
| The Elysium Enigma                                       |     43.6205 |
| Rogue of the Multiverse                                  |     43.2146 |
| Grooverland                                              |     43.1250 |
| Erstwhile                                                |     42.8130 |
| Tavern Crawler                                           |     41.9050 |
| Illuminismo Iniziato                                     |     41.7650 |
| CYBERQUEEN                                               |     41.5380 |
| Trouble in Sector 471                                    |     41.5000 |
| Black Knife Dungeon                                      |     40.9090 |
| Scroll Thief                                             |     40.9090 |
| The Master of the Land                                   |     40.7690 |
| What Fuwa Bansaku Found                                  |     40.7140 |
| Suspended                                                |     40.6670 |
| Dr Ludwig and the Devil                                  |     39.8079 |
| Of Their Shadows Deep                                    |     39.6000 |
| Scavenger                                                |     39.4440 |
| Robin & Orchid                                           |     39.4120 |
| Heretic's Hope                                           |     38.9997 |
| A Rope of Chalk                                          |     38.0457 |
+----------------------------------------------------------+-------------+

@VictorGijsbers, since you said that a lot of these would be games you have played but not rated, the hit rate on the above list is actually a good test. How much did you actually like the games on the list that you’ve played? (I would think that Treasures of a Slaver’s Kingdom would be the kind of game you would like, given Kerkerkruip and Turandot, and that comes in at #2. I’m pretty sure that all models based on existing data will insist that everyone will love Counterfeit Monkey.)

Does anyone else want to try?

I would like to try to do something similar by correlating review agreements, but the user field in that data is missing from the backups for some reason.

1 Like
42

@DeusIrae, same question for you as for Victor:

top 100 recommendations 
+----------------------------------------------------------+-------------+
| title                                                    | MODEL_SCORE |
+----------------------------------------------------------+-------------+
| The Wizard Sniffer                                       |    110.1816 |
| Eat Me                                                   |    103.1297 |
| Toby's Nose                                              |    102.5133 |
| Counterfeit Monkey                                       |    102.5002 |
| Coloratura                                               |     91.8760 |
| Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom                          |     90.9283 |
| Cannery Vale                                             |     84.0009 |
| Midnight. Swordfight.                                    |     83.4651 |
| Anchorhead                                               |     80.5266 |
| Superluminal Vagrant Twin                                |     80.4996 |
| Alias 'The Magpie'                                       |     80.4384 |
| Photopia                                                 |     79.0400 |
| Birdland                                                 |     78.8112 |
| Detectiveland                                            |     73.5660 |
| Foo Foo                                                  |     73.4638 |
| Lost Pig                                                 |     73.3125 |
| Six                                                      |     70.8339 |
| Hadean Lands                                             |     70.3845 |
| Never Gives Up Her Dead                                  |     70.0000 |
| Aotearoa                                                 |     69.6464 |
| Savoir-Faire                                             |     69.2850 |
| Inside the Facility                                      |     69.1200 |
| Violet                                                   |     67.6368 |
| With Those We Love Alive                                 |     66.9088 |
| Zozzled                                                  |     66.3465 |
| Hunger Daemon                                            |     66.2864 |
| Turandot                                                 |     65.8065 |
| Even Some More Tales from Castle Balderstone             |     64.9995 |
| Taco Fiction                                             |     64.5520 |
| Galatea                                                  |     64.2855 |
| SPY INTRIGUE                                             |     63.9480 |
| Suveh Nux                                                |     61.8180 |
| Brain Guzzlers from Beyond!                              |     61.1535 |
| And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One |     60.4548 |
| Alabaster                                                |     59.6848 |
| Vespers                                                  |     59.3600 |
| Worlds Apart                                             |     59.0915 |
| A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things                         |     58.3338 |
| Kaged                                                    |     58.1532 |
| The Wand                                                 |     57.7200 |
| Plundered Hearts                                         |     57.4284 |
| Blue Lacuna                                              |     56.8750 |
| Kerkerkruip                                              |     56.8232 |
| Bogeyman                                                 |     56.7364 |
| A Beauty Cold and Austere                                |     56.5877 |
| Color the Truth                                          |     56.5180 |
| 1 4 the $                                                |     56.3329 |
| The King of Shreds and Patches                           |     56.0625 |
| The Edifice                                              |     56.0000 |
| Rameses                                                  |     55.3336 |
| Open Sorcery                                             |     55.0908 |
| robotsexpartymurder                                      |     55.0004 |
| Repeat the Ending                                        |     54.9468 |
| Bronze                                                   |     54.9354 |
| Death off the Cuff                                       |     54.9234 |
| Andromeda Apocalypse — Extended Edition                  |     54.8886 |
| Jacqueline, Jungle Queen!                                |     54.6000 |
| Gun Mute                                                 |     54.2412 |
| Junior Arithmancer                                       |     53.5716 |
| Spider and Web                                           |     53.3028 |
| Sub Rosa                                                 |     53.0829 |
| Skies Above                                              |     52.8671 |
| Endless, Nameless                                        |     52.6668 |
| Chuk and the Arena                                       |     52.5000 |
| 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds                   |     52.4199 |
| 1893: A World's Fair Mystery                             |     52.0000 |
| Worldsmith                                               |     51.9996 |
| Absence of Law                                           |     51.8400 |
| Will Not Let Me Go                                       |     51.7913 |
| Known Unknowns                                           |     50.8572 |
| The Libonotus Cup                                        |     50.7696 |
| Three-Card Trick                                         |     50.7416 |
| Shuffling Around                                         |     50.4000 |
| Trigaea                                                  |     50.2854 |
| howling dogs                                             |     49.9200 |
| A Mind Forever Voyaging                                  |     49.5000 |
| CYBERQUEEN                                               |     49.0908 |
| Blue Chairs                                              |     49.0908 |
| For a Change                                             |     48.8568 |
| Illuminismo Iniziato                                     |     48.5298 |
| Grimnoir                                                 |     48.2306 |
| HUNTING UNICORN                                          |     48.1250 |
| Seedship                                                 |     48.0000 |
| Exhibition                                               |     48.0000 |
| 4x4 Galaxy                                               |     48.0000 |
| All Things Devours                                       |     47.6663 |
| What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed                       |     47.3000 |
| Several Other Tales from Castle Balderstone              |     47.3000 |
| Lydia's Heart                                            |     47.1430 |
| You Will Select a Decision                               |     47.0558 |
| Pogoman GO!                                              |     46.9092 |
| Aisle                                                    |     46.8000 |
| De Baron                                                 |     46.5883 |
| Floatpoint                                               |     46.5388 |
| Heretic's Hope                                           |     46.3573 |
| Overboard!                                               |     46.0000 |
| Babel                                                    |     45.9129 |
| The Little Match Girl 3: The Escalus Manifold            |     45.5560 |
| She's Got a Thing for a Spring                           |     45.2221 |
| The Fire Tower                                           |     44.9163 |
+----------------------------------------------------------+-------------+
2 Likes
43

Share the code?

1 Like
44

There’s nothing to share yet; it’s just a prototype of dubious demonstrated value.

Is there a place where I could get the reviewvotes table with userid field included?

45

Looking at the code together is how we could turn your prototype into something of value! It couldn’t hurt to share what you do have, right?

The reviewvotes are private; they’re scrubbed from the public backup of IFDB on IF Archive.

1 Like
46

If you’re able to run it for someone who had one IFDB rating earlier this morning and now has 74, I’d love to see both versions of the recommendations for me!

47

Therse look pretty good; it’s still like 75% stuff I’ve played and haven’t rated/reviewed (Wizard Sniffer, Coloratura, Treasures, Anchorhead, Magpie, Photopia…), but reading down the ones I haven’t played the top 15 list is:

Eat Me
Toby’s Nose
Counterfeit Monkey
Cannery Vale
Midnight. Swordfight.
Superluminal Vagrant Twin
Birdland
Detectiveland
Foo Foo
Aotearoa
With Those We Love Alive
Even Some More Tales from Castle Balderstone
SPY INTRIGUE
Blue Lacuna
Bogeyman

And if you were to have just asked me “what’s on top of your to-play list outside of keeping up with the events/Comps”, I would probably have listed Counterfeit Monkey, checking out some of the Chandler Groover games I’ve missed, and SPY Intrigue (with SVT rising up there after having played and enjoyed C.E.J. Pacian’s game in this year’s Comp).

I’m honestly a little surprised there’s not more choice-based stuff on there, given that I probably play more choice-based than parser at this point, and I think I rate them mostly comparably (…that would be an interesting project to undertake), but that could just reflect that older, higher-ranked games on IFDB tend to be more on the parser side of things.

2 Likes
48

It wouldn’t work; I’m using backup data from late July, so your new ratings wouldn’t be taken into account.

I’ll look again after a new backup is posted.

2 Likes
49

Maybe that’s a good thing? How often did you like the ones that you’ve already played?

(Also, people on this thread might want to try out the “Magic 8-Ball”.)

2 Likes
50

Generally pretty good, some of those games are my favorites (Photopia, Hadean Lands, Magpie) and most of the rest are very high up there too!

51

Many thanks!

52

This recommendation thing reminded me: have you played Hallowmoor by Mike Snyder?

It’s great material for your research into the Russovian Synthesis.

Hallowmoor - Details (ifdb.org)

1 Like
53

No, I haven’t, so thanks for flagging – looks fun, and I seem to recall enjoying other of Mike Snyder’s games (and God knows us Mikes in IF need to support each other, there are so few of us).

4 Likes
54

Yeah, but maybe you guys are like Highlanders and “there can only be one”.

I’m glad I’m not a Mike. I’d be constantly looking over my shoulder for other Mike’s trying to take my power. Good luck with that, Mike!

Time of the gathering!

2 Likes
55

That’s funny, I originally decided to rate every game I’d play just so the old algorithm could recommend me better stuff.

4 Likes
56

It occurred to me that, even more than a “recommended for you” algorithm, I’d love to see someone (perhaps @otistdog) take a crack at a “similar games” algorithm that generates anything remotely reasonable.

An algorithm like that would certainly be useful, and, if we had it, it would be trivial to generate recommendations for a user: we’d present a list of games that are similar to games that the user had rated highly.

EDIT: He did!

2 Likes
57

Folks here might enjoy this search for games they haven’t reviewed, rated, played, wishlisted, or unwishlisted (“I’m not interested”). It’s basically a list of “new to you” games, sorted by highest rating.

https://ifdb.org/search?searchbar=played%3Ano+willplay%3Ano+wontplay%3Ano+reviewed%3Ano+rated%3Ano

2 Likes