We started it a year ago, November 2016. We launched a semi-closed alpha
‘Inspired’ is not the right word here, we were kind of frustrated to be honest. :-) You see, we all know places to go when you want some good recommendations in media & entertainment industries. Books have Goodreads (Bookmate, and others), movies have IMDb (and many other services), music has Spotify… But when it comes to games, there are no cross-platform recommendation services. Of course, Steam, PSN, and other stores/platforms have this ‘You might also like’ feature, but they obviously don't know your preferences on other platforms, but even if they did, it is hard to imagine Steam recommending you a game for Nintendo Switch. So our major goal is to build a cross-platform recommendation system for games that will take into account your gaming experience across different platforms/devices (and, by the way, according to various reports, more than 3/4 gamers play more than two devices). But to solve this problem, we had to create a launch pad first – the base built with data. So we set out to create a cross-platform database of games (we aim to reach 100,000 titles this year, which will make us the most comprehensive database of games) and a game creators database. Obviously, if you want to recommend people what to play, you have to know who made the games this person loved and hated before. At the same time, the industry is very ‘depersonalized’. You may easily name 10 favorite movie directors, 10 writers, 10 musicians in a snap, but it's hard to name 10 favorite game designers even for industry experts. So here we are now, a year of building the team and the product, and we are happy to present the beta version of RAWG. There's a long way to go, but we are very excited with the support Product Hunt community gave us, so we'll double our efforts to bring recommendations to the gaming industry as soon as possible. Thank you for for the support and the question.