GamePal vs Gameplay.Science

GamePal is an iOS app for tracking gaming activity and keeping a game collection. Users can mark games as played, completed or wishlisted, and record thoughts, memories and experiences in a journal. Live Activities show session updates on the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island, while widgets display gaming stats, recent games and upcoming releases. The app can track gaming events and alert users when upcoming games are about to release. Siri Shortcuts offer actions for logging games and checking stats. Discover provides personalized recommendations, curated lists and trending titles across platforms; Monthly Games lists titles available through services such as PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass. GamePal requires iOS 18.0 or later. The download is free, though some features require Platinum. Platinum adds features including unlimited collections, advanced journal entries with media, widgets, Live Activities, a Monthly Games calendar and Shortcut actions. Its prices are $2.99 a month, $29.99 a year, or $49.99, paid once for lifetime access.

Gameplay.Science is an open-source web platform for independent research on video games using behavior data donated by players. It is designed to support studies without requiring direct participation from game platforms. Players can contribute digital trace data through Steam or Discord connections, account integrations such as Steam or Xbox, or GDPR requests. Account linking lets a participant sign in and authorize automatic access to gameplay data. UK and EU players can request data held by a gaming company under GDPR and share it with researchers. The project aims to cover how long people play, what they do in games, and who they interact with. A study using the platform describes Steam authentication through OpenID, public Steam gameplay details, and hourly collection of each game’s incremental playtime. That study says data was stored on encrypted servers accessible only to the research team. Steam and Xbox are listed as supported ecosystems.