Gameplay.Science vs Gameplay Time Tracker

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.

Gameplay Time Tracker records time spent in selected games and applications by monitoring their executables. Its Windows desktop interface can launch tracked programs and display a graph of the past seven days of playtime. It also handles remote game-save backups: create them manually or have them run when a session ends, retain them for a chosen number of days, and restore a save by selecting an available backup. A SteamGridDB API key enables retrieval of application icons and hero images. The project describes the app as written in C# with WPF and licensed under GNU GPL version 3.0, which permits use, modification, and distribution under that license. Settings are generated in the user's Documents folder under Gameplay Time Tracker/settings.json. The documented configuration uses Windows-specific paths and startup-folder behavior. Version 2.0.0 removed legacy data conversion; the project recommends converting legacy data with a pre-2.0.0 build. The app is free, with no free trial listed.