The Game Discovery Engine is the ultimate expression of gamer interconnectivity. Players pick a game from an incredibly comprehensive database and write in game "traits" (up to six in total) that appeal to them. Categories include the game's setting, tone, who/what you play as, who/what you play against, and how the game is played. Other traits written in by other users are already shown, so users can just pick from them if there's an overlap. Basically, you let the system know who, what and why you like a particular game. Once you're done tagging the game with traits, it gets added to your GamerDNA profile, and the site recommends a handful of other games that have similar traits. This system works well, but it can be a little hit-or-miss. Upon inputting a single game, we were recommended five other games that we already owned, so we naturally absorbed them into our GamerDNA profile. However, like with all similar systems, it the Game Discovery Engine needs more gamers plugging in information to make it more powerful. After a while, the system ends up repeating the same few games over and over again, even after they've already been added to our profile (although that will eventually be fixed). Additionally, there's no way to dismiss recommendations for games you know you're not interested in so that they don't show up anymore.

For example, we added X-Com: UFO Defense to our profile, which we enjoyed because of the sci-fi setting, fighting against aliens as humans, turn-based strategy and resource management. The recommendations were Half-Life, Tabula Rasa, Quake 4, Halo 2 and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic based on our love of sci-fi and fighting aliens. Not a bad selection, especially since we own all five of them, but not really what we're looking for when inputting a game like X-Com. None of the other X-Com games like Terror From the Deep or Apocalypse were listed, nor were there any other turn-based strategy games. Another useful feature that could be included in the future is a way to filter recommendations to include only certain platforms so that we don't get any game recommendations for systems we don't own.

So the game recommendation feature needs some time to grow, but it has a lot of potential, especially when combined with some of GamerDNA's other features. Gamers can link other applications like Steam, Xfire, and Xbox/GFW Live to their GamerDNA profile. GamerDNA will pull from these feeds and automatically update your profile with the games you've been playing recently, what achievements you've earned, and (in some cases) how long you were playing. Friends can view your profile and see what you've been up to. This is an incredibly promising feature since it automatically puts newly purchased games into your GamerDNA profile so you can quickly add in traits or dismiss it if you don't like it. The system currently doesn't scan through your gaming history, but we've been told that it's a feature that is in the works.

The tracking system works very well with games launched through Xfire. GamerDNA was able to display exactly how much time we spent gaming, and break down into percentages how much time was spent playing what. All that info was automatically uploaded to our experience profile. However, tracking doesn't work quite as well with Steam by itself. The system did not report the hours we spent playing Left 4 Dead, nor did it show the achievements we recently earned. On the bright side, it automatically prepared new games purchased and played through Steam for us to add traits to.

While GamerDNA still has a little ways to go, it has a very strong foundation for sharing a player's total gaming personality, instead of getting a limited view through services like Steam or Xbox Live. Although GamerDNA could be a little more Steam friendly, we were impressed by what we saw so far. The Discovery Engine will become more powerful as information gets fed into it, which could turn it into a critical tool for finding new games that fit your interests. GamerDNA in total will not only know gamers better than anyone else in the world, but gamers can discover quite a bit about their own habits through the site.