it's my first real game jam and I didn't know how the rating period would be. I'm a little bit surprised of the amount of effort we need to do be seen. I didn't expect we had to do that.

I did that effort in the first days, but mostly it makes me question if this is how it should be (the things like "rate my game and I'll rate yours") and how could it be different.

It feels that amongst the most rated games, we have a mix between really good games and really strong marketing games, and of course a mix between the two.

Let me know what do you think

(That being said, I had the best two weeks in a long time, making a game is such a great pleasure and getting to play games after for an entire week is the best reward)

I feel like this is a good point, although keep in mind that games are "judged" not by how many ratings they have but the average in each category, so even if a game has a lot of good "marketing" it might be rated a lot, but poorly. To be honest I think maybe the "marketing" practice is a good thing, for us new devs, this kind of experience, of trying to get other people to play your game, is a learning experience as well. I see why it could be thought of as unfair though.

I agree with you that it is good for us, young developers to learn marketing, and it is what it is.

However, I'm not sure the rate4rate system is actually a marketing strategy that we will benefit from in our future. (But what do I know? Maybe... I actually don't know what I'm talking about, I'm not an expert)

For anyone reading this, I don't mean to send a bitter/judgmental message. I'm genuinely questioning and I'm curious if actually the people who do the rate4rate maybe agree with this. And they do it against their will.

In general it felt to me that the week was a bit too much of ("look at me!" , "look at my game") than focusing on other people's games. 

My guess is we don't really want that but we do it anyway because we're scared that the people who do it will overshadow our games.

In my case, I did it, because I thought that I had no choice, because of that. And I didn't really like focusing so much on promoting my game than actually enjoying all of your games.

Because there are actually some gems here and there in you have done  guys :)