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As much as I’d love as many people playing games we make as possible (and myself to be playing as many as possible) I think it would be interesting if every participant was given a random allocation of X number of games to review in these 2 weeks. That way everyone gets some feedback and that feedback may be more meaningful as each participant has a specific total to go through. 

Meaningful feedback is way more important than ratings. I’d like to hope we all want to improve and make better games in future jams and meaningful feedback does a lot to aid that. 

Yeah, I have to say that sounds like a good way to do it tbh. There is no way anyone can play through all the submissions, so they tend to just review people who have reviewed theirs etc. which could lead to biased reviews or lack of feedback. Also some of the game streams play the games live on their streams, so those ones may tend to get a lot more views than others too; a random allocation would be a good way to ensure everyone gets to play a variety of quality games and everyone gets more meaningful feedback. 

It is true that a lot of high profile individuals get the lions share of attention and don't rate back (at least not with their account and they probably don't have an incognito jam participant account), just look at Dani for example. They are also usually the ones to "win", since they make games for a living. But on the other hand you have the whole least rated page where there is currently a wall of 2 ratings per game.

I do see a problem with your suggestion to give the people a random allocation of games to play. This system is sort of already implemented and and kicks of the rating period. It's the random filter. Unfortunately it then devolves into the r4r system when reviews for your game start flying in. We are subconsciously inclined to return the favor. You can't change that.
It would create a lot of problems if we were to "lock" the games and say: "here dear jammer are 20 games you need to play and rate them in 14 days".

Lets suppose RNGesus gave you the following:

  •   10 garbage games that weren't compiled properly or are outright just some random source code text files (I rated one such game) or simply a "sorry couldn't finish"
  •  5 games that look fine but have only been compiled for mac and you're too poor to have one in your household and have no idea how to set up a virtual machine (since you only started doing fancy stuff)
  •  4 decent games with no problems
  •  1 good game by a pro

More then half of what you got (and such a spread could occur given enough people) you can't even play. Guess it's overtime for the mods that will have to assign you new random games that are hopefully playable.

But what if you don't have time? Ok 20 games is doable on a weekend, but you can't expect that everyone is going to do 20 ratings, should this disqualify them and who will replace the missing ratings?

Lastly, what if you want to play your friends game. Will you have to wait until the jam is over, or will you just be forbidden to rate them?

Or what if you played a game and it was just ok. The most generic game. There is nothing bad to say, but also not a lot to praise. Will you be forced to write a comment?


Honestly the current system works ok, but dose require honesty and the willingness of people to play random games. It is important that we have enough quality raters, that play as many games as possible, but you also need moderators that keep an eye out for troublemakers. I think TheDutchMagikarp removed a bunch of unplayable games the other day for example, so it's definitely not the wild west out here.

You make a lot of good points and there are definitely holes in the "here take 20 games and review them OR ELSE" approach. I guess the point I was trying to get at was that it would be great to see everyone get some constructive feedback back from their games. Now I realise how difficult this is given over 8000 people entered and there are thousands of projects out there, and you're right, if you get an allocation that is barely playable, then it renders this a bit pointless. How about having a rating system that doesn't have a "winning goal" but instead just provides an indication as to the quality of your entry? Just ideas, and I think, as you said, this system works. 

In the end we just have to hope that everyone is being upfront and honest (I think for the most part they are). In the end we're all winners, imo. 

Well, aaaannnnd now we have come full circle and reinvented the wheel. The ratings are supposed to be an indication of quality. There is no prize, but the friends we made along the way :) and the lessons we learned.

Agreed, friend! :) NOW RATE MY GAME. 

That was just a joke... 

agreed and i also think that the game randomizer could have worked well but in these cases where there are more than 1000 games only the most popular games will be rated the most and that would not be good

but above all we have made friends  along the way and we have learnt our lessons :)

Amen to that! All the conversations I've had on here have been amazing, as have all the games I've seen so far. Truly, we're all winners here. 

EXCATLY!

The gamedev community is always the best! Everyone here knows how hard it is to make a game and everyone can appreciate your effort and is willing to help wherever they can.

(Didn't expect a discussion board about cheating to end up in such a wholesome thread, but I for sure don't mind some positivity)

I think ratings should only be possible through the 'play random games' button. Each game will still have a jam page where people can comment to leave feedback, but the only way to get ratings is by your game randomly being played by people. I think this way an even number of people will rate each game, and you can still share your game with each other for feedback.

Yeah but I do appreciate the "in need of rescue" or equivalent filter. I felt like a hero for saving games in LD46 and those saved where probably very happy as well.

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That's true, that part is pretty useful. Although, in an ideal situation we wouldn't need a section like that. If the rating distribution was completely random, games would have roughly equal ratings, apart from the few games that just don't work due to a compiling error or other similar issues.

Wouldn't the rating number of games follow a bell curve, if completely left to chance? With a few having a lot and a few having very few. Remember something like that from statistics class, but it has been a while for me.

Oh yh that is correct. I guess if they did implement a system like that,  instead of pure randomness, there would have to be some way they favour games that haven't been seen by many people yet.

But my main point is that rate for rate threads and ads on the discord server should not affect the number of ratings people get at all.

I really liked the Ludumdare karma system. Taking the number of your ratings vs the number of ratings you got, with games below 20 rating getting preferential treatment. They also gave heavy emphasis on comments to boost your placement. All this was shoved in some formula to determine the order of games and I must say it worked quite well.

They did write that they will keep an eye out for cheaters, but it's not like it was too clear on what they do or how they do it (which is understandable). Now that I look at my LD page, they specifically write karma for feedback, so that would imply you only give a boost from your comment if the creator liked it. That would actually be pretty darn great! You would have to tell the peps to only like helpful comments and not like the the "nice game rate mine plz" and it would instantly curb the issue.