Just curious, There will be way more submissions than I will get a chance to see. That makes the early popular submissions typically more popular. Are the submissions going to be forcibly randomized during judging? Or at least hide the popularity sort function? It may help the ratings get more spread out.
Great question! No entries will be able to be judged until the voting period begins on Dec 1st, so the first concern is eliminated. Historically, the entries that get the most votes tend to be the ones that are available on the web, windows and multiple other platforms + the ones that include screenshots, instructions, etc.
I'm not sure if it's possible to hide the 'sort by ...' functionality for the submissions, but I agree that might help. I'll investigate - thanks!
Out of curiosity, during that system, were you ever forced to rate a game that you, personally, couldn't run? e.g. it was a Mac-only game? Were you given the option of a few random games so you didn't have to just pick the first one given to you? Or did that jam have specific rules for what platforms your game could be submitted for?
Hm... the issue is that this jam has no such platform requirements, plenty of people have done mobile-only, VR-only, or Mac-only games. Those games usually don't get many ratings, but at that point that's their choice to make lol.
But, I suppose it could be done with more reshuffles, plus letting u lock platforms more.