So I've considered this a bit, but I think having the "popular" and "most rated" sorts as options is better. Here's my thought process
- The number of ratings is not equal to your score, the person with the most ratings is not the winner. You can think of the number of ratings as a confidence level of how accurate the score is. If someone gets one rating with a score of 5, there's a very low confidence that it's correct. If someone gets 100 ratings averaging 4.5 then that's likely to be their "true" score
- itch.io uses a weighted rating system based on the number of ratings. Entries that have below the threshold number of ratings will have their average score proportionally decreased. This threshold is dynamically calculated based on the median of number of ratings across all rated projects
- Ratings are open to everyone, not just people who submitted. This means that your average rater doesn't have the same sense of duty to help rate things that may need ratings.
- A "Popular" sort lets someone who is new to the jam view submissions that have been vetted in some way by the community. It will make it easier for them to be engaged with playing and rating jam entries.
- If their only option is random, they may immediately give up and not rate anything because the things they see may be of questionable level of completion, buggy, broken, etc.
- When building a product (or a game), if you make it easy for a user to get engaged with your project, then they're more likely to continue using it. Conversely, making it difficult for them will likely lead to them giving up and "bouncing."
- In conclusion, I think that having the option available will increase average number of ratings given to each project.
- I don't think it's helpful to think of it as a zero-sum game where if someone rates a popular game they won't rate another less popular one. I think it's more likely that:
- if someone rates a popular game they enjoyed, they'll be will to go explore and rate other games
- if someone only sees things they aren't interested in they will rate nothing at all and bounce
- I don't think it's helpful to think of it as a zero-sum game where if someone rates a popular game they won't rate another less popular one. I think it's more likely that:
Sorry for the long response, tell me if you have any concerns about my thought process. Also keep in mind, "Random" is the default view, "Popular" is another option in a menu. If you don't want to be influenced by it then don't look at it.