Hey hi! I just hosted a game jam and there were lots more entries this time around than we're used to. Some of the games got way fewer ratings than others, and we were wondering if there was a way to help direct folks to them to ensure less popular games have a shot at getting enough ratings to have a more accurate average? Filtering entries by number of ratings could be one solution, but it might not be the most appropriate. Do you feel this is a problem, and if so, is there a practical way to solve it?

Thank you!

It's a problem all right. Game jams on itch.io can see fairly high participation, but the conversation around most entries is usually non-existent. Most people don't rate, don't comment, don't bookmark, don't nothing, as a general rule. And if someone has a solution, I'd love to hear it, because what more can developers do than, you know, participate? That's what a public game jam is for: increasing the visibility of entrants. If that doesn't work, might as well hold a private event at a LAN party.

Hello, thanks for the feedback. I agree we can do better about encouraging rating on projects that have proportionally less votes. Right now, the list of games is shown in random order on the jam's page, so although it might help spread votes out, it won't help those that have too few. I think having an option to sort by votes would be a good first step.

You can also try emailing the jam participants to remind them that rating is going on, and directing them to the jam page. Although this won't target the people with few votes, it might get some of the people who didn't rate a reminder to do so.