it would be nice to see the rating be affected by number of times the game has been downloaded. And the number of times the game has got a positive rating.
This is one of the reasons why the rating has no sway on the downloads page and isnt calculated until its had a reasonable amount of votes, and therefor a much more accurate representation from averagesm which would knock a score like that down alot if lower average votes are given
The reason ratings will never be accurate on this site, is because the community is to small. When 50% of a community with thousands of people vote, majority of serious votes counter balance bogus votes. 50% of a community with a few dozen people though, and a 1/5 rating will almost always bomb a percentage.
Another problem with the 5 star voting system seems to be that people have a very bad habit of always voting 5 out of 5 for games that mildly enjoy, or 1 out of 5 for games they just hate. So why have 5 stars? Why not only have 3. Because in reality, with such a small community to vote, we should only need to know if a game is either worth playing, worth checking out, or just not worth your time. This way a 1 out of 3 wont counter balance a percentage as much as a 1 out of 5 or a 1 out of 10 might.
Yeah, I agree with everything said so far. It's also kind of sad to see how the number of bad ratings has dropped significantly since the new system was introduced, with your rating always being visible to everyone. Well, at least we got rid of the thumbs-down trolls and everything (OOH, CONSPIRACY).
Still, people should think before voting. Giving a game five stars because you think it's "okay" or "decent" is kind of silly. Heh.
Personally I set the score to 3 then take away, or add stars as I see fit. a 5/5 is something that'll stay on my HDD, a 4/5 will stay a bit but I'll probably delete it when I either get bored or complete it.
I'm the same with big commercial games too so donut think I hate indies!
Originally Posted by BrandonC The reason ratings will never be accurate on this site, is because the community is to small. When 50% of a community with thousands of people vote, majority of serious votes counter balance bogus votes. 50% of a community with a few dozen people though, and a 1/5 rating will almost always bomb a percentage.
That's why you should use Median and not an Average value.
Lets say a game has 5 votes like this
2 3 3 4 4
The average value would be (2+3+3+4+4)/5 = 3.2
Now lets say someone gives it a 1 rating.
1 2 3 3 4 4
Suddenly the rating went from 3.4 to (1+2+3+3+4+4)/6 = ~2.8
Use the Median value though, and the game's rating will still be 3.
In case anyone here doesn't know, the Median value is the middle value, or the average of the two middle values (with an even set of numbers)
- Ok, you must admit that was the most creative cussing this site have ever seen -
How 'bout the average of the average and the mean?
...or is that getting silly?
Admittedly, I did like it when the volume of votes and the number of downloads (or whatever it was) affected the game's overall ranking, and not just its thumbs up/down percentage.
This is why my stuff's on the front page? My fault, I don't know how I made an mfw. Probably because I used donaldquest4.mfa
Yeah, it's only version 1 tutorial. Supposed to have better versions in the future.
I think that the rating should count one what's been rated most frequently and maybe get rid of out-cast numbers that don't have are far from the actual rating.
Example, something that gets all 4 and 5 star ratings but one person gave it a 2 or a 1.
For F SAKE, i gave him 5 stars because he won my frickin oekaki compo! i said that the best frickin picture before 12th march will get 5 frickin stars for there next frickin download! http://www.create-games.com/forum_post.asp?id=215584
The main problem with this kind of rating system is simply that people vote by different criteria. Somebody might give a "joke game" 5/5 sort of like "great game in its 'genre', funny as hell", even though he would acknowledge that the game can't compare to other games in general. Another voter always compares games to the likes of Noitu Love and Knytt, which basically means 99% of games can reach only 3-4 stars from this person. The joke game above would be 0-1 stars based on his "comparison scale". Nothing wrong with that really as it's a subjective vote and everyone perceives the scale differently.
One interesting issue regarding this is that we have two distinct extremes of voters: 1) game developers and 2) gamers. "5 stars" can be totally different between these two groups. Game developer might actually give a good rating for a lousy game, if it has things like advanced engine or if the workload/effort gone into the project is high. This is evident at TDC, where some people clearly over-emphasize things like parallax scrolling, custom movement engine and explosion effects, just to mention a few. For the other extreme, gamers, these technical features won't matter if the actual game concept and gameplay suck. Good game means different for gamers and game developers.
Originally Posted by J.R.P For F SAKE, i gave him 5 stars because he won my frickin oekaki compo! i said that the best frickin picture before 12th march will get 5 frickin stars for there next frickin download! http://www.create-games.com/forum_post.asp?id=215584
Edited by the Author.
Which ironically enough is one of the many points of this thread. The rating system is to easily manipulated by piss poor ratings such as "I like you, you like me, lets give each other 5 ratings!!1"
Originally Posted by J.R.P For goodness SAKE, i gave him 5 stars because he won my fun oekaki compo! I said that the best looking picture before 12th march will get 5 shiny stars for their next fun download! http://www.create-games.com/forum_post.asp?id=215584
Edited by Ricky.
Ratings exist to help both the author and people coming to the site to play games. You do both a disfavor when you abuse the system like this.
Well, one thing is that at least you know what idiot is giving 1 or 5 stars and why. It's not just someone thinking, "That guy is an ******" then voting 0 stars/thumbs down, then putting the game on the front page telling everyone that it's a great . No cowardly shots.
Actually, I think a median rating is quite a good idea. If possible. I want the articles to have the same rating system where people can't just give a 0 rating without saying why :/
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Originally Posted by MJK The main problem with this kind of rating system is simply that people vote by different criteria. Somebody might give a "joke game" 5/5 sort of like "great game in its 'genre', funny as hell", even though he would acknowledge that the game can't compare to other games in general. Another voter always compares games to the likes of Noitu Love and Knytt, which basically means 99% of games can reach only 3-4 stars from this person. The joke game above would be 0-1 stars based on his "comparison scale". Nothing wrong with that really as it's a subjective vote and everyone perceives the scale differently.
One interesting issue regarding this is that we have two distinct extremes of voters: 1) game developers and 2) gamers. "5 stars" can be totally different between these two groups. Game developer might actually give a good rating for a lousy game, if it has things like advanced engine or if the workload/effort gone into the project is high. This is evident at TDC, where some people clearly over-emphasize things like parallax scrolling, custom movement engine and explosion effects, just to mention a few. For the other extreme, gamers, these technical features won't matter if the actual game concept and gameplay suck. Good game means different for gamers and game developers.
MJK is dead on. When I play a game that has elements to it that I know I personally wouldn't be able to 1.) do well, or 2.) do at all, it makes me respect that part of the game and boosts my score for it. Lyle in Cube Sector, to me, has a near-perfect blend of everything I'd like to be able to make in a game myself but can't yet, so it gets the 5 stars from me easily.
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Unless the developer has made their own music and art then I won't give it the full 5 stars though. There's something about giving more credit when they're put more effort in.
Music has always been a big thing for me in games. Once I'm done playing the game it's the media that sticks with me the most. Even now I still hum out tunes from ED (even though I didn't really enjoy the game as much as others).
There's really no way to get people on the internet to vote completely fairly. That's why my picture on hotornot.com has an average of 1. Obviously I am not a 1, my mother always tells me I'm handsom.
I'm afraid, JustinC, that your mother could perhaps have lied to you to spare your feelings. After all what sort of parent says "You look like you fell out of the ugly bird nest in the ugly tree and got hit in the face by every single branch on the way down."?
But truthfully I jest, .
There is probably no rating system that will just work for everyone, we may just have to hope that people vote fairly?
Originally Posted by Ben~ I'm afraid, JustinC, that your mother could perhaps have lied to you to spare your feelings. After all what sort of parent says "You look like you fell out of the ugly bird nest in the ugly tree and got hit in the face by every single branch on the way down."?
Hmm, do you visit hotornot.com? That was actually one of the comments on my photo.
Hey, there is an almost perfect rating system! Ever seen www.worth1000.com? If you judge a good picture badly (far away from average ratings), and judge a bad picture well, your credibility or whatever it's called goes down and your votes won't matter as much as other people who have been voting well for years. It really works most of the time, I kinda tried to convince Clubsoft to use a similar system, but he thought it would be too complicated and that TDC members would start to question how we judge things. Which is true
But I still like this system. At least you can tell from the comments whether it's overrated (I liek the screenshots!) or underrated (ololololol, 1 starz!).
Lol, hotornot.com is amusing. Even the guys who made it got horrible ratings. The people who score the highest seem to be the ones with the least clothes on. But I got a 6+ with a really bad photo, so I guess it's ok I rather use facebook to judge my hotness.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Originally Posted by Ben~ I'm afraid, JustinC, that your mother could perhaps have lied to you to spare your feelings. After all what sort of parent says "You look like you fell out of the ugly bird nest in the ugly tree and got hit in the face by every single branch on the way down."?
Hmm, do you visit hotornot.com? That was actually one of the comments on my photo.
LOL, I most certainly do not visit that site. Weird :S.
A very easy thing you could do to atleast make the votes a bit more coherent is to apply some sort of guidelines for the voting like for instance:
0 stars = bad, poor
1 = needs improvement
2 = Ok
3 = Good, worth a download
4 = High Quality stuff
5 = A classic, one for the books
The reason I put 2 stars as Ok is because most games seems to get a 3+ rating which makes the great and good games really hard to distinguish. Also the bad games don't need to be distinguished as much since people probably don't really care if a game is really bad or just bad .
Originally Posted by CsaR A very easy thing you could do to atleast make the votes a bit more coherent is to apply some sort of guidelines for the voting like for instance:
0 stars = bad, poor
1 = needs improvement
2 = Ok
3 = Good, worth a download
4 = High Quality stuff
5 = A classic, one for the books
The reason I put 2 stars as Ok is because most games seems to get a 3+ rating which makes the great and good games really hard to distinguish. Also the bad games don't need to be distinguished as much since people probably don't really care if a game is really bad or just bad .
Originally Posted by CsaR A very easy thing you could do to atleast make the votes a bit more coherent is to apply some sort of guidelines for the voting like for instance:
0 stars = bad, poor
1 = needs improvement
2 = Ok
3 = Good, worth a download
4 = High Quality stuff
5 = A classic, one for the books
The reason I put 2 stars as Ok is because most games seems to get a 3+ rating which makes the great and good games really hard to distinguish. Also the bad games don't need to be distinguished as much since people probably don't really care if a game is really bad or just bad .
Well, then we'd need another page for the guidelines. Then people would have to read them. Anyone who would bother to read ANY guidelines would bother to vote properly without being told how to vote
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
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Edited by the Author.
Apocalyptic Coders - 
. No cowardly shots.
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