| Author |
Message |
Panpan
| | Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2001 - 1:17 am: | |
Compiling and publishing the number of downloads for each game would be useful to the users of the site.
Popularity would also be a better indicator of game quality than the voting contests where the game authors or coders vote for their own.
This should be pratical to do because each downloadable game has its own web page. |
Robert A. Kraus (Bobkraus)
| | Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2001 - 8:33 pm: | |
I disagree that the number of downloads indicates a game's popularity. Any game must be downloaded before one can try it out. It just means that the ad looks or reads good, or the game's ideas or rules are appealing. But the game itself might be terrible! The only true indicator of quality would be the number of times a game has been replayed, but that's impossible to tabulate. Voting may not be too bad if it is done right (which it never is either by Zillions, or by game magazines for computer games); what needs to be done is have the voting list include EVERY game and have every voter PLAY every game and RATE every game. The list could have less than all the games, which would give relative ratings for that subset only. In fact it would be best to have different lists for different types of games, such as one list for chess variants, etc., so you are not comparing apples and oranges. Also, since different people like (or hate) different types of games, players should only vote for games in a category that they really like. (I'd like chess variants relatively rated only by people who love and play dozens of chess variants, not given a bad rating by people who hate chess, or those who will only play the "real" version!) Of course all this may be impractical, but meaningless ratings are not useful either. |
Robin Gryphon (Robing)
| | Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2001 - 6:45 am: | |
I agree that there have been occasions where I have downloaded games that looked interesting only to find they were rather boring. However, at the same time, there have been games that were so obviously uninteresting to me that I never downloaded them in the first place. And I have to say that the majority of the time the games I've downloaded turned out to be as interesting as I expected them to be.
So while number of downloads may not be the full measure of a game's popularity, it is a good starting point.
Most websites that feature files to download have a download counter. While keeping a download count for each game would be nice, I'm not sure if its practical. I would think there should be at least a listing of the top 20 or 50 downloads.
I also have to think of the game developers who post their games here. They never recieve any feedback. Their game could never have been downloaded or it may be the most downloaded game on the site. They simply have no idea.
As to how the Best of contest is run... So a developer could vote for his own game. So what? In an election you don't stop the people who are running for office from voting for themselves. If your look at the results, out of a dozen choices there were a couple of games in each category that recieved a significant number of votes. A vote here or there really wouldn't have been enough to tip the scales either way.
In regards to the idea of listing every game with a rating for each, that just isn't feasible. Not only would it be an enormous task to create and maintain such a list, think of the few people who would take all the time and effort needed to go through the tedium of voting that way.
I like the contest as it is, with a handful of choices in each category. Although I would have liked to see more then four choices per category this time. |
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