AGS Games page update

[Pumaman]

As some of you will remember, about a year ago a new project was launched. Its goal, to review and rate all the games in the AGS Games database.

History

Over time there have been several requests to sort games by rating on the games page. But this feature has not been added because many people felt that some games were unfairly rated and there was evidence of cheating by a few people to bump up their game's rating.

But it was clear that people new to the website needed a better way to find high quality games to play.

The Project

We assembled an anonymous group of AGS Forum users, known as the Review Panel, whose job it was to play through all the games in the database and try to give them an objective rating.

As the project got started, we realised that since we would be playing through all the games, it was a good opportunity to record some extra information about them. As a result, games have now been given a genre, and any broken download links have been marked as such. Additionally, we can now separate out commercial games from free ones.

Changes to the Games Page

You'll notice the following changes:
* The "Browse Games" section on the main Games Page has had a makeover. Rather than just browing by game length, you can now customize it to provide more useful results.
* Each game now has a Panel Rating as well as the existing User Rating.
* Each game now has genre information, and any broken links are marked as such.

Which games are not included?

Demos and games with broken links have not been rated by the panel.
Is it our policy not to rate demos, since we don't want to unfairly bias the reputation of the final game just based on its demo.
Games with broken links will be rated if the link is fixed by the game author.

My game rating is too low!
Game X has a rating far too high!
You guys are stupid, game X is way better than game Y!

Whilst the panel has tried to be as objective as possible when reviewing games, at the end of the day we're all human and we're all likely to have different opinions.

In due course we will put in place a formal appeal procedure that you will be able to use if you feel your game has been unfairly treated. In the meantime, you're free to discuss the ratings in this thread and argue about them; and if the Panel read any convincing arguments they may update the relevant rating.

But please, don't take this too seriously! We're never all going to agree on the right rating for each game, but hopefully they are consistent enough to be helpful to players. And remember, this is what this whole thing is about -- making it easier for people to find games to play.

Conclusion

First, I'd like to thank the Review Panel, who have dedicated a lot of their time over the last year to getting all these games rated. Without you guys, this project would never have got off the ground.

And secondly, I hope you all find this new Games page to be useful, and that it's been worth all the effort!

Enjoy:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php

[TheJBurger]

Awesome.

One little suggestion: a check all box would be nice, so we can narrow our searches faster.

[SSH]

Having served on the rating committee for about 3 seconds ages ago, I realise that it is actually very tedious work sometimes getting through those games: so huge kudos and respect to all those who did this monumental task.

[MashPotato]

Very nice upgrades overall; thanks to all involved

[ThreeOhFour]

Excellent work, and what a massive amount of effort this must have taken.

I've done some searching and browsing around and have to say that the ratings seem very, very fair to me from what I've seen.

Thanks for the time and effort, all involved .

[Mordalles]

thanks, panel, looks great, and thanks for the generous cup rating. 

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Our goal was above all else to be fair while creating a system where the lowest rating meant the game was seriously flawed or showed little effort and the maximum cup rating for games that were (or were very close to being) perfect.  This is why there are so few 5's and many 1's, because being completely honest means realizing that a great number of the submitted games were jokes/not really serious efforts.  We definitely worked to give games that showed serious effort a fair shake, but in the end it all comes down to the likes and dislikes of the individual judges and the result is no different from what you would see at any rating site.

I'm glad that at least some of you so far are finding the ratings to be more reasonable than not.

[Radiant]

Well done, everybody who worked on this.

[Buckethead]

Awsome! Really good job! 

edit:

I wonder if they actually played my Evul click game to rate it. The link is death for more then a year now. I guess it's just awarded one cup from the silly name and screenshot 

[Matti]

Well done. Thanks for all the work.

Like JBurger said: A all check box would be nice.

I think I found two unmarked games with broken links: Anna and Spooks.

[SSH]

Ben Jordan 4 seems to have no rating at all?

[Vince Twelve]

I think I found two unmarked games with broken links: Anna and Spooks.

Both games (along with Linus Bruckman, Heartland Deluxe, and La Croix Pan) are hosted on my site, which is working for me.  If the direct download doesn't work, try clicking "go to site" and then download from the link on my site using "right click, save as."

EDIT: Actually, yeah, something weird is going on with the .rar downloads when using the link from bigbluecup.  Going to my site and manually downloading still works though.  I try to see why this is happening.

[Matti]

Okay, thanks, Vince. 

[Buckethead]

Ben Jordan 4 seems to have no rating at all?

I think person who made that Ben Jordan podcast did that rating 

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=513


You don't see the 3 cup rating?  I do.

[Akatosh]

The panel hates my games, woo! 

Apart from that, I like the update.

[miguel]

The Inquisit... The Panel hate my games too!!!
Nice work guys! It must have take a lot of work.
I checked the ratings for some games and I think they are pretty fair and just.

[SSH]

You don't see the 3 cup rating?  I do.

Darn proxy cacheing... D'oh!

Meanwhile, how long has the umlauted-you in http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=584 been broken? Any chance of that getting fixed?

Soviet Untergunterbuntersdorf has also got something going on. Has the codepage on the games DB changed or something?


Also, how the heck did Princess Marian XI get two cups? It's clearly a one-cup game.

[Valentijn]

This seems very well done and very user-friendly. I think many people will be very grateful for all of your hard work!

I skimmed over the ratings. Of course there will always be personal preferences there, but I actually found myself agreeing with almost all ratings for the titles I instantly recognized! For those I'd personally give higher (Prodigal) or lower (Other Worlds), I could imagine the average rating being a more likely standard.

Thumbs up!

(Although... only three cups for Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment..? I would say that this game's unique, innovative gameplay alone should make for an extra cup...)

[TwinMoon]

Congrats guys on finishing this huge project!

The 'search on genre'  option is a great addition, and the independent rating a very very welcome new feature.
(And thanks for the generous rating of my game )