Sorting the games

[Radiant]

You don't understand something and therefore you assume that it cannot make sense. Really now.

[bicilotti]

Most people would choose to make their own decisions, rather than being misled by false data.
[...]
Most good rating systems are, or at least purport to be, based upon fact. You know, to make them not arbitrary.

Geez I really don't understand you. Many of the rating are genuine and made by fellows AGSers, there is a significant number of votes for the "major" games (and many useful comments too). You and I don't have to agree with them and the system is, like everyhing in this world, amendable, but I won't throw it into the bin labelling it "false information".

Having said that, de gustibus: let's get over it.

Back in June 2006 I wrote a script that downloaded all the rankings and generated this page:
http://ssh.me.uk/ranking.htm

I'm browsing through it now, very, very nice job SSH!

However i still do not understand why a sort on the rankings are not provided. All I have got are convoluted arguments that really do not make sense.

If the mountain will not come to Muhammad... again thanks SSH.

[ranon]

You don't understand something and therefore you assume that it cannot make sense. Really now.

Why don't you answer the question I posed in post #11.

[JimmyShelter]

A rating system is always subjective, it's always based on opinions, not fact. How could it not be arbitrary?

That is simply false. Most good rating systems are, or at least purport to be, based upon fact. You know, to make them not arbitrary.

Ok, that makes me wondering, what is in your opinion the difference between this rating systems, and good rating systems?

I always rate games after playing them, even more so if I disagree with the current score.

Yes, but because most people don't do that, the current scores are arbitrary. So in effect, you want to play a number of arbitrarily chosen games to find out if you agree with their arbitrary scores. You can already do that.

Yes, you can do that, but you need to wade through pages of games before finding highly rated games, however arbitrary the rating system is.

You seem to think adding a sort by rating option won't advance the games listing, but I don't see how it would reduce the value of the listing in any way if such an option would be added.

[Candall]

Well, it would provide more motivation for people to falsely boost their own scores.

That would be a problem.

[JimmyShelter]

Well, it would provide more motivation for people to falsely boost their own scores.

That would be a problem.

Only registered users can vote right? Well, then it's checkable if there's cheating.

[blueskirt]

Every rating system is arbitrary.

False.

Fun and beauty aren't facts and cannot be rated on a scale from 1 to 10. Something may be a turd for someone and a gem to somebody else and vice versa.

Back on the topic, if I was cut from the internet for several months, I'd simply trust the AGS awards to keep me up to date with what I could have missed, and I'd just download all award winners and nominees. It has yet to fail me, even if 5 nominations per categories aren't enough when the number of quality games keep increasing every years.

[ranon]

Well, it would provide more motivation for people to falsely boost their own scores.

That would be a problem.

Actually, if the rating system is made more user friendly there will be more and more people like myself who will rate games after playing them and will swamp out any malicious voting.

There are ~3800 members at current count. Even the best games have at most 100 votes. If the system is improved there will be a large improvement in the total votes and it will take too large an effort to game the system.

[Pumaman]

But you have the rating system. So that is some information. What you are saying is that the system can be manipulated. However, how will sorting on that basis increase or decrease the ability of the system to be manipulated?

If the list can be sorted based on rating, then people are more likely to attempt to manipulate their rating. At the moment, people are unlikely to bother trying to boost their game's rating because it's not really going to make any difference, except maybe get a couple of extra interested players who happen to see it.

But if the game list is sortable by rating, then people have an incentive to try and bump their game to the top of the list as a marketing ploy to get more players; this in turn means we have to have heavier moderation of the page to spot any troublemakers, which eats into peoples time, and so on.

However, as Progz has mentioned there is a review underway of the games page and we have a team of people giving each game an "official" rating which will be sortable.

[Indie Boy]

However, as Progz has mentioned there is a review underway of the games page and we have a team of people giving each game an "official" rating which will be sortable.

Got any idea when it will be officially finished? Soon I hope

I find the system very easy to use as it stands right now, although I'm not against this new rating system. I don't understand how you can get confused or feel offended that the system is "hiding gem games" from you. When I look for a game I would look at the screen shot, then read the description, and THEN look at the rating. If nothing has put me off then I will download.

I'm sure I am not the only one who doesn't rely on ratings

[ManicMatt]

I just don't find the ratings to be very accurate, it's less accurate than if a team of people who review games professionally did one. Which is exactly why a non biased team is doing just that!

Looking at the overall enjoyment scores, Sydney Finds Employment is about 13 places below my own (unavailable unless I ever get some webspace) game "Secrets" which surprises me as I'd expect Sydney to be much higher than my own. It also was download over 5000 times to date where as mine is just over 2000.

Looking at the breakdown of votes on my game, 2 people rated the graphics as "super" and 1 person called it "Abysmal"! I agree with neither, I'd say they're "Average".

What I'm getting at, is although SSH's guide will give you a good idea, you're going to miss out on some good games if you only go so far down that list. (I'm not including mine in this sentence!)

[ranon]

But you have the rating system. So that is some information. What you are saying is that the system can be manipulated. However, how will sorting on that basis increase or decrease the ability of the system to be manipulated?

If the list can be sorted based on rating, then people are more likely to attempt to manipulate their rating. At the moment, people are unlikely to bother trying to boost their game's rating because it's not really going to make any difference, except maybe get a couple of extra interested players who happen to see it.

But if the game list is sortable by rating, then people have an incentive to try and bump their game to the top of the list as a marketing ploy to get more players; this in turn means we have to have heavier moderation of the page to spot any troublemakers, which eats into peoples time, and so on.

However, as Progz has mentioned there is a review underway of the games page and we have a team of people giving each game an "official" rating which will be sortable.

A rating is not the only piece of information that one uses to decide on playing the game. There are other pieces e.g. no of votes, the comments in game page. A rating is only the starting point. If one sees a game with a high rating but with poor reviews, a downloader is savvy enough to disregard that rating. but at least the information must be available in a good form.

There are two diametrically opposite ways to design rating systems.

The first would be an open system where everybody can rate and there is only rudimentary IP checking to check for duplicate ratings. This system is very scalable and can be used for large systems. It depends on the fact that it is very user friendly to rate and so a large number of people will rate the games and manipulating the ratings will take too much effort for anybody. The best examples of this type of system are digg and wikipedia.

The second is a closed system, which is suited for smaller communities. This system requires registration to rate and cannot be scaled to larger communities. It depends on authentication to prevent duplicate ratings.

The administrators must decide which one of the two methods they should use. From what i gather there is a fear about manipulating the vote and a trend towards the second method.

Still in this (second) method, I would offer a suggestion. Use a weighted system. In this the people who have submitted at least one game (submitters) get a larger weight than people who have not submitted any game. Say, each vote of the submitters counts as 10 votes of any other members. This will almost eliminate duplicate voting.