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[Radiant]

A single panel member's opinion of a game's difficulty level would be more or less pointless

Yes, which is why I never suggested that in the first place. Like game length, the author could give an approximation.

And the point of such a rating anyway?

Obviously, to let people find the kind of game they like. Sometimes people want a quick 'n easy game. Sometimes people want a challenge. With the near-thousand games in the database, finding what you want is difficult enough already.

[LimpingFish]

I still say one persons opinion (be it the author, a panel member, Jesus, Jesus' dog Andy) would be pointless. As I've said, such a feature would perform better as an ongoing user-based rating. Implemented as such, I don't have any problem with it.

Still, it strikes me as more pointless segregation of the game database. If a player doesn't want to devote a lot of time to a game, they should download a short game. Where's the fun in playing an easy game? Indeed, where's the fun for a developer making a game they know people will breeze through?

Maybe I'm just missing the point.

Obviously, to let people find the kind of game they like. Sometimes people want a quick 'n easy game. Sometimes people want a challenge. With the near-thousand games in the database, finding what you want is difficult enough already.

From what I understand, the revamped games database will make finding the games you want to play a lot easier. We should wait and see how the work the panel is doing turns out, and decide if any new features should be added.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

In my personal experience I've never had a game rated 'high difficulty' dissuade me from playing it.  I've never placed a huge amount of trust in the opinion/review of someone I don't know, though, so rather than let a rating or review convince me I usually look at a cross-section of reviews and player opinions and get a feeling for the average opinion of a game that I'm not terribly knowledgeable about.  If it's a game I've wanted to play, no rating is going to prevent me from at least trying it, however.  I think more people should form their own opinions of difficulty and such instead of this hive-mind reliance on other people to do things for them that's been creeping into society.  Hopefully the new rating system won't turn someone away from playing a game that sounds really interesting because it was rated poorly, but after they play it the rating might make some sense .  I think that difficulty (like play length) is something the author should decide but could be altered by player votes (much like game length).

[Brad Newsom]

I like this Rating Panel idea. It may not dissuade you, but it gives a professional view of what they think of the game. I prefer to go with what the panel has to say instead of the overall community. For instance in a abandonware site I saw the game Future Wars. It was rated 5 by the website and 3.2 by the community. I loved the game, and once I replayed the game, it was still something golden. The community most of the time doesn't understand why things are rated a certain way and sometimes rate it just for the fact its not there type of game, which is really unreliable. Newgrounds is a great example of this.

All in all, i'm all for the rating panel.

Maybe in two more years i'll be able to put my hand in the rating panel. Ive worked for a lot of abandonware websites and freeware sites rating videos games for about 6 years, so hopefully soon i'll be able to get back into it for the better good.

[bicilotti]

Geez long thread!

May I ask the admins to show us one "panel rating" (just out of curiosity).

EDIT: a game like 7 days a skeptic or some other well known ags product will do

EDIT2: maybe a "famous" game and a couple of short, slighty above average one, so that we can get a feel of this rating.
Also, where can I find the official rating guidelines (the one I downloaded seem only a preliminary draft).

Last, I do really fear most of the games will be doomed to the "1 cup swamp". And I think some "requirements" are quite dull (who cares about the originality of my GUI as long as it runs smoothly).

But as long the "cup-rating" will be showed along with the "people's rating" there will be no problem at all: I'll just stick to the last one (maybe a "filter by users' rating" option will be a good thing)

[Andail]

A little update:
The rating panel is now about halfway through the 750+ non-demo titles in the database.

Along with ratings, games have been further classified, and their links have been fixed.

So far, work has proceeded extremely smoothly.

[Erenan]

Wow, I'd say that's good news. Halfway through, and it's not even two months later now. Good work, ratings panel! *distributes root beer floats*

[Radiant]

I spotted something that may be of interest to the rating panel.
Several of the older games (such as this one) don't actually have a category (like short games, joke games, etc). You can spot them easily on this list. It may be useful to add categories for these?

Also, I spotted four games with no listed author: James bond, Surreality (RON), QfG4.5 and this one which I suspect doesn't really belong.

Archive.org shows that James bond was made by foz. QfG4.5 appears to be made anonymously. Perhaps some oldbie remembers Surreality?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The rating panel will set a length if none is there or if it's wildly inaccurate as well as the genre since that's a new feature and it's not realistic to expect everyone to go back and edit their game.  As far as games without an author goes, that's usually the result of accounts being deleted/lost and there's not a whole lot that can be done about it unless CJ manually fixed each one.

[Radiant]

The rating panel will set a length if none is there or if it's wildly inaccurate as well as the genre since that's a new feature

Cool.

there's not a whole lot that can be done about it unless CJ manually fixed each one.

Er, there's, like, four of them. One of which I pointed out above, one is an advertisement, one is a game anonymously released. One left.

[Pumaman]

The author name is entered by people when they upload their game. If they choose not to fill it in and remain anonymous, who are we to argue?

[mätzyboy]

Sorry for thread digging, but I'm curious about the outcome of this panel and figured it better to post here than start a new thread...
Is the panel still working their way though the games database? Any status update?

If this is inappropriate I guess a moderator can lock...

Cheers!

[m0ds]

More than threequarters of the games in the database have been rated, so I'd assume they're getting close to putting this live I'm sure someone can give you a more detailed update than that, though!

[Pumaman]

Yes, the rating is still continuing. There have been a couple of people doing a really good job at playing and rating lots of games, but it's been hard to get the commitment from most people so the job is proceeding more slowly than we'd like.

We'll get there eventually!