MAKERSCORE QUESTION ABOUT GAME RATING

Posts

Pages: first 12 next last
Excuse me, I really don't know if this topic comes here. I've just been thinking about it and I wanted to ask, why low rated games give MORE Makerscore than unrated games?

Say for example a game that is good but has not been reviewed. Makerscore of it will be low until somebody reviews it. That may not be a main issue, but if 10 persons review 4.0 for a complete game, the game still gives 510 MS and not 5100 MS. So after a game has been review once there is no reward for the developer, unless the new review changes the game MS in a positive way. That may discourage people to review already reviewed games if their rating doesn't produce a significant change in the overall score.

On the other hand imagine a terrible game, so maybe somebody reviews it for 0.5. but MS still rises from 15 to 37 in a complete game. Twice the MS for a very bad game? Isn't MS a measure of the contribution of the developer for the community?

I've just been wondering about this and wanted to ask it. If I'm being irrational or obnoxious I beg your forgiveness beforehand (please, let me know). I just want to understand and maybe, if it gives place, promote an idea or a positive change.
The reviewers get MS for the reviews, not for the game. They get a set amount for every review they put up, no matter the score they give.

Only the game creator (and those who are marked as people who worked on the game) get a weighted MS from the game score. It's an average of all the scores given to the game and the higher the score the larger the MS. A game with no reviews won't get as much as a game that has one - but they're more likely to receive a review if they don't have one especially during the review events that are held through-out the year.

The weighted MS is to encourage people to go back to their games and work on them a bit more and polish them up into better versions.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
You didn't actually answer his question, Liberty. He knows that a game with no reviews won't get as much MS as a game that has one review. He wants to know why.

I kind of want to know also. If there are no reviews, you'd think it would get the same amount of makerscore as one with 2.5 stars.

Are you worried that this would discourage people from giving reviews with scores of 2 or lower, because they would be actively harming the game creator? That's already the case for 50% of people who review any game that already has at least one review, it's an inherent part of reviewing: half the people who give reviews will be lowering a game's average rating and the other half will be raising it. So I don't think it's a meaningful issue, if that's your concern.
SunflowerGames
The most beautiful user on RMN!
13323

If someone gave one of my crappy games a score, even a low score, I would have more MS than if no one reviewed it all.

The thing is that even if it is a crap game someone thought that it was worth while to review. So even a crappy game that is worth while to review deserves MS over a game that doesn't deserve the time or energy to even bother.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Your idea that games that have no reviews are probably "so bad they're not worth reviewing" is horrifyingly false.

They're probably just fairly average and didn't leave a strong enough impression for any of the players to feel like they needed to have their opinion about the game heard. If it were really worse than a 0.5 star game, it would get reviews out the wazoo because people would be infuriated by its existance.
Yeah! Here I agree with LockeZ, twice. If you really liked a game you review it, if you absolutely didn't liked it, you review it. If it is somehow average it may not be rated (being more like a 2.5)

Not to mention that some reviewers may also put their effort in specific games, in featured games, buzzing games or so, meaning that there are a lot of games that may never be rated, just because the people that review are already reviewing something else.

If the point is that:
Unrated game =/= bad game; so MS should me more like Unrated game > bad game

At least for the doubt of benefit?
I'm actually fine with the current system. Encourages me to promote my game more, so it'll get reviewed.

But I understand your point. That unrated games generally just lack the attention it deserves, over terribad games who got attention just by being bad.

But fear not, for the reviewers here (and more recently, including me) have been working on gracing every unrated game on this site. So far, they've made quite some progress.
We did have a big discussion about this at one point when we were changing the amounts of MS.

I think one of the issues raised was that just putting a game up gives a set amount. The way MS is calculated for games is by multiplier - it's not an addition or subtraction system. Thus, the game is given a set amount and a review will first change the score via average, then multiply the average by it's own set amount.

For example, say an untested game will be set to 10 points. A review comes in that gives it three stars, let's make that a multiplier of 3. So now it's worth 30 points. Another review comes in that gives it 1 star, meaning the average is now 2, thus making the new score 20 points. Another comes in giving it a 4, now the average is 2.5 (rounded to closest .5 in this case) thus the score becomes 25.

As you can see, it's not a case of addition and subtraction. The MS is tied and dependant on the average star scores, not each and every review itself.
I hope that makes it a bit clearer to you.
An unrated game == unrated game, and then from there ratings confer more makerscore. An unrated game is not average, it is unknown. How can you guys justify that an unrated game is equivalent to an average game? That makes no sense.
Absolutely true Kentona, but Makerscore as it is now justifies that an unrated game is less than the equivalent of a very bad game. That doesn't makes sense either.
I believe they're trying to justify by saying the unknown potential could be good or bad, or between - they're looking at it from a scale of minus to positive, that is unrated = 0, bad = -5, good = +5.

But as you said, there's no way to know the potential of a game until after it is played and rated. And that's how we apply MS. Instead of unrated being 0, unrated is x and the amounts are .5 to 10. Unrated is an unknown amount until after it becomes rated. It is outside the numeral realm until such time as it's given one.

Maybe it would be best to think of it as a stand-by amount instead of 'my game is worth this'. You're not getting MS for what your game is rated in this case. Instead you're getting MS for putting your game up. The amount will change due to the rating it gets but it will never fall below the first up-front amount you receive for sharing your game. It's your prize for sharing. Anything else is bonus money for making a good game. The better the game, the bigger your prize.

Think of it as a present from the submissions queue for getting past the site standards. "Good job, your game meets our standards, here have some awesome internet points!"
Really, there are so many games that are simply not known. And played by only few, why would anyone come to the conclusion that it must be bad because of it?
It's harder to find or dive into, since you have no way to know, but it doesn't discredit it.

I'd agree with kentona here.

And also @LockeZ - I always feel a little uncomfortable to rate games badly, because obviously this will make it less popular and be a punch for the creator to take. On the other hand, I try to give critique to improve on and know that at least there's one more rated game.
Lowering the MS score? C'mon .. I'd mind doing that! And what's the point? It's not like MS are the holy grail. And active people here will find it easier to get their games reviewed - or they just plainly ask for it. I'm on Saratorus in which case the creator simply asked for some feedback.

As for reviewing ..

author=Treason89
Yeah! Here I agree with LockeZ, twice. If you really liked a game you review it, if you absolutely didn't liked it, you review it. If it is somehow average it may not be rated (being more like a 2.5)

Not to mention that some reviewers may also put their effort in specific games, in featured games, buzzing games or so, meaning that there are a lot of games that may never be rated, just because the people that review are already reviewing something else.

If the point is that:
Unrated game =/= bad game; so MS should me more like Unrated game > bad game

At least for the doubt of benefit?

That is true to those who usually wouldn't review a game. So many one-time reviews people write fall under this category.
But as you must have noticed, all regular active reviewers are seeking out unrated games. Me included. And if you look at the review-log, you'll notice it makes up the vast majority of current reviews.
There are more reviews from them still for buzzing or popular games simply because they played them additionally for their leisure.

And the way you describe it an unrated game would be an average game .. so where does the unrated = bad come from?

It's a wild idea to think unrated would mean bad anyhow .. I mean .. why would you even do that? You wouldn't know whether it's good, certainly, and rather play something with a good rating to be safe, but it won't make them appear as bad games.
Do you see people treating them as that? Or do you view unrated as bad yourself?
Not being played by many does not equal being a bad play.

Either way, there are many who strive to rate the majority of unrated games, and while we'll inevitable have trouble keeping up with everything, I appreciate the system for what it does.



.. lastly... every and any download-less version will be tagges as unrated first and foremost. You need at least a playable version to be able to have an actual review, and a review will confirm the effort to have actually made a game.
People already get MS for the existance of this idea, as Liberty stated, but you'd skip a step by applying this reasoning.

"Bad" unrated games already benefit from the "benefit of the doubt", doing those more good wouldn't sit well with me.
Good and average games will certainly eventually get the rating they deserve.
Honestly, the last few years have had a bumper crop of reviews and the majority of them are for then-unrated games because we cater our review events towards them. We push people in the review events to go after the unrated games because we want them to get love and people run after them. One event had bounty posters for older games with no reviews and let's not forget the Secret Santa events where people can sign up and ask for reviews (the most common present) for their games.

Hell, there are topics by reviewers looking for games to review and some of them stipulate no-star/review games. There's no stigma to having no reviews, it's just a natural fact of putting up a game. If you can't find someone to review your game, just ask around, do a review swap, check out the review threads and write a blog post on your game page asking. Someone, somewhere, will want some more MS to do so~


author=Kylaila
.. lastly... every and any download-less version will be tagges as unrated first and foremost. You need at least a playable version to be able to have an actual review, and a review will confirm the effort to have actually made a game.
People already get MS for the existance of this idea, as Liberty stated, but you'd skip a step by applying this reasoning.

"Bad" unrated games already benefit from the "benefit of the doubt", doing those more good wouldn't sit well with me.
Good and average games will certainly eventually get the rating they deserve.

This puts it a bit better - basically the MS you get for a game isn't for a GAME, it's for the game page itself. Only after a download is uploaded and played can it even be eligible for the multiplier, until then it cannot be rated. It exists outside of the realm of ratings. The MS for a game page is flagged for addition when the game page goes live - not when a download is added.

Ok. I'll try to channel my question.

The issue is not about unrated games not being reviewed. I understand what Liberty says about reviewing unrated games. I also follow that way of thinkning in my own reviews.

As Kylaila said, Makerscore isn't a grail or whatever. In normal life, or even here in RMN, it may become almost irrelevant (in which case why should it exist anyway? It HAS to be important for something, right?). It's just a way to measure the contribution of a member to the community. Of course just for developing and sharing a game then there is some contribution, which traduces to MS.

The question is, and I'll just use an example and stick to the definition, why should a "Poor" (1 star rating) game should be considered as a more valuable contribution to the community than a unrated game? So the point is in this concept (which is reflected in the MS) and not in any stigma or pity for unrated games. Just for sake of clarity, I have found precious jewels in unrated games more often than in 4+ star buzzing games.

Probably you have already thought about it before and have an answer. As this is a curious fact for me, I would like to know that answer.
Because you're not getting the initial MS for a game. You're getting it for a game page. There's a small difference. The additional MS is based on your game in the form of multipliers.

You get an ice-cream - you get a scoop with the cone but the toppings depend on how much you paid.
You begin your life with muscles - the more you work out the stronger you get. You never lose your muscles completely - they're still muscles, but how well they work depends on how much you put into them.

Understand now?
That's a valid approach, but you are missing a piece.
First this MS would be, as Liberty stated, for setting up a gamepage - not necessarily with a download - think all those games under development.

MakerScore rewards you for making things, duh.
Alright, we got that, you make a game, you add a download, you get a meager bit of MS. Sure, not much, but it's there.

Why in the world then would you reduce your MakerScore by getting your first review should your game be worse than average?
Your game got more value, even if this value is contributed by someone else - you got a proper review for it, stating pros and cons about it and how it comes together so people know what to expect and have recommendations for some and a warning sign for others.

Yes, you can already lose makerscore by changes in your reviewscore, but those are usually just slight changes to balance how good your game is deemed to be.

Yes, you will also get lots lots more score after your game got "officially" reviewed - it was deemed worthy, it was found and now put onto a rank. Will a rating make it any better than it was before? Surely not, but it will make it more noticeable and your gamepage as a whole more detailed, more "complete".

I agree that a game deserves their boost if it's done alright, but that's why I keep reviewing. Developers will know how much they've been doing.

We all know how little impact MS actually has after a certain point, but the other consequence of changing this order would be punishing people for getting a review, which is wild, or making a review obselete to the value of your gamepage in terms of MS (since the majority of games is about average).
It would benefit those the most who haven't actually finished their game, because they can't get a review for it.
M-u-s-c-l-e-s

M-u-l-t-i-p-l-i-e-r-s

Let me put this another way. You have a base stat in a game. When you equip a weapon it will multiply by that base stat. Stronger weapons will give you larger amounts of strength and weaker weapons will give you less of a boost but it will always be more than your base stat because that is the base. The base never changes. It stays the same, always, and your strength is only ever enhanced by equipping a weapon.

0 stars does not mean bad. 0 stars does not mean good. 0 stars does not mean average. 0 stars means the content of the game is unknown and falls outside of the perameters of measured quality. It means the game is both horribad and amazaballs, that it is both mediocre as fuck and incredible in all ways. It has no defined measure thus it gains no multiplier.

Reviews give multipliers, not actual MS. A bad game is still a game that has been given a multiplier. An un-multiplied game is an outlier and does not count within the scale. I don't know how to make that clearer.

We don't give MS based on what the game may or may not be like, but just that it exists.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Your logic makes no sense. If the content of the game is unknown then, best guess, it's probably average. Multipliers can be less than 1. A game's first review being 0.5 stars would give it a 0.2x makerscore multiplier.

You're not designing a game with stats here and justifying why it's fun. You're designing a marketing system and justifying why it's fair.
It really boils down to with thousands of games available, the chances a game will get even 1 review greatly reduced, unless there was a lot of hype built up around the game beforehand, and even then that's not a guarantee as I see a lot of games with pages upon pages of feedback but no reviews.

There's also the mindset from developers and players alike that if a game already has a review and there's nothing more to add that will change the score, why should somebody bother to post an additional review. I had one developer get a bit defensive that too many reviews could hurt their chances of building hype for a potential remake and was trying to discourage people from leaving reviews.

Also, this really isn't a case of a game being unknown if it doesn't have a review. Sure, it could be a part of the issue. But there are good known games that also suffer from a lack of reviews, because people just don't care enough to review games anymore.

There's really only two options I see here:

1. Encourage more reviews. This has been discussed in length before, and there's really no easy fix to this. The people who like to review games will continue to do so, but they can't be expected to play and review everything, especially with the amount of games that comes in each day; and those who don't care enough won't.

2. Make MS for reviews about the reviewer and not about the developer. By this, I mean continue to reward the reviewer with MS for every review that gets submitted and approved, but don't give MS to a developer based on a review somebody else did (especially since reviews are opinionated and subject to bias that may not properly reflect the game's good and bad points). MS is already given (I believe) to the featured games (in the spotlight); getting there should be rewarding enough for a developer.
Yeah I kind of wish I asked WIP why he decided to tie MS with the game's average score.

author=LockeZ
Your logic makes no sense. If the content of the game is unknown then, best guess, it's probably average.
What is the rationale for making the assumption that it's probably average?
Pages: first 12 next last