LOOKING-FOR-GAME FRIENDLINESS

I am not sure about the specifics of your actual suggestions but I am completely in favor of making it easier to find quality games for visitors to play. The question is, of course, who decides what games qualify as "good?"

post=120477
Well, for starters, a game that has no download, is clearly not a quality game.

Not necessarily. Just because a game does not have a download does not mean it is not a quality game. The creator may make a gamepageprofile during the production phase to interest an audience, and plan on providing a download once the he/she deems it ready to do so. Leave the judging to the actual content of the game itself, not the fact that it has a download or not.

I would personally like to see a search option that allows the user to filter games by their download status (that is, if they have one or not).

post=120510
A game with no download is not a quality game. It might be quality but it is definitely not a game.

Well, it's a game, but there is no download to it :(. Unless the definition of 'game' extends to the fact that it may be distributable :/.

So when we see previews of upcoming games in any media, they aren't actually games at all in that point - and there is no reason we should call them games?

I think I'm missing something.

post=120522
In other news, I'm totally fine with segregating not-downloadable games, demos, and completed games into three distinct categories - oh wait, you can already do that in the Games tab.

How do you do that? I know for a fact that not all games In Production have demos. In fact some games labelled "complete" don't have downloads. If you sort by status.

Sorting by Rating probably helps since games usually have to have downloads to be reviewable (though I know that there are a few freaks in the system where the download has been removed after reviews have been written)

So when we see previews of upcoming games in any media, they aren't actually games at all in that point - and there is no reason we should call them games?

If I go into this I could very well say that no there's no games in those media. (though if a magazine comes with a demo disc then that's games). There's presentations OF games and talk ABOUT games and other stuff but no actual games.

I would never open a magazine or turn on the TV and expect to find quality games there because games are usually stored elsewhere. (I say usually, because I guess there are TV-games nowadays and not to mention board/cardgaming magazines with rules in the magazine that will let you play immediately)

I think this is a great idea. It would also be nice if there was a Completed date to go along with the game profiles. That way we could have a Recently Completed list to go along with the Recently Added.

Well of course this thread devolved into an argument over semantics.

I am currently working on an article that will serve as a sort of "Welcome to RMN" sort of deal. In it I will point potential developers to useful resources (kentona and Brick's game design articles) and point people looking for games to a few of the more quality titles on the site. Both lists will updated occasionally as new content gets added, so if you think something belongs on the list but isn't there you can make the argument for it.

post=120500

post=120477
Well, for starters, a game that has no download, is clearly not a quality game.

Not necessarily. Just because a game does not have a download does not mean it is not a quality game. The creator may make a gamepageprofile during the production phase to interest an audience, and plan on providing a download once the he/she deems it ready to do so. Leave the judging to the actual content of the game itself, not the fact that it has a download or not.

I would personally like to see a search option that allows the user to filter games by their download status (that is, if they have one or not).

While that's true, and as a creator of games, I would definitely like for the random visitors to the site who are looking for random games to play to see my gamepage and like what they see enough to stick around and play it when it actually HAS a download... The idea was to filter out quality games from the giant list of crap games/nonplayable games/nondownload games. And the first step in doing that is elimination of the games that don't have any downloads... the games with no game, if you follow.
The next step would be to list the ones with a good review score first (if they have one, so the random visitor can see that at least someone LIKED these games. Next in the list should be games which have no review at all, but still have a download. These should be flagged as 'potentially good games' or something equally positive sounding. They have no review yet, so nobody knows if the game is any good, so the visitor is taking his chances in playing it. Lastly the games that have review scores below 2.5 stars should be listed after the non-reviewed ones. These are games for a niche market, or that needed a lot of improvement, and the random visitor should probably avoid playing them.

Do note that by random visitor I mean like, a person who joined the site (or maybe didn't join, do you have to be registered to download things off here?) specifically to download other games. I'm not one of those people mind you, so this probably isn't EXACTLY what they'd want... but I'd say it's close.

If this is possible using the existing sorting functions that's great, but I have no idea how to do it. And I'm sure a random newb wouldn't either.

I like things just as they are. IMO is pretty easy finding a game you want, a high-rated game, a completed game, etc. I wouldn't change anything.

One part of this is that game ratings are not very uh...good....because there is no consistency in review rubrics/standards. Like I am fairly sure that Solitayre's 1 rating is my 2.5 rating sight unseen.

An okay example is that completely as a player, not a developer, I tried to use the site's "Games" page function to find a fun RMVX game to play. I was looking for the best ones added since I last joined the site. So I searched for all games with a five star rating.

The only game with a five star rating was one I had played before...and it sucked.

When I went to four stars, I got a lot of games returned but I had played most of them before. Likewise I only got a few more games when I went to 3.5 stars. I feel like there have to be good, worthwhile VX games on the site I haven't played but the mechanism for finding them is not ideal. It's not terrible but it's not ideal.

I think there are a lot of games with lower star ratings and they are not all equally bad. I think that even something as simple as upping the ratings to being out of ten rather than out of five might provide more...granularity of coverage.