THE PUBLIC SHOULD VOTE FOR THE NEXT FEATURED GAME

I don't care about mediocre, underlooked games when I see the front page.

A popular game doesn't have to be awesome and an underlooked game doesn't have to be mediocre.

I understand where you (and a lot other people) are coming from, though. When people see "Featured Games", they instantly think of universally popular, crazy-batshit-insane-awesome games. Perhaps the name "Featured Games" is a mislabeling given what it's currently trying to do?

author=Craze
I don't care about mediocre, underlooked games when I see the front page.

Come on Craze, you should know better to say something like this. For example, the very purpose of my TVTropes effort was to get great, overlooked games the exposure they deserve.

Feldschlacht IV

Craze
I don't care about mediocre, underlooked games when I see the front page.

Come on Craze, you should know better to say something like this. For example, the very purpose of my TVTropes effort was to get great, overlooked games the exposure they deserve.

I want people to stay on the site. Phucking Phantasy of Phate is not helpful; a finished Chronology of the Last Era just might be.

And again (still?) people are completely misunderstanding what RMN's "Featured Games" is about: It's to promote obscure, under-appreciated games that the staff feels the community might enjoy if it's given extended exposure. Already popular games largely do not have anything to do with RMN's "Featured Games", AAG's promotion was probably the odd one instead of the other way.

As I can see, there's a couple factors at work here with this problem:
1. A conflict of interest between staffers and members; the former wants to give publicity to under-appreciated games, the latter wants to promote very popular games. This point needs to be addressed swiftly before all else.
2. A gross misunderstanding of what RMN's "Featured Games" is even about, stemming both from the staff's obscurity regarding the title's attainment conditions and the very name itself as I pointed out above.
3. A complete lack of community-created reviews which could help staffers potentially distinguish truly bad games from the rest. If Legendary Legends really was such a horrible piece of shit and people had shown it with seethingly-low-score reviews beforehand it probably wouldn't have been picked to begin with.
4. So much pointless bickering that it begs the question whether RMN as a community even deserves something as flashy as "Featured Games".

Honestly, this topic feels like it's going in circles.

you know KA, last time i checked "popular" and "quality" didn't mean the same thing.

I answered this at the top of this page. It was addressed to Craze, but it'll still adequately answer your query.

popularity is very relative. what is considered a 'lot' of popularity for most of the games on the site- couple hundred downloads, maybe even 1k downloads- is honestly not a lot of people, even in this (relatively small) community.
eyes without a face just broke 1,000 downloads recently. they certainly didn't come from this site, nor the english speaking community. YDS worked her butt off advertising us to the non-english speaking communities, and that's where all those hits came from. not many people in this community know about it.

I don't even check RMN's front page or game pages all that much and I still heard of Eyes Without A Face through word of mouth and that Halloween movie contest. Coupled with the fact that YDS put a lot of effort into advertising that was well-received, that seems to be relatively popular already to me. Not downplaying YDS's effort, just so you know.

Meanwhile, I had never even heard of Legendary Legends before it was featured. For the record, Legendary Legends is an example case of Your Mileage May Vary. It was received well by some and it was received badly by some. All in all though, it wasn't such a bad piece of shit game as the drama made it out to be and, given some people genuinely liked the game, the staff picking LL for Featured Games to promote under-appreciated games seems appropriate.

shouldn't the point of the featured game be to bring the experience to the viewing audience of this site?

The point the staff is trying to make here is: Why promote an already well-promoted game through Featured Games when there's potentially other, unknown gems lying around in RMN's game database? Honestly, half of this probably wouldn't be an issue if Featured Games was instead called something more neutral like "Staff's Picks" or objective-accurate like "Unknown Gems".

eyes without a face got pretty soundly passed on by english language speakers.

Perhaps it simply didn't interest them? Seeing as proper advertising was done that's about the only reason I can think of.
EDIT: RMN's horrible track record with reviews should also be taken into account. 3 reviews isn't a whole lot no matter how you look at it and I doubt it has to do with popularity.

i'm saying that 3 or 4 guys on RMN saying 'feature EWAF' does not equate to 'popular in the english language community'

I'll concede that you are correct when we're only looking at the presented numbers. The potential problem here is that not everyone who found EWAF great may be enclined to come on to the forums and say "I vote EWAF for FG!". Alternately, if the vote was PMed to a staff member, as kentona has been suggesting, we'll never know the actual count. Consequently, I don't think it's wise to gauge its popularity solely on visible "I vote for this!" posts.

well, yeah. I kind of do all that already.

-I organize a "staff picks" article annually
-featured game choice can be influenced by the public (send me a pm)
-I list hidden gems in the snews monthly-ish
-I list wavemakers in the snews monthly-ish

author=Strangeluv
Why can't staff pick a few games then, as someone else suggested, and let people vote on them

because its not a popularity contest.

author=KingArthur
As I can see, there's a couple factors at work here with this problem:
1. A conflict of interest between staffers and members; the former wants to give publicity to under-appreciated games, the latter wants to promote very popular games. This point needs to be addressed swiftly before all else.
2. A gross misunderstanding of what RMN's "Featured Games" is even about, stemming both from the staff's obscurity regarding the title's attainment conditions and the very name itself as I pointed out above.

Here it is:

author=Darken
I'm not sure what's the stance on whether or not we should stick to staff picks/communitypicks/robotoverlordpicks but... The way I see it, there are three types of games featured: Popular, Obscure, Event(Contest games). I think we need to acknowledge these aspects. But take out subjective quality for a moment and focus on what people don't have a problem with when you just look at popularity/innovation (as objective as possible).

Featured games that aren't likely to piss people off:

Popular (or once popular) + Lack of novelty (Hero's Realm, Legacies of Dondoran, Starless Umbra)
Popular + Novelty (AAG, Space Funeral, Wilfred the Hero, Quintessence,)
Obscure + Novelty (The Reconstruction, Its good to be a pirate, Any game not made in RM lol)
Contest Game (Seriously regardless of quality, no one has ever had a problem with these)

Featured games that ARE likely to piss people off:

Obscure + Lack of novelty (Fable of Heroes, Legendary Legend)

Conclusion: Even if an obscure original game sucks in the majority's opinion; people won't have a problem with it because the screenshot looks cool and they don't play games anyway.

Non Joking Conclusion: Wait... that's basically right ^

So, in the future, we will be looking for Popular (or once popular) + Lack of novelty games, Popular + Novelty games, Obscure + Novelty, Contest Game. all subjective, of course, which leads to...

author=halibabica

from Strangeluv
I am sorry your job is so difficult. Maybe you are not fit to do it.

Well, gee, we'd better fire all the other staff members then, too. I'm not the only one who doesn't have time to play 200 shitty games a month in the hopes of finding one you guys won't hate.

...the answer for which is 1)

3. A complete lack of community-created reviews which could help staffers potentially distinguish truly bad games from the rest. If Legendary Legends really was such a horrible piece of shit and people had shown it with seethingly-low-score reviews beforehand it probably wouldn't have been picked to begin with.

and 2) PM me your suggestions and reasoning behind them.

4. So much pointless bickering that it begs the question whether RMN as a community even deserves something as flashy as "Featured Games".

Honestly, this topic feels like it's going in circles.

I concur.

EDIT:
tl;dr

a) in the future, we will be looking for Popular (or once popular) + Lack of novelty games, Popular + Novelty games, Obscure + Novelty, Contest Game. all subjective, of course.
b) write more reviews
c) PM me your suggestions and reasoning

author=halibabica
I remember a time when Brickroad was a staff reviewer, and they needed me to offset his opinions on some of the features (read: Quintessence). Too bad it's hard to find more people willing to do that sort of thing!

i just noticed this on the previous page.

this is something i would be seriously willing to do. not as a 'staff plant in the audience,' but as a reviewer who could add some perspective that differs from the staff's. i did it with the current featured game, and i would happily do it again.
but hey, my reviewstyle obviously doesn't meet y'all's stringent standards or whatever.