CONCERNING THE GAME FRONT-PAGE DOWNLOAD UPDATES

On the flipside, a game shouldn't be denied attention because it is unknown, otherwise popularity buries it.

If only.

author=Archeia_Nessiah
Maybe add a time span. Like 1 week after the game's upload date can it be bumped up again sort of thing.

I support this method but it has some flaws. Most games release small patches that are pretty much small balance changes or bugfixes while any big updates would take more than a short period of time since the last release. It should be easy to implement and be fully autonomous. The time frame should be longer because it could take a week from release to a bug report to getting fixed and a patched version being uploaded. I'd suggest three weeks to a month to start with, we can always change it later.

There's still the flaw that minor updates shouldn't bring a game back to the front page, a patch after a month is the same as a big update after a month. I can't think of any good method to automate front page downloads while telling the difference, somebody (like the user) would have to specify if it is a minor or major update (read: not-front page and front page material) when adding/changing a download and then we've only climbed one rung. It also hurts iterative releases where a major update may be broken into several different patches (but to be fair this is pretty rare in game development from what I've seen).

Alternative $$$ Solution: Pay money to get your game on the front page! $10 get you a week, $30 get you the month!

Games people are commenting on? I remember suggesting that blogs shouldn't be based on how many blog posts an author should make but how many replies and discussions they generate (the situation is kind of similar to this). I suppose you can make a tally on how many comments + downloads a game gets per month to determine which games people care about.

author=narcodis
I feel like the quality of RMN would improve dramatically if quality control were left up to the userbase, personally.

I don't see what's so wrong about having a "latest games" AND a "most popular games of the past week/month/year/all time". Would it be so bad? Are these things in the works for RMN4?

Problems like game-bumping wouldn't be an issue.

I suggested this before and I'm not sure if anyone remembered it. Sites like Newgrounds, which is also pretty much exactly like RMN; user generated content (but of a different media instead of homebrew RPGs), do this absolutely perfectly.

It's not a new idea and the method has already been perfected by a multitude of sites with user generated content; it works fantastically because the consumers decide what deserves the attention through downloads, comments, reviews, and discussion. There's also space for new content of the moment as well.

what about a porn site

bahleted

I don't think discussion generation is a very accurate way of judging popularity, tbh. I usually turn to subscription numbers for this, as my games with like 4 subscribers somehow tend to generate more discussion than Fragile Hearts, which has significantly more. Let's remember that discussion generation here isn't always of the most positive nature, and so that type of popularity doesn't necessarily equal quality. Just look at some of the reviews and the comments beneath, lots of them don't even talk about the game, but rather the review format or whatever.