CONCERNING THE GAME FRONT-PAGE DOWNLOAD UPDATES

author=narcodis
You seem to be missing the point of the "buzz". We don't want to just feature whatever is being talked about on the front page, we want to feature things people are finding GOOD.

Buzz seems like a pretty decent way to help with that. Quality games, put our most shining gems up front.

A negative review should be the only exception to the buzz thing, as it is meant to detract viewers. Final Tear 3 is a perfect example of the kind of game we DONT want on the front page. When people visit RMN and see bad games on the front page, that hurts RMN as a whole. To reiterate my point, bad games don't need attention. To further go along with the points you made, if you want to have games in-production get more attention, you have to make sure that games who don't deserve the attention they're getting are stealing the spotlight.

Also, I think kentona intends to reset the "buzz" of things once a week. maybe there could be "most popular in the past week/month/all time" or something like that.

Also, I'm hoping RMN4 is still planning to have the "latest" games up on the front page, too (albeit, not the focus :x )

good =/= buzz. It might be what you think of when you hear the word "buzz" but when I hear it, I think of activity. I prefer Kentona's original explanation of buzz:

"So, just to reiterate, activity == buzz under this system. So yeah, if someone makes a good blog post that generates a good discussion, buzz is generated!. On the flipside, if someone writes a review that it ripped to shreds, buzz skyrockets!"

Personally, I don't see a problem with that. Final Tear was a great example of how buzz would have worked. EVERYONE was talking about Final Tear. But unless you happened to get linked to the argument via an irc msg or catch a "latest post" post about it on the front page, you probably had no reason to look at it. Buzz would have solved that because it would have gotten a great buzz score and it should have since it was "what people were buzzing about" for those few weeks.

I don't mean to pick on hero's realm here, but even if you reset the counter every week or month or whatever, games like that WILL receive the spotlight for buzz every single time. This is a game that 16,000 views just last month. There are other games that have just a fraction of that, that should be featured on the buzz.

I don't want to see the same 6 games rotated in and out of buzz every single week just because the community likes them the best.

author=narcodis
You're missing the point entirely. I'm not sure explain this to you. I understand what buzz is. You're not understanding why it's being put into place.

The Buzz system isn't designed to just tell us where people are posting... we have the "latest posts" for that. It is being set into place in order to help sift through all the games and bring out the best projects to the spotlight. It's quality control. If we just let the games who got the most comments on the front page, it would be a constant uphill battle for games to get noticed.

Final Tear 3 got enough attention. It was on the front page for a long time, had a few reviews. But have you ever fucking played that game? It's god-awful. I mean, seriously. This is what we want to -prevent-.

I'm not retarded or missing anything. You keep acting like it in your posts, but I don't need help to comprehend. I'm perfectly capable of understanding (and disagreeing with) your idea of what "buzz" should be.

You have your idea of how it should be used or "why it's being put into place" - as an automated quality spotlight and I have mine - as a feed of what's fresh and happening in the community. Where the action is.

It is my opinion that quality be featured in other ways. For example, with good review scores, or for all you younger facebook generation thumbs ups or likes or w/e.

In my opinion tools that measure quantity are not the best way to measure and feature quality or "good" games but it is a great way to show where the action is. I have no problem with featuring good stuff, but I feel this system would be better used for spotlighting activity and conversation stirring content.

So, I'm afraid you are the one that doesn't understand. I know what you mean and want and I don't give a fuck. I'm expressing my opinion that I want it to be used differently than the way you do and that does not warrant a condescending assumption that I am unable to comprehend you :)

btw, while I am posting I should try to contribute instead of just going around in another circle with narcodis.

I think a good way of preventing hype from simply measuring "cool pic man" posts on screens or "subbed" posts on old profiles is to only count the comments that occur on content submitted THAT WEEK.

In other words, even if that Ill Will or Legionwood or Americana Dawn screen looks totally awesome, if the content on it is not new, comments on that content shouldn't count towards buzz.

ex If we are calculating buzz for August 9th - 15th, then only comments on blog posts, images, etc. posted between 8/9 and 8/15 should count (content and comments must occur in that week, not just comments that week on old content). That way, buzz isn't falsely elevated by all the content that has a huge ongoing stream of people showing up at their profile anyway.

author=narcodis
Well, agree to disagree. Having yet another system of "where people are posting comments" on the front page will not solve any of the problems with RMN's front page though. Like I said before, negative reviews receive comments not on the game itself, but simply on the content of the review. Why should a game receive more attention if someone is trying to address the author of the review? It's counter productive.

No it won't fix everything but it will help to promote games with interesting blogs, nice screens that disappear as soon as the next guy decides to post 4 images at once, etc. There are already some individual sections for writing, images, etc. but this would look at the big picture and promote games that actively utilize all the features of the site with content on a regular basis.

It could also encourage people to post positive/discourage people from posting negative comments on each because people will be giving buzz every time they comment. In a way, you would vote for a person to have buzz by making comments. If you don't want a game to receive buzz, you won't be posting comments.

I think that would cut down on the unnecessary negativity and if it doesn't then the people criticizing the games have only themselves to blame for making shitty games get front page exposure.

Hero's Realm: 345072
Legionwood: Tale Of The Two Swords: 252863
Alter A.I.L.A. Genesis: 223180
Forever's End: 197712
Vacant Sky Vol. 1: Contention: 151215
RPG Maker 20XX Engine: 119280

There's no "views this month" stat but with some quick math each of these got 10-20 thousand views in the past month.

Even if the counter is reset, they'll prob get another 10,000-20,000 views next month. Some might have a lot of discussion and buzz but not necessarily.

The points given for each thing is kind of messed up and shouldn't be based on rarity of the type of consumer contribution - view, comment, review, etc.

Picking on heroes realm again, that game had 16,000 views (16k points), 381 downloads (9k points). In March and April it got 4.5 star reviews. Those months would have another 9k points. It keeps getting reviewed even though its been around. I wouldn't be surprised if someone reviews it this month. Even though it didn't have any talk/comments this month it would prob be up there on the buzz-meter despite being older, featured, and isn't actually generating any fresh buzz. Again, it'd be like putting ff7 up. That game should be displayed but not permanently for buzz. Display it for quality or popularity sure but not for buzz. Unfortunately, just wiping won't prevent the same handful of games from getting stuck on the buzz like that.

I don't think reviews should be worth as much as they are in the proposed point system but they should never cause negative buzz. Btw, 10 reviews is mad buzz. I'd suggest displaying both, the double 5 star one for quality somewhere on the page and the 10 review one for buzz.

I wouldn't say quality is entirely subjective. There's a clear cut difference between Rise of the Third Power and like.... Fire Woman. No one can dispute that. The REAL problem with showcasing quality is that our rate of even above average games is pretty iffy. I mean you look at http://www.pixeljoint.com/ and click on their weekly showcase. They have tons of undeniably good content, thing is those probably took 5-10 hours to make or even less. Not the same as a game, which can take YEARS. One of the problems with the featured game is like, once Hero's Realm or Ara Fell or w/e is featured there's real hunting to do when it comes to THIS MONTH'S HOTTEST PICK.

One thing to note though, is that there's a ton of qualitative development. A lot of people complain about mockups and pretty screenshots but at least they are relative content of interest. Idk where I'm going with that but I thought I'd just point out the issues of having a magical QUALITY GAMES list on the front page.

I would just make it generate a lower amount. Negative points just seems extreme given how many of the low score reviews are seemingly written by trolls.

Also, there's the fact that a review for a demo could completely hurt the full release, even if the entire game has been retooled since the previous version. The last thing we want is more elitist bs going on here, and I think that's what some people are afraid of in this case.

Edit: It's too bad this topic isn't getting more people discussing it, I'd be interested to know what a greater part of the community is thinking.

Just 2 spectacular examples every one must have in mind while dicussing this topic : "Heartache 101" and "Underworld4"(2 weeks ago)........
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Too much stuff on the frontpage to the point where you can scroll down forever really makes the info itself less important and more jarring. It's called subtractive design.