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Exeunt Omnes
A game of strategic sophistry. Convince or crush the teenage girl who wants to end your reign of evil.
A game of strategic sophistry. Convince or crush the teenage girl who wants to end your reign of evil.
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Opinion: Stop Rating Demos, It's Unfair...To Completed Games
Adon, you are assuming that people who don't even read reviews before ignoring a 3.5 (or 2.5, for that matter) star game would give relevant feedback on a demo. I'm not really convinced by this.
It's generally easy enough, from the title and the first few lines of a review, to know whether A) the demo might be worth trying after all (because it caters to my tastes if not to the reviewer's) or B) the reviewer is just being pretentious or hateful.
This minimal effort is the difference between random visitors who are pure consumers and care only about stars, and community members who may actually be helpful critiques. Apart from some hurt feelings (which are a factor, sure), I have yet to see how the system is so broken.
It's generally easy enough, from the title and the first few lines of a review, to know whether A) the demo might be worth trying after all (because it caters to my tastes if not to the reviewer's) or B) the reviewer is just being pretentious or hateful.
This minimal effort is the difference between random visitors who are pure consumers and care only about stars, and community members who may actually be helpful critiques. Apart from some hurt feelings (which are a factor, sure), I have yet to see how the system is so broken.
RMN Secret Santa 2014
Americana Dawn
Well you're investing a very small sum in return for the hope of (virtual) goods ;) Amusingly enough, if we did not expect any return, it would become a charity to support poor gamedevs in their lifestyle and we might do it out of goodwill or out of principle whether or not they finish their games. Anyway, that's a bit beyond the point.
Americana Dawn
Thanks unity and sorry if that sounded like I was taking the moral high ground. I completely understand why someone would draw a line and I think it's a good thing to know where to stop taking risks for yourself ;)
author=SnowOwlUnfortunately that's called being an investor, a publisher or an employer, and it's quite likely to happen next time you hire someone. So far, I find it kind of impressive how rarely I've been utterly disappointed by indie gamedevs compared to other people I've given money to do stuff, although that may have been a streak of luck.
You're basically paying to get disappointed.
Americana Dawn
And now it's Greenlit.
Echoes of Eternea Dungeon Panic! is the worst offender here since the team pretty much just quit to do their webcomic instead (and very unapologetically, at that). The first one should not really count as a loss since you got a refund, but I do understand how you may feel about that sort of projects now.
Honestly, while a demo would have been a proof of goodwill, I kind of agree with Darken that it wouldn't have been much more reassurance about the team's ability to complete the project.
As for the general tone of this thread, I feel that informing other people about potential risks is a good thing, not wanting to take those risks yourself is fine, but actively discouraging others from supporting a peer out of unrelated experiences and lack of evidence is harsh. I see where y'all are coming from, but still.
It's a small community, anyone of us may someday benefit from a touch of leniency and optimism and willingness to take a crapshoot (just as we may learn from each other's mistakes).
author=unityI see, I guess
RAiN (sent out refunds), Dungeon Panic! (indefinite hiatus), Echoes of Eternia (was supposed to be finished over a year ago and shows no signs of nearing completion).
Honestly, while a demo would have been a proof of goodwill, I kind of agree with Darken that it wouldn't have been much more reassurance about the team's ability to complete the project.
As for the general tone of this thread, I feel that informing other people about potential risks is a good thing, not wanting to take those risks yourself is fine, but actively discouraging others from supporting a peer out of unrelated experiences and lack of evidence is harsh. I see where y'all are coming from, but still.
It's a small community, anyone of us may someday benefit from a touch of leniency and optimism and willingness to take a crapshoot (just as we may learn from each other's mistakes).
Americana Dawn
author=unity
Forgive me if I'm showing my ignorance, but have any of these Kickstarter indie RPG projects ever resulted in a completed game? I backed a couple of them a few years ago and even though they reached their funding goals, they never completed anything.
What games were those? So far I've had no bad experience of the sort with KS, though I guess I do tend to back slightly bigger projects on average.
Oh well, guess I'll still back this one, just in case. Even just helping someone out there live the dream may be worth it.
Opinion: Stop Rating Demos, It's Unfair...To Completed Games
Both you and I probably belong to the category of people who actually read reviews, which is not the entire population. That being said, stars do help detect really good or bad games and the measure of consensus about them in a single glance. All kinds of unfairness that may result from a scoring system can plausibly be avoided altogether by a very simple measure: the appropriate filtering of games (by genre, completion, length, good and bad traits...) so that those very different items are actually not in competition for our attention.
Overall, I could get behind an option for each game (whatever its state of completion) to make its score private or public, though I really think we give such a high weight to scores only because of years of Pavlovian conditioning by a terrible school system :P
Overall, I could get behind an option for each game (whatever its state of completion) to make its score private or public, though I really think we give such a high weight to scores only because of years of Pavlovian conditioning by a terrible school system :P
Opinion: Stop Rating Demos, It's Unfair...To Completed Games
As an afterthought:
I guess one way to try to go around it would be to further divide the first purpose you mention into two different aims: evaluation and diffusion, the first being less relevant for demos while the second one is actually important for feedback (and hype building I guess). But even then, it's not completely obvious.
"Pure" product evaluation is well separated from feedback for AAA games because there is no overlap between consumers and contributors, and few consumers are interested in versions < 1.0. It's less convincing for our community, or even for indie games in general (and open software too).
Another equivalent could be found in episodic material, including games that are released that way. Reviews for episodes in TV series cannot work exactly like movie reviews, especially as the TV series may very well be discontinued by producers before their intended conclusion, and it gets worse when the feedback loop between the making and the reviewing is even stronger, like in our format.
I guess one way to try to go around it would be to further divide the first purpose you mention into two different aims: evaluation and diffusion, the first being less relevant for demos while the second one is actually important for feedback (and hype building I guess). But even then, it's not completely obvious.
"Pure" product evaluation is well separated from feedback for AAA games because there is no overlap between consumers and contributors, and few consumers are interested in versions < 1.0. It's less convincing for our community, or even for indie games in general (and open software too).
Another equivalent could be found in episodic material, including games that are released that way. Reviews for episodes in TV series cannot work exactly like movie reviews, especially as the TV series may very well be discontinued by producers before their intended conclusion, and it gets worse when the feedback loop between the making and the reviewing is even stronger, like in our format.
Opinion: Stop Rating Demos, It's Unfair...To Completed Games
Disclaimer: Sorry, I have the nasty habit of editing my post right after posting it, because I tend to write things too fast for my own good.
I have reverted my post above and added the details here.
I would say mainly two things:
- it is especially important to help people notice a very promising demo and thus give feedback to its author.
- if unstarred reviews are good enough to help an audience find good demos, then they are good enough to find good games too and stars are entirely irrelevant, complete game or not.
I admit that the second point can be mitigated a bit since people willing to give feedback are more likely to make the effort of at least browsing the reviews. But the problem remains that the mechanisms that make high-rated games easy to find would also be useful to find demos with a lot of potential.
I have reverted my post above and added the details here.
I would say mainly two things:
- it is especially important to help people notice a very promising demo and thus give feedback to its author.
- if unstarred reviews are good enough to help an audience find good demos, then they are good enough to find good games too and stars are entirely irrelevant, complete game or not.
I admit that the second point can be mitigated a bit since people willing to give feedback are more likely to make the effort of at least browsing the reviews. But the problem remains that the mechanisms that make high-rated games easy to find would also be useful to find demos with a lot of potential.
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