NTC3'S PROFILE

Well, this is what's already there. However, here's something a lot of people seem to miss, intentionally or unintentionally: the pages themselves don't matter anywhere near as much as what they're linked to. The ideal state is perfect crosslinking (or "crosswicking", in the site's lingo) whereas every trope listed on the game's page lists that very same game in addition to many others already on there. That's what ultimately gets people to see the page, but since it's obviously very tedious and time-consuming, only the things already popular in the first place are cross-linked to any meaningful degree.

Well, I do tend to make notes directly during the gameplay, much like I do for reviews. Then, there's just experience: these RMN pages a tip of an iceberg when it comes to my total TVT activity over the last couple years. Back then (and now, to a lesser extent), I often managed to create 10-30 trope pages based off of 2-3 reviews and nothing else.

Should we be doing more SNews? Like everyone else said before me, yes, of course! Now...

author=kentona
There is also itch.io there, and Desura.

About that last one? Anyone heard that the Desura's owner has filed for bankruptcy? Now, the site is probably large enough not to close down completely, but there's still plenty to be worried about. (Though it would be quite cool if we somehow got rich enough to buy them out, and instantly get every gaming journalist's attention in process).

Dreams aside, the perception questionnaire. I'm not going address the sillier and obviously untrue points like "fuck resources" or "we only support rm2k3", so that I have more space for the actually interesting ones:

1. We are elitist
3. We are highly critical
5. We have low standards

Well, I think it's obvious to everyone that these points are contradictory enough to describe separate groups of users. I'm probably biased on this count, but 1 and 3 are not strong/prevalent enough to be problematic in any meaningful way. Point 5, though, leads directly to

17. The review system is broken As a rule, it's not, and like many others on here, I have spoken out against introducing rating and what not. It is true, though, that sometimes it seems there are not enough available reviewers. That number of unreviewed games with download is still above 900, though it does thankfully seem to go down recently.

Where it's tied with point 5 is that sometimes a game seems to come out, quickly get a rather positive 3.5-5 star review from some new member and then not get any more attention or reviews. If the person who reviewed it did have low standards and the actual game was more like 2-2.5, then I can see how a visitor who downloaded that game afterwards might form that impression. I've recently been making note of such games with only 1-2 positive reviews, precisely to ensure such phenomenon is not in play.

6. We have a ton of shitty games that "clog" up RMN As I said above, as long as they're adequately reviewed as such, and the users can quickly find more worthwhile games, it's not really a problem, especially if their creators do improve later on.

7. We have a giant boner for 8-bit graphic games Really? I can't recall the last time I saw one on here.

8. We have a boner for Eartbound games Well, if more Earthbound-style means less "awaken the crystals and kill the demon-emperor" games, then it's only a good thing. In fact, the overall ratio could still do with a fair dose of the former.

10. We don't promote good games Well, how much more can a website like that can do? I suppose we could have something like an overall list of best-to-worst (according to reviews) games in descending order, one which also took the overall number of reviews into account, but I'm not sure how practical that would be. TVTropes and YouTube are way more important here on the whole.

14. RMN is dying :'( Alexa says otherwise. With the other cool games now in development, it can only get better.

18. We need to develop and retain young talent Well... it's tempting to reply like Red_Nova to this, but I do find it a little disconcerting how sometimes I seem like the only one who bothers to reply to blogs and such from non-established developers.

Anyway, that's it, I guess.