RADNEN'S PROFILE

@Aqua: A tree is on the mountainside... That doesn't look quite right. And bushes in the water...

author=LockeZ
I'm not saying it's okay - it's definitely not. It's just fucking weird. It makes me wonder what the hell they planned to get out of it. What was the point?

On Desura you can sell your game for money. Perhaps that was the pirate's intention?

author=PentagonBuddy

author=Radnen
A beginner will tend to use RTP, while an advanced user will make their own graphics and an intermediate is expected to tweak/modify the graphics. This can be seen as encouragement?

This would only encourage the association of CUSTOM GRAPHICS/MUSIC SYSTEM~ = good game. That is a terrible association.

Alright, I wasn't really thinking about good games that don't necessarily have custom graphics. Advanced users do tend to map better; this I guess is a better metric. Indra, I'll completely skip your rant. :)

author=PentagonBuddy
And "quality" is such a nebulous, subjective, generally hard-to-define thing that I think skewed reviews would only cloud it further.

Okay, I'm going to switch my brain on.

If quality were subjective, many professional fields would be obsolete. No, quality implies a metric of 'completeness and richness or excellence'. It's purely objective as per it's definition; the word is also a social construct. Completeness is a sound and definitive metric and the second one more subjective. However, one knows when quality work had been done by comparing the product to other products of similar kind. Therefore quality is also well-defined.

When you create beginner, intermediate and advanced levels you are trying to imply states to the metric; "A beginner has these qualities, intermediate these, etc." The hard part and what is open to interpretation is what exactly constitutes these states? What are their exact qualities? The word "exact" here is hard to use, because as a metric, quality is a 'comparable metric' it's not defined over a set for "less-than and equal to" or "greater-than and equal to". The quality is well defined, but not complete. No two products can be of equal quality unless it's the same thing in which case quality is a moot point.

In reality our brains tend to be super-sleuths and we do create loose definitions for beginner, intermediate and advanced. What else defines the featured games if not for quality? At one point when you create a "beginner" tag with regard to quality, you bite the bullet. There is no exact location for "beginner" but there is one with respect to the other levels of quality. A good logician would know where, while a poor logician comes to the conclusion that "quality" is subjective, and get confused.

I'm by no means a good logician. I have no clue exactly where to put "beginner" so it's best to entirely not do this, and skewed reviews. In fact it's better to keep things where they are. So I'm going to shut up now. :)

About ranking/segregating the community. I actually do this myself, and I'm sure others have done so as well. When I see projects, I judge them by their screenshots or by playing them. It's true, but I do it all the time. It's really my only way of knowing their competency levels.

If someone tags themself as a beginner it wouldn't really change the way in which I view their game, honestly.

Though if there was a "beginner league" a benefit would be "skewed reviews" where a 4 star beginner league is different from a 4 star advanced or intermediate league. Beginners would have more leniency in the art/sounds. A beginner will tend to use RTP, while an advanced user will make their own graphics and an intermediate is expected to tweak/modify the graphics. This can be seen as encouragement?