Another LD over, not sure how I feel about my scores this time – on the one hand, the scores are a mess, on the other, my game was a mess so I wasn’t going to take them too seriously anyway.

There has, however, been another epidemic of unjustified all 1/all 5 votes, and as the number of entrants grows this is sure to keep happening more and more. On the bright side, while I was a bit busy/lazy this time round, there’s 5 people who managed to rate all/nearly all the games (someone even managed 101%! ), and 21 who rated at least 25% of them. It’s possible that those figures include the people responsible for giving nonsense ratings, but even discounting them there’s a good enough base there that I think it might be a good idea to set up some kind of volunteer judging panel who could be trusted to rate and comment on a certain percentage of games (with each game distributed evenly amongst the panel) and give the ratings a bit more meaning. I feel a panel like that should be somewhat selective, but also in some ways more open – for example, someone could be allowed on through past LD experience (entering and rating), but even non-entrants with reviewing experience could join too – basically the LD organiser’s choice, or perhaps open to a community vote. Seeing as a number of indie game sites/blogs cover LD entries already I’d like to think a few would be happy to help out with that, and external help with rating would also reduce the pressure on those entrants who feel obliged to rate but would rather focus on developing their LD entry further while it’s still fresh.

That said, even if a few spoil it for the rest, I like that the current system gives everyone involved a voice and it might just not be LD without that.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 at 5:02 am and is filed under LD #20 - It's Dangerous to go Alone! Take This!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.