Reddit
Again about voting
Every now and then I see someone tackle the discussion about voting and results, after thinking for a while here are my thoughts.
One of the main problem (right next to small number of votes == possible better scores) is that some voters like to give good ratings, while some doesn’t. You can imagine someone being a jerk and giving bad ratings to good games, and the opposite, someone who is way too nice and gives good rating even to bad games. I noticed this on my last entry (LD#22), where I quit halfway through and still some people gave medium ratings to my game.
To remedy this, maybe we could give ratings based on other rating by the voter. If someone gives a lot of games 2-3 stars, but gives a game 5 stars, it must mean that that game is somewhat better than the rest. On the other hand, if someone goes around giving 5 stars to a bunch of games, it’s possible that those games are not really worth 5 stars.
Two possible workaround would be: calculating the rating based on the position of the game in relation to other games the voter voted (if he votes for 3 games, giving 2, 3 and 4 stars, their real rating would be 1, 3 and 5 stars, or something like that) or letting the voter order his voted games from best to worst. I’m not sure if this would work out, and I know you guys will be able to find a lot of flaws in it 
Another possible solution to the voting problem, and this would mean an overhaul of the voting system, would be to separate voting in phases. Every phase would last for a week, and during that week the voter would have to vote on 10 games for his votes to be considered. The first phase would have all games, randomly given to the voters. The next phase would have just a fraction of the games (something like the 500 best voted games), the third phase even less games (for example, 100) and the last phase would have the top 10 games to be voted. I believe this would make voting something a lot more exciting than just picking random games and hoping they don’t suck, and would also make people vote more, especially on the last phase where almost everyone would come to vote, since the games are somewhat guaranteed to be good.
The solution seems to be to normalize the scores – any score I give is divided by the average score that I give. Then a typical normalized score from anyone would be 1.
If I give out 100 1s and a single 5, then everyone I gave a 1 to would receive a normalized score of about 1, and the guy who got a 5 would get a score much higher than the average.
I really like the idea of the rounds, that would kick allot of new life into voting. The idea i have would be everyone gets a set number of stars (say 50) We then choose who and how many of these stars to give to who, (say 10 games at 5 stars or 50 at 1).
That would be alright if the voter would be presented with a random game. But I could easily see the more popular submitters getting a lot higher number of votes when compared to first-timers
Either way, I think the best way is to make people vote on a random game. This way the competition is less biased, since some submitters don’t even advertise their game in irc or elsewhere, possibly leaving gems floating in the bulk of less than average games.
i got an idea… (STAY OUT OF THIS JELLONATOR!)
when i go to play on the gamemaker website, each and every game has a “review” where somewon (an admin or a well-respected user) “reviews” a game,where he just doesn’t just rate a game in one category,
but over 5 different ones e.g. music,gameplay, graphics,interface, etc… instead of an overall rating,thus affecting the overall greatly. for example,a puzzle game gets reviewed by one who likes a game with good graphics,and give the game a good rating on the graphics,without changing the overall rating totally.
The main issue is you dont really have time to give a game a rating based on anything but first impressions. got home late, crappy dinner, boss being an ass, rated 9 games, guess what happens if #10 isnt dead obvious
frustration, bad rating