Ideas about a New Game Rating System

I dislike any rating system, actually, but if we really need one

At least I think that for a like/dislike system a few things are important.

• In my experience, troll rating is much easier with this system and the chances of getting caught are lower. Most troll raters go into the extreme ratings. Like and dislike is harder to check for honesty.

• For this reason I think this system will make it much more important to have a minimum amount of people rating before an actual percentage of likes and dislikes is being calculated. This 1-5 scale was already asking for this. 1x5 and 1x1 is still rating 3. 1 like and 1 dislike is already 50%. As the site is growing I guess we basically can ask for a minimum amount of raters.

• And what will happen to the ratings we already have. There are too many of those to ignore. Is 3-5 going to be "like" and 1-2 to be "dislike"?

• One more reason I insist on a minimum amount of votes is the fact that many games never get the attention they deserve, and if the few ratings they get are also dislikes (given in a trolly manner), then we those games have a score of 0%, and then we can completely forget those games will ever get any attention.

• And after all, no matter if you use a like/dislike, or a 1-5 scale or a 1-10 scale or even 1-100 scale, the ratings are only informative when a lot of people have rated.

I would make it so only featured games by gamejolt have ratings, but separated for gameplay, gfx,music etc. Those ratings are only gamejolt staff made. Ratings for other games - based on time spend in game (data gathered from client ?), on Like button (no dislike button), money earn (for paid games) (and yes money earn not downloaded not copies sold and not times played )

I dislike the idea cause it doesn't improve anything let alone make game rating better. As Jeroen posted above, rating bots won't be stopped by this and instead they would have easier way to spam ratings
I don't have idea on better rating system though I can say that we need better system to promote games to get more people playing the game

Dislike the idea. The 1-5 ratings are okay in my opinion, it gives more feedback if you get a score of e.g. 3 or 4. A simple yes/no system would be useless.

I think I am with gn0me on this one.

I'm not a big fan of any rating system, but I don't think Like/Dislike is a good option either. Let's say a person wanted to give a game 3/5 (he thinks that the game is average). But with the like/dislike system, that person doesn't know anymore is 3/5 more close to like or dislike. I think Steam-like Recommend/Not recommend would work better, but I still wouldn't support that idea.

Woah, lots of feedback! Let me clear up a few things and share some additional thoughts we had.

• Existing rating data wouldn't be thrown away - I guess it would be converted

• We were talking about adding in a review system similar to the way Steam does it. This way we could have general ratings via the like/dislikes and then detailed breakdowns in the reviews section.

  • I know a lot of users like to write lengthy feedback on games, and some may even post video reviews. This way they can post in this format rather than leaving a general comment.

  • We could also pull out these and show the most liked reviews on the game overview page and use those to convince the player to play or buy something.

• What if we didn't show the like/dislike ratios at all? That way people wouldn't be judgemental over the game immediately.

Personally I think generalising the standard rating system and allowing reviews to be more complex breakdowns of a game is a better idea pushing forward with Game Jolt. A review would be a much better form of feedback rather than a rating of 3.

What if we didn't show the like/dislike ratios at all? That way people wouldn't be judgemental over the game immediately.

What would you show then? Only the amount of likes, and a button that shows the like/dislike ratio when pressed?

(I still think "Recommend/Not recommend" is better than like/dislike, because "A of B people recommend the game" sounds better than "A of B people like the game".)

One extra thought:

What about a popularity value? It could be a weighted sum of followers, amount of views and plays and comments, amount of likes/total rating etc. The popularity value could be shown when a user browses games, the game pages could show the "actual data" (i.e. ratings or like/dislike ratio or whatever).

I still think "Recommend/Not recommend" is better than like/dislike

Yeah, it could be called that too! I think we actually mentioned about showing it like this rather than you disliking something. This would probably be a better and more mature way of asking for the user's opinion.

What about a popularity value?

That would be interesting, but again it could get messy. I think using the number of followers for ranking devlogs and ratings for ranking released games would be better ways of ranking. We could use views, plays and comments to determine if something is 'hot', like the current algorithm (but better!).

One thing about recommend/not recommend. If you see really crappy game pages on the site, I want people to feel free to say "I don't want to see games like this". If we can make it more like:

I recommend this/like this
I don't want to see this or didn't like it

A review would be a much better form of feedback rather than a rating of 3.

Brings us back the subject of reviewing again. I am not against it, in fact I would encourage that, but when it comes to reviewing I have been a member of a music site with a rather professionally set up reviewing system. Reviews did have to fill certain standards and people could even be rewarded for writing reviews. Reviews are (if fulfilling these standards) more informative that a rating can ever be (even if you take the average of 1 million + raters).

As I don't wish to revert to threadjacking I can write a full essay on my experiences in a separate thread on reviewing as I've seen both the pros and cons of such a system, since the problems we may face with reviewing can be the same no matter if this site is about music or indie games. A review system is a review system only the details about the system differ.

This way we could have general ratings via the like/dislikes and then detailed breakdowns in the reviews section

If we were to have reviews section, I still prefer voltage to be combined with that instead of like/dislike system. A review with detailed parts and scoring would look nicer if combined with voltage system than like/dislike
OTOH it would look odd if say someone reviews a game saying that it's worth playing etc etc but he/she clicked dislike (cause he/she is honest). With voltage system, he/she could just give rating 3 to the game (meaning the game is good)

I agree with having review idea but I hope it would allow editing posted review (we can't edit our comment BTW). That would allow reviewers to add or edit some stuffs

I recommend this/like this
I don't want to see this or didn't like it

Would those be put in single option? it would look odd if someone clicked I recommend this but at same time he/she clicked I don't want to see this.
On second thought, if it were in single option, it would be practically no different than current rating i.e rate from 1 to 5

Last, this might be already be in plan but I'll confirm it anyways: can reviews be reported too?

I like it :D

• So you guys have noticed a trend where people are rating 1/5 at a higher rate compared to before- how significant has that been + have you got stats?

• Does that change significantly effect the power voltage has at differentiating games too?

• I don't think rating systems should be made as a feedback process for developers, as different games attract different audiences with varying degrees of pre-meditated appreciation for said game (i.e. random scrolling of games section vs some popular LP), so a like/dislike ratio seems as meaningless as any rating system to record enjoyment.

• Is there a problem already where people are being exposed to crappy games? It seems like you guys have alreday pretty much done as much as possible mixing features and hotness in offering the best to users.

I dunno, I get the impending doom feeling that voltage has for developers, but the cold numbers of non-adjusted averages or like/dislike ratios seem even more cruel as a metric

That's actually a good idea. Also, I see it's bear week on Game Jolt.

Sounds like a great idea
gives a troll dislike

hey look at me im a necromancer hey nik hey nik hey nik hey nik we did this hey

I'm sure she likes you