c4countdown

The number of people who vote on Game of the Week has declined sharply in recent weeks, and it's a shame because there are so many awesome games out there. So I wonder whether anyone has any great ideas to make voting more appealing, and in particular, what would make you personally bother to vote?

Sex cheques.

I can't offer anything to come up to Michael's suggestion, but if you're not prepared to do as he suggests, Charlie, a timely reminder here, together with a link, might will help.

I must admit I have just forgotten about it and haven't voted for a long time. Possibly if you vote one week then you get 5 top dogs a day rather than 3 or something. Probably a shit idea depending on how easy it is to do and also if people care about top dog.

Do it in a MOTD stylee.
Someone(or a panel of experts),with the time, picks 10 to choose from and we then vote for our favourite.

I think one big obstacle is voting itself is quite an investment; as it is you have to read several different games, and give a vote for each, which is a lot of clicking and back and forth. One idea might be to have all the nominated games on one page, with a voting box below each one, so you can review each game on a single page, without having to go back and forth. Maybe restrict the number that make the cut too.

Might be just as daunting, though.

Ryan Taylor wrote:I must admit I have just forgotten about it and haven't voted for a long time. Possibly if you vote one week then you get 5 top dogs a day rather than 3 or something. Probably a shit idea depending on how easy it is to do and also if people care about top dog.

Yeah, I definitely think a reward of some sort, although obviously not something like ranking points or anything that's supposed to be based on merit.

The problem is I generally cba, like said above, it feels like a lot of effort to look at a large selection of good games. I suppose I don't care enough either, I doubt there's much incentive that would make me make more effort. The only time I'd be vaguely interested would be if one of my games garnered a couple of nominations. Mostly however nominations appear to go to close-to-max games rather than simply close battles or comebacks.

This might be a bit radical but maybe get rid of voting all together and make it so that the prize goes to whichever game got the most nominations? I haven't checked if there's a correlation between how many noms a game gets and how big a score it gets in the vote, but I imagine that games that generate a lot of excitement and get lots of nominations tend to be the ones that get a bigger score in the vote.

This would do away with the amount effort you have to put into voting, and it would also truly make it 'game of the week' as opposed to a celebration of the games from the week before last, which is the case at the minute with the current voting system.

In the case of a tie I guess you could have multiple winners of GOTW. Out of interest, how many times has there been top of the leaderboard games with the same amount of nominations?

Ben Hunter wrote:This might be a bit radical but maybe get rid of voting all together and make it so that the prize goes to whichever game got the most nominations? I haven't checked if there's a correlation between how many noms a game gets and how big a score it gets in the vote, but I imagine that games that generate a lot of excitement and get lots of nominations tend to be the ones that get a bigger score in the vote.

This would do away with the amount effort you have to put into voting, and it would also truly make it 'game of the week' as opposed to a celebration of the games from the week before last, which is the case at the minute with the current voting system.

In the case of a tie I guess you could have multiple winners of GOTW. Out of interest, how many times has there been top of the leaderboard games with the same amount of nominations?

Earlier games in a given week have a longer time to get nominated. This is an advantage anyway I suppose, but it would be even more here I think.

Gavin Chipper wrote:Earlier games in a given week have a longer time to get nominated. This is an advantage anyway I suppose, but it would be even more here I think.

Doiii yeah I didn't think of that.

You can vote on as many or as few games as you like. Games are shown in a random order. If you vote on every game, you will receive an ostracon and nobles will genuflect before you in the street. 5 is best, 1 is worst.

I've only just read this instruction properly. For the last few weeks I've been voting 1 for the best, down to 5 for the fifth. Probable reason is that it goes from 1 on the left, to 5 on the right, followed by abstain.

Do I forfeit all my ostracons?

My apologies to all those people who I thought I was voting for.

Howard Somerset wrote:

You can vote on as many or as few games as you like. Games are shown in a random order. If you vote on every game, you will receive an ostracon and nobles will genuflect before you in the street. 5 is best, 1 is worst.

I've only just read this instruction properly. For the last few weeks I've been voting 1 for the best, down to 5 for the fifth. Probable reason is that it goes from 1 on the left, to 5 on the right, followed by abstain.

Do I forfeit all my ostracons?

My apologies to all those people who I thought I was voting for.

Haha, that's great. I occasionally monitor statistics on the correlations between individual votes and popular consensus, just to see whether there are people who vote randomly or give every game the same score. I noticed recently that you've been appearing absolutely last on this list, with your lowest vote often coinciding with the eventual winner and vice versa. But I figured you'd just become an iconoclast with age.

I think maybe the description of the scoring system could be changed.

I thinks saying '5=best' and '1=worst' could imply that a ranking system is used rather than a rating system. In a ranking system, you can only use each number once: i.e. 5 is the best game, 4 is the second best etc.

Maybe it could say '5=highest score' and '1=lowest score' or could simply be '5=Brilliant' and '1=Pretty good but not that amazing'. And maybe the instruction could be 'Rate each game on a scale of 1-5 where 1=......'

And I would tend to agree with Howard that maybe 'Abstain' could come before '1' or could be in a different colour or something so that people don't accidently click on it when they mean to give a 5.

I think there are two reasons why I'd got this voting system the wrong way round.

Firstly, in most surveys in which I'm asked to select from a horizontal list of options, the best is generally on the left. This idea is supported by "abstain" being at the far right.

Secondly, and I hadn't realised this until reading Karen's post just now, I'd really thought that we were ranking the games, and picking the best five. Hence 1 for the best, down to 5 for the fifth best. I had been a little concerned about the use of the word "abstain" for those outside the top five; I would've prefered someting like "unplaced". But now I realise that we're not ranking the games, but giving a verdict on each game without reference to the others, I see that "abstain" is an appropriate title.

I only corrected the first of my misunderstandings for my voting last night, so apologise once more to those in the game for whom I only gave 1 mark.

Hopefull, I'll get it right next week.

Oh - and Charlie, having just looked at the Wiki page definition of iconoclast, I think I became one at primary school.

Howard Somerset wrote:

You can vote on as many or as few games as you like. Games are shown in a random order. If you vote on every game, you will receive an ostracon and nobles will genuflect before you in the street. 5 is best, 1 is worst.

I've only just read this instruction properly. For the last few weeks I've been voting 1 for the best, down to 5 for the fifth. Probable reason is that it goes from 1 on the left, to 5 on the right, followed by abstain.

Do I forfeit all my ostracons?

My apologies to all those people who I thought I was voting for.

Erm, that's exactly how I vote too, although I'm avowedly iconoclastic as well...I assumed it was rankings rather than points, for the same reason as Howard!

Ian Volante wrote:

Howard Somerset wrote:

You can vote on as many or as few games as you like. Games are shown in a random order. If you vote on every game, you will receive an ostracon and nobles will genuflect before you in the street. 5 is best, 1 is worst.

I've only just read this instruction properly. For the last few weeks I've been voting 1 for the best, down to 5 for the fifth. Probable reason is that it goes from 1 on the left, to 5 on the right, followed by abstain.

Do I forfeit all my ostracons?

My apologies to all those people who I thought I was voting for.

Erm, that's exactly how I vote too, although I'm avowedly iconoclastic as well...I assumed it was rankings rather than points, for the same reason as Howard!

Haha, I had a sneaking suspicion from the correlation figures that you had been doing this as well.

I was thinking about how I vote (not done it many times to be honest) and I think I've really only voted in the 3-5 range because I'd feel bad going 1 or 2. But I suppose logically, if you want to maximise your vote counting, you should give your best one 5, your worst 1, and fill the rest in between. Giving all 5s and 4s is presumably exactly the same as giving all 2s and 1s (if it's scored by just adding the numbers up).

I usually rate foreign games 5, as I think they're generally more impressive, because you have to do the same thing as with English but in a second language. Unless they're especially good, English games usually get 4s. Sorry Kirk

Charlie Reams wrote:Haha, that's great. I occasionally monitor statistics on the correlations between individual votes and popular consensus, just to see whether there are people who vote randomly or give every game the same score. I noticed recently that you've been appearing absolutely last on this list, with your lowest vote often coinciding with the eventual winner and vice versa. But I figured you'd just become an iconoclast with age.

Isn't it a secret ballot?