My GGE Wish-list

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Kevin James   (Nov 26, 2006 at 22:57 GMT)

I agree completely with Kevin about the Private Message and/or Chat Room idea. Right now communication between yourself and someone else isn't very handy. I just got my account so excuse me if there are such features.

User ratings seem like an unneccesary thing. I'm not sure how they help any, and as far as negatives, they have caused some strife and this is just the beta!

These are minor issues. One the flip side, GGE is an amazing center for developers and gamers. The interface is like a Torque game which would be a compliment to any website. Keep up the good work GGE team!

Timothy Aste   (Nov 26, 2006 at 23:21 GMT)

Great Feedback Kevin!

Kevin Erkelenz   (Nov 27, 2006 at 00:14 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5

Thank you for the nice comments, the user ratings personally do not upset me as much as they do other people and as I said they are up to no good when it comes to rating people! This may be useful for publishers and games, but not for individuals, on Ebay this is useful, but not on GGE.

I am trying to cheer up the crowd with my two public groups:

R.I.P. Steve Irwin and a Garagegames Fan Club (Can't believe I was the first one to create that!!!)

So I hope that the community will settle and that my ratings will go back up a little :P

David Montgomery-Blake   (Nov 27, 2006 at 02:01 GMT)

When I first got on, I felt like I was friend-whoring until I realized that everyone that I requested to add me to their friends list were people who I have been in dialogue with (often for years) here. But sitting down, going through profiles, and adding felt that way at first. But, much like MySpace, everyone is either someone I know or have interacted with on a number of levels or people who have requested me and seemed genuinely interested in staying around the site for longer than a quick flash.

I've always been ambivalent about user and group ratings. I fully expect the RPG Maker XP group to be down-voted by a number of people who are against "game maker" software, an attitude I find elitist. But I am hoping that (once I actually make it more than a placeholder), it will be a place for story-tellers and artists who have dreamed of making a role-playing game and are involved in other projects on GGE to convene. It will never take over the role of RPG Palace or such, but I think it is necessary to have pockets where storytellers, artists, and RPG enthusiasts can meet on-site rather than off. I have been thinking of an Adventure Game groups as well. In fact, I have thought of shifting the title of RPG Maker XP to RPG Development or some such which would include Sphere and such. Lack of planning on my part and excitement at testing out the system.

I had thought about a shoutbox feature, a chat client, or even Meebo integration. Of course, I usually have a Meebo tab open in Firefox anyway so I did not see it as a major setback. I like the PM option, though. I hate the MySpace comment system to follow discussions. I much prefer Google Talk and the integration into GMail.

A support center feature would be nice, but I am not sure if the intent of GGE is to become a support community so much as a networking arena for gamers and developers to interact. Plus the support side of supporting a support site (say that five times fast) would be hell. I can see gamers blaming GGE support for lack of consistent developer support rather than the developer in question. More of a "get on their butt because I'm not getting the support I deserve!"

I'm not sure what the benefit of a console sales link would be, though. Perhaps it is because I live in Idaho and even in our little state, I can walk into a store and buy consoles and games. Perhaps if GG got a cut of the PS3 Ebay sales...

The Master Server app is up and running on Gnometech. It would be a fun app to be able to implement and change some basic information to point to your master server and check stats. It would be fun to see Shelled players, TGE demo players, ZAP! players, etc.

Jeff Tunnell   (Nov 27, 2006 at 02:49 GMT)

@Kevin... Nice post. Refriend me. I turned you down before reading this post. Great suggestions.

To everybody that wants to drop user ratings. What other metrics can we use to suggest that people are good developers? Any ideas?

-Jeff Tunnell, GG

Kevin Erkelenz   (Nov 27, 2006 at 02:57 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5

An alternative to user ratings on my point would be a thing called reputation:

After a good conversation, a game release, fair publishing offers etc. an individual that was involved in the action can give something like a review, or explanation to his rating of the user, that means that the same individual can rate a user many times for different events.

Rating can still be an option for groups, games and publishers but not so much for developers and gamers (Individuals), and even for games, groups and publishers a reputation is probably more convenient than a rating!

EDIT:
I really want to know how the "popularity" is calculated in GGE, i still have the most profile views (friend whoring :P) but my popularity went down a lot, and up again, but yesterday I was in the highest rated, most popular, and most viewed categories so just out of curiosity, how does it work?
Edited on Nov 27, 2006 03:01 GMT

David Montgomery-Blake   (Nov 27, 2006 at 03:08 GMT)

@Jeff
Perhaps it would be a good idea to split ratings so that they are only for developers and are split between gamers and developers. That way, if a developer is irritating users, there is a user rating. If a developer is constantly not pulling their weight on a team or contract basis, developers can down-rate their developer rating.

But I think it would be good in some way to have a list of the ratings available much like the Ebay ating/response system. For example, if I have a really crappy idea and demo and show it off, expecting praise and you are like "Oh, Dave a game where you shoot babies out of a chaingun at pregnant nuns might not have been the best showing at Family GameCon." I get pissed and down-rate you because you didn't like my baby cannon game. At this point, your rating is marginally knocked (more marginally because you have a number of ratings and fall into the living legend category here on GG...which is why I so wanted to show off my game), but there is no justification for my rating. I am not responsible for my clicking a 1. But if I have to account for the rating and you can respond, then others get a better understanding of the situation.

For you and other GG people, this won't be as big of a problem because you will have a number of up-votes, but for new developers it would be a great way to answer criticism and justified down-voting (justified through explanation rather than a simple-click).

So, if a new developer signs onto a project and the project is badly managed and the artist leaves...and the project down-votes them, they can respond as to the specific conditions of the project. That way you can trace it in a single profile rather than reading comments on both profiles (should ratings be made public so you could navigate profiles). It will not change the vote, but it will provide perspective to people thinking about using that person with actual information rather than a simple rating.

Tom Eastman (Eastbeast314)   (Nov 27, 2006 at 03:16 GMT)

I think the rating system is fine except for one thing - it's useless until there are enough ratings for it become valid. There aren't enough users and not enough interaction yet for ratings to be useful. Once the site is launched for real, most of the problems should evaporate.

The current problem could be solved by not showing ratings until a certain number of ratings have been given. For instance, someone with less than, say, 20 ratings would have a hidden rating until they had more than 20. There's the awkward issue of how to get people to rate others without seeing any response, but that's the web guys' problem ;)

Kevin Erkelenz   (Nov 27, 2006 at 07:17 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5

Well I have to object to one thing Mr. Eastman! The GGE Site already has over 300+ accounts registered!

Tom Eastman (Eastbeast314)   (Nov 27, 2006 at 07:29 GMT)

There is no way I'm old enough to be called Mr. Eastman. If you read my GGE profile, you'd know that ;)

300 accounts isn't nearly enough to ensure that a rating system can't be hijacked by a few bad apples. As long as someone can find a user and visibly change his or her rating value, there will be people who find joy in clicking '1' (or maybe '5' if they're a juicy apple). I'm pretty sure Sean and the web guys built the website for a lot more than a few thousand users, anyway. 300 isn't very many. The experiment will fail if it doesn't get to at least 500 ;)

Canon   (Nov 27, 2006 at 09:10 GMT)

I'm agree with you Tom : the rating system need some time (and more GGe members) to become a useful feature.

Another way to rate developers/games/groups could be a "karma" system : a user could only makes positive rates (like good/very good/god like). That way, if you don't like a game, just don't rate it.
Maybe the ability to rate can be restricted : a user would gain the ability to rate only if he completed his profile and his image (I think it can reduce the number of "blank" profiles).

Christophe
Edited on Nov 27, 2006 09:46 GMT

Oliver Rendelmann - DerR   (Nov 27, 2006 at 11:47 GMT)

@Jeff: I think it would be good idea to give developers the average rating of their self-made games if that is possible. :)

Ben -Djaggernaut- Chavigner   (Nov 27, 2006 at 17:32 GMT)

Looks like you took on the job to receive GGE wishlist Kevin. Your enthusiasm is good to read, but too much zeal can be annoying (see rating).

Anyway, I agree about the user rating, it's not that much of an help right now.
GGE community is based on GG community right now, and there are lot of friends or coworkers. I don't know for you but I tend to rate highly my friends or people I know (all those 5 stars was honest though).
If someone comes to an unknown person profile, they will probably not rate, unless it's someone they heard about with a bad behaviour.

So, maybe we should rate the actions of someone. It would be more objective, and to do so, it would be several small ratings:
- The comments or discussions could affect the user rating.
- It could probably be possible to add a small rating to a gallery or portfolio (list of games/resume).
- And keep an actual global user rating like it is now.

Eventually they could have different "power", comments rating being weaker since they would be numerous.

Of course, this is probably a bit complicated but, I'd like to see a rating system based on work/actions.

Edit: Would be nice to have a title close to the name (Coder or 3D artist or anything) close to the name for easy spotting.
Edited on Nov 27, 2006 17:34 GMT

Kevin James   (Nov 27, 2006 at 22:01 GMT)

This idea of Canon's sounds promising:

Quote:

---

Maybe the ability to rate can be restricted : a user would gain the ability to rate only if he completed his profile and his image (I think it can reduce the number of "blank" profiles).

---

Sean Sullivan   (Nov 30, 2006 at 02:00 GMT)

Great points Kevin. Thanks for all of your input. We are currently working on handling a lot of the issues you mentioned. Just today, we introduced private messaging in its basic form! There will be more surprises popping up later. The features just keep coming =)

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