It is no secret that I do not like ratings

Mining the wisdom out of crowds is not easy, it is however easy to find false wisdom and pretend that it is real wisdom.

At the most basic level of many failed attempts is the following problem.

Collapsing the positive and negative parts of any experience down into a single number between 1 and 5 is fucking retarded and impossible.

Displaying that number to others and then asking them to do the same is even more retarded and just creates a feedback loop.

This doesn't matter to the content aggregator, they win whatever content ends up on top as long as they are the one aggregatng it. But for the content creator this is a mess that only succeeds in devaluing all content.

Here is a link to a link to some research that shows a huge problem with everybodys mind. Any random statistics displayed next to content will drown out the content. This works, you have seen it work, you know that it works.

When I say everybody I include myself, it can of course be combated on a conscious level but only if you notice it happening. That's the problem, it is somewhat similar to some visual illusions, you will continue to see the false image no matter how sure you are that it is false. When you talk in terms of website users and include feedback loops, this sort of thing is highly effective, more effective than anything else anyway.

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/10/false_advertising_st.html


Remember if one is to understand the audience one must first understand this zen koan.

"Participants were given a choice between a short proofreading task that would award 60 points and a longer proofreading task that would award 100 points and were told that 60 points would entitle them to a serving of vanilla ice cream and 100 points would entitle them to an equally large serving of pistachio ice cream. Most participants opted for the longer task. But when asked later which flavor they would enjoy more, most favored the vanilla ice cream."

World of goo is pretty damn sweet.

World of Goo Trailer 2 Director's Cut
by 2dboy

You have no excuse not to go play the demo right now.

That link seems to be the best one, after clicking on download there is a I don't want to have to log in option unlike all the other links I can find. http://2dboy.com/ is their main site, but doesn't have any better download links.

I really don't understand, 32meg is only slightly bigger than many flash games and every site you hit a login and pay for bandwidth wall. A very horrible user download experience.

A simple amazon s3 download page + google ads would probably come out at a profit guys, go make one :)

Anyhow, go play the demo, nicest game to come along in quite a while.

Apparently placing ads inside games is evil.

in response to gameshelf bitching about ads in flash games.

you missed the developer side of course

once upon a time people made flash games

then along came sites that hosted games and put ads around the games and made money (the developers did not make money)

Some such as ebaumsworld, branded other peoples content as their own without permission and in the end made millions of dollars off of doing so.
Go read the legalise on ebaums upload page for an example of how evil they still are, 3 years exclusivity WTF?

now, with the new in game ads the developers are scraping up some loose change, generally this isn't much. Some kids think they are making money, thats about it. However its still better than the alternative. For in game ads to really pay off, you need to get 100 thousand or more hits a day every day. This gets you around 50 bux a day and is of course very unlikely to happen.

Obviously this is the time for the gamers to get angry and stop these lazy profiteering developers.

well done

The main gain from in game advertising is being able to then negotiate a price for its removal before your game can be included on some of the bigger sites. That it is still there on the smaller sites means at least you might cover some expenses.

Today people such as spill group, (agame.com and ever expanding to more sites) demand the removal of developers ads so they can replace them with their own without paying the developer anything. They have also recently been making noises about stopping developers from even linking out to their own sites from within flash games.

This attempts to cut off developers from the gamer, making it harder to even build up an audience for your work. Which is not an easy act at the best of times.

Maybe the gamers like to get angry about that sort of thing instead?

nah

didn't think so

Gamers mostly play flash games to waste time, putting adverts in means you are just wasting more of their time whilst collecting up a tiny little pay back.

Personally I'd like to remove all advertising, however it's a very important leverage point and right now its just about covering hosting fees whilst my development work cause me to spiral further into debt.

I'll tell you things that you already know. So you can say I really identify with you, so much.

Always on the look out for alternative points of view I came across this http://www.ludomancy.com/blog/2008/09/29/the-kongregate-experiment/

Believe it or not, my initial response was a feeling of joy, you mean the kongretards are becoming less retarded. Oh look Some pixely art work, Hurrah!

Sadly this didn't last long as a small amount of investigation showed that it was the same old same old.

Obviously its important to suck up to a dumb audience, it pats them on the back and keeps them dumb and docile. It's exactly the tactics that rich leaders, who wish more than anything to stay rich and leaders use and it works perfectly. Vote for me, I'm not a terrorist, look at the color of my skin.

So what we actually have here is a dress up toy designed as bait to aim firmly at pseudo intellectual emo fag gamers that wish for their great intelligence to be recognized.

Well that sucks, then.

A dumb dumb dumb audience is a huge problem, not one thats unique to games but lets try and fix that, lets try and make them just that little bit smarter. Games are the perfect medium to achieve that, they make wonderful teaching aids.

Above all, people who tell the morons how great they are for being morons, primarily for personal gain, are evil.

Go play top hat villa instead, it's much less retarded and has a story and everything.

"Congratulations, here is a rainbow."

I have just reminded myself that if I type too much crap into a comment box anywhere I should also just chuck it out here as well.

So congratulations here is another small observation on that obese beast I like to call, The Moronity.

Moron: A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education.

originally commented on a brainy gamer post here.

This game is pointless or whats the point of this game is a comment I've hit a number of times from gamers.

It took me a while before I understood exactly what they where really complaining about. Initially I simply tried responding with it's a game it contains it's own point, you're pointless and a towel.

What they want is some sort of reward, a payment for playing so to speak, adjust the games to give out a small amount of virtual currency. It doesn't even have to be currency of any actual use, just a number you can show off.

Then suddenly the game has, as far as they are concerned, a point. The less skill and more time it takes to achieve this reward the better.

This all reminds an AI / semantic web guy, Push Singh, who killed himself after trying to harness the crowd and bashing against The Moronity for a while. I think he made the mistake of describing his plans as contributing to human achievement. When he should have said "Click here to win a free iPod!!!!"

Also the episode of the Simpsons which has a focus group about improving itchy and scratchy. One of the things the kids request is "and we should win prizes just for watching."

On that note you wouldn't believe how much venom and hate we consider to be contained in the phrase.

"Congratulations, here is a rainbow."

But, it's not just games. I'm sure the same people feel the same thing about reading books. "What ya reading for" being the start of a bill hicks routine. Books are just an older medium so have attracted a bit more age based respect is all. The verb play will wear out its stigma in a few decades.