The percent rating says little about the quality of a game (a frustrated player can quickly downvote - the game may still be great). It can also quickly demotivate a creator if a supposedly good game has a 65% rating.
So: please remove the percent rating and only show the number of “likes” - as other UGC games have.
Example image:
I don’t know… this seems like a pretty important metric to have for creator feedback. Also, without this metric there’s no good way for a potential player to distinguish between a good game and a game that’s just been around for a while. This will certainly cause a barrier to entry for great new games, since they are judged solely on the number of likes they have; consumers of UGC content are usually pretty cognizant about content rating before investing their time.
@djzk, what are your thoughts on just giving creators the request to hide the metric for specific games?
As a side note, 65% is not bad for an indie game on a UGC platform - I mean… this percent is not the equivalent of getting a ‘D’ on a math test. This 65% percent means more people think a game is worth their time than those who think it’s not - and that’s something amazing.
If you consider that your players’ time could be spent playing any other game (or doing anything else for that matter), a creator should be proud that 65% percent of their players would rather be playing their game.
@TheDeveloper
In relation to other games that have a rating of +80% rating, a game with 65% is “bad”. And that can happen quickly in a game that has a high level of difficulty. 2-3 players who are frustrated vote one game down.
Also, I still don’t think it’s good that you can just vote like that. You should first have to play a game for 5-10 minutes to rate it. Right now I don’t even have to play a game to vote.
@djzk
Hmm… you bring up a good point about people being able to rate a game without giving it a fair chance.
I definitely agree that the rating system could be improved, and I’m still thinking about what we can do to improve it. Here are my thoughts so far:
People tend to take longer to up-vote a game (they have taken the time to determine they like it)
People tend to take less time to down-vote (they have encountered something they don’t like)
djzk is right - A player’s downvote should not affect the rating of a game until they have some amount of play time.
Some games just take more time to get into, so the amount of play time should not be fixed for every game, but rather proportional to how long people tend to play the game? Well… that’s a pretty loose definition - maybe we can come up with something more concrete:
This would show: x number of people upvoted within 1 min, … within 2 mins, … within 3 mins.
This graph could be used to populate a loading screen message for new players: “Players start enjoying this game most after playing for x minutes”
(or maybe tell them before they open the game)