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What can we learn from the most popular submissions

A topic by Rimulex created Sep 12, 2023 Views: 345 Replies: 7
Viewing posts 1 to 3
Submitted

Win or lose, I always see it as a way to learn something. However, I tend to learn more when I lose since success usually leaves some form of a bread trail. With that in mind, 

What has everyone noticed about the games that got some of the highest ratings that you think led to them doing as well as they did? 

What was your strategy for doing well in the game jam if you had one?

If your game didn't do as well as you had hoped, what do you think might have improved your chances of winning or what are some things you noticed in other's games that might have helped them win? 

In my case had I focused a little more on music and sound effects I might have been able to get a higher ranking, but I did notice that a lot of people enjoyed the intro, cutscenes, and the video that's playing in the menu screen.

It might be very easy to guess that I like to break down and understand wins or losses to try and learn from them because, for me, that's part of the fun of any competition I get to be a part of. Anything that's learned from this is something I see as a huge win since that's knowledge that can be used for any of us to improve as game devs.

Submitted

The ratings arent in yet tough?

Submitted

We can still sort by popularity to see how people have rated the games.

Submitted(+1)

Not how popular works, also quantity isn't quality ( rating )

https://itch.io/t/719515/how-does-itchio-sort-games-by-these-criteria-popular-ne...

Submitted

I know quantity isn't quality, it rarely ever is the case, but i wasn't aware thats how Itch decides on whats popular

Submitted(+3)

Main thing I've learned is that a browser version is essentially a must in order to get as many ratings as possible. Seeing my adjusted score drop me about ten places cause I assume people did not want to download a game feels bad. Also, pestering people for ratings seems to work as far as getting ratings goes, although I feel that probably has a negative impact on the actual rating.

If anyone actually still is reading these discussions even though the jam is over, please play other people's games when you enter a game jam. Every one that submitted took the time to make a game and you would want them to play and rate yours,  so why not do the same for them? This was a small game jam and playing every submission only took a few hours. To everyone that played my game, thanks and I hope you enjoyed, and to those that didn't, I still invite you to give it a try.

the amount of ratings doesnt matter, its the quality that matters. 

Submitted (2 edits)

That is objectively false. itch.io's final score calculation takes into account the number of ratings and the median number of ratings from the submissions. If your submission got less ratings than the median, your final score is less than the raw score, which is done to prevent rating manipulation. "Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam." You can even verify this by looking at the results.

Edit: I've said this before, but I did not care at all about winning. I just wanted to make my game idea and have people play it. Hopefully they would enjoy it, but at the very least I wanted to get some feedback. I could then take that external feedback as well as my personal learnings into future projects. My main point is that everyone should at least be supportive enough of their fellow submitters by playing their game.