I've done a lot of jams and the problem is it's not 'organic' in terms of ratings. People will simply say "wow great game" without anything further and you know they are speed running reviews in order to get people to pay it back and play their game. People think that volume of reviews mean something where it take doesn't. If your 16 reviews are serious reviews that's more than enough to get you a realistic rank but the true value comes from proper feedback on your project.
Viewing post in Karma - do people care?
My personal reviews are a bit of a mixed bag because:
- I lacked the time to devote enough attention to everyone.
- Not all games trigger deep commentary. You play one, and you suddenly have a lot to say; you play another, and it’s fun, but you don't have many suggestions, so you just leave 1–2 sentences.
- (I was reviewing some of the games while half-asleep, so I could only judge whether I liked them and what exactly caught my eye :D) And to share good constructive criticism you need special inspiration and energy.
However, I tried to do a better job with the ratings themselves - scoring every aspect as accurately as possible.
I think the whole system is a bit flawed. There are so many games, and your visibility depends mainly on people replying to your reviews. If you don't have a job and can just review games all day, your game will likely get much more exposure than the game of someone who works full-time. I’ve personally seen games with tons of reviews that left me feeling mixed, while other games had barely any ratings (or just low ratings) but looked amazing and really impressed me.
Not to mention the heavy subjectivity. What does a 5-star rating for mechanics or aesthetics even mean? We all compare things to our own ideals and past experiences, so the final results can be questionable. I believe the winners will still be great, but it’s highly possible there are equally good games that just lacked ratings or were unlucky enough to be reviewed by people who simply don't like that genre.
Idk, it's just my first game jam, so I'm still figuring out how it all works :)
Anyway, the best achievement is that we all made a game. Some of us might even evolve our projects into full Steam releases. Others will make their next games even better. And some will probably keep doing jams just for fun with no serious intent. But we are all doing what we love - making games. And other people are playing them. :)
So I've rated games without leaving a comment. It was an ok game maybe but nothing really blew me away so I just give it an honest rating and move on. You're going to notice that that games with 50+ reviews seldom 'win' the jam. Often the top games will have ratings in the teens. So quality is way better than quantity. There is a degree of subjectivity only when the game doesn't blow you away! When it's an amazing game it just racks up all the 5 stars. When it's not then you have to try and figure out a relative score and people are going to score differently. Seek quantity of ratings if you don't care about position in rankings but do want to know how to make your game better. Seek quality by doing nothing and just letting at least 10 honest rating come in. And by "honest" I mean you avoid the "wow great game play my game" pointless circle jerk. That doesn't benefit you at all. We all get a course, nobody gets any money or anything really. The jam will be forgotten about in a week and everyone will move on so take it easy and just enjoy playing some cool entries when time allows