itch.io

Hi leafo, thank you for answering. I think most organisers want to be as fair as possible and that it can be tricky as there is a lot we don't know and people might cheat etc. I agree that we don't want a game with e.g. two ratings of 5 to win a competition. On the other hand, it is not necessarily fair to assume that all games with few ratings are overrated. They might as well be underrated.

I am from the interactive fiction (IF) community (text adventures) and I participate and/or vote for games in the annual TALP Jam and ParserComp and Ectocomp plus several non-annual competitions here on itch and the subject has come up before. One hurdle is that some games are accessible on more platforms than others, e.g. not all are playable in browsers etc. so in practice, some platforms are significantly penalised. IF games usually require interpreters which people in the community may help developing so already written games become accessible on more platforms. If new, promising platforms are always significantly penalised, they will continue to rank low and people won't give them the attention they deserve.