itch.io

"A 4.5 with 10 ratings is not the same as 4.5 with 20 ratings" - absolutely, and itch will not know what you would think, that could be a 1 or a 5 or something in-between. So in reality if you see a game with only one vote of 4, you cannot make much assumptions, as after you played it and added your vote, it could be anything between 2.5 to 4.5. And that itch has this is good, I'm just saying my change would not make it worse.

Well, maybe a better solution would be to use the median, and add some extra calculation layer on top of that so that not all games have too similar scores - maybe X% of the score comes from median, Y% from top Z%-percentile, Y% from bottom Z%-percentile, etc, etc.

Another change could be that you would need to have downloaded a game, and waited at least 5 minutes after that, to be able to vote it. Probably still wouldn't really turn down trolls though.

And sure, there are good faith 1s. But also note that a 1 will always affect the score (except in my kind of bad and unrealistic all 5's example). But if you see the following examples, the system only makes it so that if the scores are centered high (2 3 4 5 5 5 5 5), your 1 vote affects the score less and if the scores are really low for a game (5 4 3 2 2 2 2 2) your 1 vote actually affects the score more.

"Ohhh, you assumed the ordering of the ratings were of significance. I just counted up to have every different rating, except 1 and added some 5s. Then I added a 1 and then removed a 1 and a 5 to show that the average still goes down if you remove a 1 and a 5 and thus showing that this system does not preserve the average. " Yes, it is intended that the score goes down in both cases. See above, the 1s just have less or more of an impact depending on the vote distribution. The vote still counts. Lets say a game has an average of 4. As it is now you could vote 5 and slightly increase the average, or vote 1 and tank it. I.e. inherently your vote affects the score more if you vote 1. This change just adjusts that.

"But no, you cannot claim any knowledge about justification here either and it also goes again into this assumption of a correct objective rating. Where any nonconforming rating is somehow unjustified." - again, it just weights the value of 1s lower if the distribution is high and higher if the distribution is low. So nonconforming rating are still counted. It is not like your vote doesn't count.

Sure, but other people can ALSO see that it is AI-generated. And they might not care about your 1/5 vote, they just want to know if the game is good or not? And these votes just makes that harder?

I agree that big companies using AI is bad and sad, but I personally do not care if a small kids first garage made game contains AI images.. as he just would not have hired an artist anyway.

I just don't agree with you that you should hand out a bunch of 1/5 without playing a game. Just don't vote? As those votes you are adding just doesn't help anyone? They can make people feel sad I guess, so if that is you goal? Like increase the sadness in the world? No artist will receive money from you adding that review. And if some people really like AI games, they will probably still play them, and then notice that AI games rated 3/5 is somehow better than regular games rated 4/5 and just start searching for more AI games - and just enforce their view that AI-games are clearly superior?

I still don't want to defend AI games though... but there are good uses. Like I have played a game from one developer that uses 3-d to generate his scenes, but added some AI use for generating books in bookshelves, to not have all of them look the same. And that was a fast and smart way to solve a problem, using modern tools. But I guess I should change my 5/5 rating to a 1/5 because of AI use, as that will surely help people in the world somehow. I mean he did use AI once, and no artist received any money - and his game is at least somewhat well known - yeah, he really should have a 1/5, even though the game was really great.

If you don't like something, why play it? Or should we rate things 1/5 just based on our beliefs?

I made the post because of a campaign against one person that received so many "1/5 reviews", even on his straight-games, that he published the reviews... and the reason for the "1/5" votes was that some of his OTHER games contained gay themes. So while he had a lot of 4/5 and 5/5, a bunch of accounts added a lot of 1/5 just to try to force him to focus on straight games only. 

But even so, I still don't think games should be rated 1/5 without playing them because of AI either. Because I know a lot of games get that too. For a new developer, that cannot draw and has no budget, having them use some AI art can still be a way for them to be creative. Like you could probably use to learn some free 3d-models too and make some visual novel by setting these models in different poses, BUT such developers do not give artist money either, they just don't get review bombed. In the end, the main problem is that the artists receives less money? (and sure.. that AI slop looks ugly, etc, etc). But in the end, these artists would not have gotten it from like 95% of these people anyway - the only difference is that these creators would just not have been able to be as creative and make their games.

But enough about AI, it was not the reason for this thread.

But there are not really any "good faith 1s", and when there are, then the average rating would we very close to 2 anyway.

Your example: 2 3 4 5 5 5 5 5, adding a one here is not deserved and can be seen as in bad faith.
Your bad faith 1 example only reduced the average from 4.25 to 4.14, and saved one bad actor from taking it to 3.89.

An example of a "good faith 1s" would be the reverse of your 2 3 4 5 5 5 5 5, making it 5 4 3 2 2 2 2 2. In this case a 1 could be justified.

This example changes the score from 2.75 to 2.55 using the original rules, but reduces it to 2.42 with these new rule, Making that 1 have an even bigger impact when a game TRULY is bad.

And this works for exactly as good if there are many ratings too. Like if there is a forum of "pure christianity+" that gets together to downvote games with bisexual contents, or having people give "1/5, didn't play, as you stated it contains AI use", or "1/5 why are there so many horror games on my main page, go away!", or "Why did you state you vote X on your Facebook, I vote Y, so you get a 1/5".

Rating systems are inherently vulnerable to bad-faith actors. There is a lot of people who leave a 1/5 review because a game doesn't match their political views, (why is one person in your game gay? 1/5), or simply because they can. This kind of griefing can tank a game's rating and exists mostly to make a developer sad, regardless of a games actual quality.

So here's a small mechanical change to itch's rating system that I think could help:

If a 1/5 rating represents less than X% of a game's total ratings, instead of counting as a 1/5, it cancels out the highest existing rating.

Example: A game has 9 players who rated it 5/5. One bad actor rates it 1/5. Rather than dragging the average down, the 1/5 simply removes one of the 5/5 votes — leaving the game with 8 five-star ratings and an unchanged average.

And bad games will still suffer. Like have a two votes of 1/5, three of 2/5 and two votes of 3/5. Now if the developer gives himself a 5/5, it will not really matter that much, since one of the 1/5 votes will just cancel it out. The game will still average below 3/5.

The obvious counterargument: won't griefers just switch to voting 2/5?

Maybe some will. But most won't — partly because this change wouldn't need to be loudly advertised, and partly because the psychological reward of griefing comes from feeling like you dealt damage. And a 2/5 probably doesn't scratch that itch the same way a 1/5 does.

It's not perfect, but it's a low-cost change to make targeted harassment significantly less effective.

Bug: @Andrealphus, you need to add a way to join the band if you didn't have the guitar skill in the beginning. Like when Sasha is in love with you and you have a guitar and you know how to play.
Because currently, the game gets wonky later on, as you cannot unlock the studio without it, and Kleio's progress will not continue because you aren't in the band.. and then if you buy a car, it will break down and cannot be used, but Kleio needs to have sex in the studio with you or something in order to fix it..
So if you missed the early opportunity to get into the bad, you miss a lot of content, and then the game soft locks you out of a lot of content since your cannot even use your car - forever.

(Game + DLC bought on Steam. Other than that, it has been really good)

Paypal (for steam and itch)

Don't use the Christmas decorations early.

I cannot tell for others but I have bought like 100s of games on itch, and you are simply in the backlog. I just cannot play them fast enough. But hopefully I will some day and then I will leave a review, as a do with almost all games I play here.

When I see a game under development that is interesting, I add it to a private collection like "Interesting games". Over the years my collections have gotten 100s of entries.

1. Now what I would like to do, is to search my own collection. Like, perhaps "Status" changed from In development to "Released"? If so, I might now want to make a decision if I want to buy the game.. but I cannot search my collections? Opening up many 100s of games just to recheck their status is mind-boggling tedious. So I often miss when they are completed and I guess I just buy a lot fewer games.

2. Also after I do buy a game, I likely want to remove it from that collection. Why can I (from the game's page) only add it to a collection, but not remove it? This is also true if I want to move it to another collection. Like perhaps the game is released, but I find it a bit too expensive, so I want to move it to a "Wait for sale" collection. Again, I can add it to a "Wait for sale" collection, but it would be good if I at the same time could remove it from my "Interesting games" collection. It should be a simple fix, there are even 3rd party scripts to do this (https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/433692-itch-io-simple-remove-from-collection), but we should not have to rely on 3rd party scripts for such simple things.

3. If/when search is implemented. It would be good if I could search for things like: Has an ongoing sale? Are currently buyable in a bundle? Have more than 1000 downloads? Have a score over 3 and at least 100 voters. Last activity, was it was more than 2 year ago, or less than 3 months ago? Things like that. It will increase your sales!

4. It would of course also be good if I could also search "Things you own" (my bought games), and not just my collections. Because sometimes I do buy things in development and want to wait with them while playing finished products, or I might want to play the most popular games first or so. But worst case I guess I could just spend some time to add them to collections too.

Suggestions:
- As you quickly gain the 10 cards you optimally need, add a drawback that some harder dungeons down the line require you to increase your minimum deck size? Otherwise you will quickly start to have no use for the cards you pick up. As you can gain +draw, than the deck can be larger without it messing up things?

- Perhaps also add some gatcha mechanics that you can merge 2 cards to improve them? Then 2 improved cards to further improve them and so on? If combined with the rule above, it might not always be good to combine cards. Increasing strategic elements.

- Also there should ideally be some kind of town you visit between missions, where you get to interact with ladies, etc. Perhaps a bounty board where you can add quirks to missions?

- Reduce the power of perks? Like halve them? You could also add drawbacks, "+1 draw" could be "+1 draw and +2 to minumum deck size", Perhaps replace the level system with an equipment slot system? And a shop?

- While separating physical damage and magical damage cards was fun, having monsters that permanently can become completley immune to one or the other will not. So.. avoid that. Or set it to a maximum of 75% or so, and then add items that can bypass 25% immunity, etc.

- Perhaps add some cards to make physical + magical deck combos viable? Like "deal 1 physical damage three times and gain +50% magical damage for 2 turns", etc.

It was pretty easy, and the healing spell ensured that you could correct any mistakes you did. I really missed some kind of town between the dungeons, but other that that. A really good demo :)

I noticed that if you change to another browser tab, and then back again, it releases that soft lock where it stops accepting clicks.