Edit: Holy guacamole! This one got away from me, didn't it? I'll apologize in advance, Rain. I didn't mean for my post to turn out this long.
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*Sound Of Rain said: How and why did you do the whole invisible name thing? Just asking. |
Well, as to the "why" part, it was purely accidental.
As to the "how", when I was signing up, I created the name "ColdFire" only to be informed that another user already had that name. When I looked, it turned out that this person had simply joined and then never returned...
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/profile/106575/coldfire/
If you read his profile, you'll see that it says, "Joined on December 19th 2013, last online on 19 December 2013."
So, yeah.
Since it didn't look like he was coming back, I decided to keep the name. To distinguish it (and because I thought it looked cool), I put it inside angle brackets. Little did I know that the site would interpret this as an HTML tag. That's why my name doesn't show up. I was initially considering canceling the account and making a new one but it's actually kind of grown on me. Plus I've made a few friends now.
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*Sound Of Rain said: This is my 5th elimination game. I did three in 2011 (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft) and the 2 from this past week. I'd like to do them more frequently so that VGC isn't so sales focused. It is more about a simple, fun game that gets people involved. |
Sounds good to me. I don't mind the sales stuff - I find it interesting. But I do get tired of the bitter arguments. I was somewhat out of the gaming scene a few years back, and during that time, I followed a lot of politics. In the end, I was so emotionally burned out from all the bullshit that I gave it away. So, you can imagine my horror when I returned to the world of gaming only to find that it had become almost as bad.
Anyway, yeah, I have no objection to something lighthearted and fun. Anything to stop people yelling at each other for a while.
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*Sound Of Rain said: I have an idea in mind but I'm not sure if I can do it. I have asked the mods if I'm aloud but they never got back to me... |
Am I allowed to ask what it is? It's ok if you can't say; I'm just curious.
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*Sound Of Rain said: if you (or anyone else) have any ideas, feel free to share them. I'll consider them if it sounds cool. |
Ideas regarding themes for the game? Or ideas for games themselves?
Regarding themes, unless you want to do like the best of individual genres or something like that, I can't suggest much besides console-specific competitions (which you said you've already done), or as I suggested before, a contest between just multiplat games, which I think is a good way to eliminate console bias in voting (or at least minimize it, since some multiplats are undeniably associated more with one console than another).
I don't know if you were around for the game where people voted for the best upcoming titles, but it had all the big names on the list...
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=183754&page=1
I didn't participate in that one (I joined right after it ended) but I watched the whole thing from start to finish, and it basically devolved into a console war, with opposing exclusives being voted against each other (like +Quantum Break, -Uncharted 4... +The Order 1886, -Sunset Overdrive... that kind of thing) until there were none left.
Then the same thing happened with the others - instead of voting down the lesser games, fan wars started between all the most anticipated games, and in the end, the winner was a small indie game that nobody knew anything about.
Now, don't get me wrong - I love indies. But people were ignoring games that no one was interested in to engage in wars between the popular ones. I know the point is to eliminate them but the problem was that because of the way people were voting, once any two games locked horns, that was it - they were both doomed. So, ultimately, the only games that reached the end were the ones that nobody cared about.
I got to thinking about how this could be avoided. I don't think there's much you can do about the battles between specific games, but it occurred to me that you could mitigate the console warring a little by having a rule which simply says that you can't pit opposing exclusives against each other in a single vote.
So, for example, if I upvote a PS exclusive then my downvote can't be an XB exclusive, and vice versa. I can, of course, downvote an XB exclusive but if I do then I can't upvote a PS exclusive.
Note that this only applies to exclusives on opposing systems. Simultaneously upvoting and downvoting two exclusives on the same system is fine. And, of course, multiplats are fair game in all scenarios.
Does that make sense?
So, under this rule the following votes would be valid and counted...
+The Order 1886 (PS)
-Watch Dogs (multi)
+Witcher 3 (multi)
-Quantum Break (XB)
+Uncharted 4 (PS)
-Driveclub (PS)
+Batman: Arkham Knight (multi)
-The Division (multi)
And the following votes would be invalid and not counted...
+Halo 5 (XB)
-Infamous Second Son (PS)
+Bloodborne (PS)
-Sunset Overdrive (XB)
Of course, if someone really wanted to, they could still pit opposing exclusives against each other in separate votes, but at least this way they are forced to vote for something else in the process (either another exclusive on the same console or a multiplat).
So, someone who was really determined could vote, say...
+Quantum Break (XB)
-Dying Light (multi)
And then, next time, vote...
+Dying Light (multi)
-Bloodborne (PS)
But even if they did this, so long as the upvotes and downvotes aren't the same value then their votes will still affect something beyond the two exclusives they're trying to play against each other. This way, the game never descends into purely dueling exclusives.
Regarding ideas for the game itself, some people in that thread I linked above actually posted some interesting ideas towards the end. I don't know the exact post numbers, but they were somewhere in the last few pages when discussing some of the problems with the game they'd just finished.
One idea that I've had for adding another strategic element to the game - although this may be difficult to implement - is to have the value of a vote change depending on a game's overall score.
One example would be, say, diminishing returns on the value of upvotes, the higher a game gets. This would prevent any one game from getting runaway votes and becoming untouchable. It could also encourage more balanced voting, spreading the distribution out more, rather than there being too much focus on any single game.
I'm not sure how that would work, but one idea would be something like this...
Game score Upvote value
Up to 59p 5p
60p -69p 4p
70p-79p 3p
80p-89p 2p
90p and above 1p
Of course, trying to do this on the fly, adjusting the value of each vote as the totals go up and down all over the place, may be prohibitively difficult, especially if there are a lot of people voting. Perhaps you could try the same idea but with a much simpler system - perhaps just one tier: Everything below is one value, everything above is another?
If this still sounds too hard, it might be interesting to experiment with that metric in some other way. Perhaps a system where the value of votes changes as games are eliminated? This way, you could arrange it so that it starts out like an ordinary game, and the changes only come into play as there are fewer and fewer games to keep track of. Meh, I don't know. I'm just throwing ideas out there.
One idea that I must say I really liked was the ability to split up our vote. I thought that added a really interesting dynamic to the game. And yeah, I know you said it would be too hard. I can see that. Shame. I think that would have been cool.
Hmm... anyway, I'm just rambling at this point - maybe I'll eventually come up with something that's actually feasible. Never ask me for ideas. 
ColdFire - The man with no name.
