How to separate the Indie-RPGs ?

We just want to rank a game based on how good it is, not how many people played it.

This way I found a lot of games that were much better than the AAA games everyone played and therefore got much more votes.

@Dart:

All I'm saying is:

If we allow anonymous voting a good voting from RPGWatch-regulars will go under.
Simply because the masses DON'T KNOW the smaller good games.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
We just want to rank a game based on how good it is, not how many people played it.

This way I found a lot of games that were much better than the AAA games everyone played and therefore got much more votes.

I don't really get it.

You're saying we only play games that all people play? I don't agree with that. We play indies - a lot of indies, actually.

Once again, if a game is a good RPG - chances are we'll know about it - and we'll rate it accordingly.

Trying to implement a complex system with such a small user-base seems a waste to me. We're not enough people to represent a statistically useful reflection of quality.

But, whatever - I believe I've said my piece about now.

If we allow anonymous voting a good voting from RPGWatch-regulars will go under. Simply because the masses DON'T KNOW the smaller good games.

That's true, but you need a substantial pool of votes to reflect anything approaching actual quality.

To have 2-3 people call an indie game good isn't going to reflect whether it can really be considered good. We're just too few people around here - and some of us seem pro-indie biased to me, which is not what I consider particularly useful.

In the end, I suppose it doesn't matter much - and I can go either way.

I'm just a fan of keeping things simple and letting people think for themselves.

I like Myrthos's suggestion for 2 cathegories and a single list. It's sounds uncomplicated and elegant.

As for voting, maybe there could be 2 different results, if the process can allows for members and non-member (lurkers, community organized support and the like) votes to be counted separately. Would be interesting to compare the results between the general public that is aware of the watch vs the watch itself.

The problem is, that bad games get the same votes as unknown games.

A voter will give a vote to neither the game he has played and disliked, nore to the game he doesn't know. Although that's two different things. But that's the way it goes with simplicity, results can be biased.

You could indeed argue, that if a game was really good, the voter would have played it as he had heard about it from previous reviews. So you most likely get this bias for mediocre games only.

The thing is that in the very beginning we must set a goal about: What is the intention of such an award?
Is the goal
A- to have as many people participate as possible?
B- to motivate game companies to link to this site (vote for us over here!)?
C- to promote indie games?
D- to have indie games compete with other games?
E- to reflect the staffs opinion?
F- to give a realistic reflection of the RPG watch community's favorites?
G- to give a reflection about what the RPG watch community has actually played?

Now the most Gaming Sites either go for Community participation which of course is commercially the best option or for reflecting the staffs opinion as this is less effort than the communities opinion and gives a very mixed result as well where some underdogs will show up.

Once you are sure about what you want it's time to find a method how to vote.
It's just logical that B will not work with F for example.

Personally I would prefer F (to give a realistic reflection of the RPG watch community's favorites). But to get a realistic reflection will be complicated and there is no way around it.
I think the suggestion HiddenX did was pretty good and will already reflect the reality quite well. To make the reflection even better you would also need to include the question whether you consider playing a game or not.
If 5 people love a game and vote it as favorite, but 95% don't even try it because it's obvious they don't like it, this game shouldn't get a 100% score.
To get a result which truely reflects the reality it's probably best to set up a survey via surveymonkey for example.
There you can make checkboxes besides each Game and let people fill out one check boxes like

Would result in a easy to do (on the community side) survey with very representative data.

Now all you need is a key to interprete this data.
For example +10 for liking it, -8 for not liking it, +3 for wanting to check it out, -2 for not wanting to check it out.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
The thing is that in the very beginning we must set a goal about: What is the intention of such an award?

Agreed.

To make the reflection even better you would also need to include the question whether you consider playing a game or not.

Agreed.

Now all you need is a key to interprete this data.
For example +10 for liking it, -8 for not liking it, +3 for wanting to check it out, -2 for not wanting to check it out.

That's the difficult part. Why not 10/-7/4/-1?
Perhaps we need a vote on this.

@Kordanor -> good idea!

no opinion = 0

played & like it = rating [2 to 10] (10 is best)
played & dislike = rating [-2 to -10] (-10 is worst)

not played/wanna check it out = 1
not played/no interest = -1

Absolute rating:
Sum the values up -> best game wins

Relative rating:
Sum the values up / (count of players <> no opinion)
-> Game with the highest average rating wins

Easy to implement and fair.

10 = Highest rating
9 = Played
8 = Played
7 = Played
6 = Played
5 = Played
4 = Played
3 = Played
2 = Played
1 = Not played, but I have interest
0 = No Opinion
-1 = Not played, I have no interest
-2 = Played
-3 = Played
-4 = Played
-5 = Played
-6 = Played
-7 = Played
-8 = Played
-9 = Played
-10 = Lowest rating

A tad excessive maybe going from 10 to -10.

Well, 3 or 5 would be enough of course but that's not the point.
I think the system is pretty good. Now all we need is a list of preselected games in the starting post and everyone can put his numbers behind each title. Pretty easy.
Just has one hook: One poor soul needs to add all these numbers together.

Or with less values:

8 = Played -> Best game
4 = Played -> Better Game
2 = Played -> Good Game
1 = Not played, but I have interest
0 = No Opinion
-1 = Not played, I have no interest
-2 = Played -> Bad Game
-4 = Played -> Worse Game
-8 = Played -> Worst Game

Allow me to repeat that Myrthos wants the vote to be simplified.

Originally Posted by Myrthos
I'm for simplicity. The amount of categories should be limited, the voting should be simple and (especially for me) publishing the results should be easy as well.

I like the ideas talked but it comes down to lack of free time, and effort required.

Kordanor's system can be applied without Admin help.

Felipepepe is doing a similar thing right now at the Codex - forum based:

RPG Codex's Best cRPGs - VOTE ONLY THREAD

And what about "outsourcing"?
You could select 2 or 3 community members who count the votes if we take HiddenX latest System
All you needed to do was to post a list of the games in question

The cool thing would be that this way you probably don't even need to differentiate between indie and other games.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
And what about "outsourcing"?
You could select 2 or 3 community members who count the votes if we take HiddenX latest System
All you needed to do was to post a list of the games in question

The cool thing would be that this way you probably don't even need to differentiate between indie and other games.

That's actually not a bad idea. So what about you or HiddenX? I'm sure you can PM Myrthos with the offer. I don't know if he will accept it though.

Sure, can do it. Should be much less of a mess than in the codex board if it's just about the RPGs of 2013

So - what are the CRPGs of 2013 ???

Avadon 2 The Corruption [4]
Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition [1]
Banner Saga [1]
Blade of Destiny remake [-4]
Blackguards [8]
Expeditions conquistador [8]
Mars: War Logs [2]
Shadowrun Returns [2]
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing [4]
XCom EU [1]

And with that we need to answer the next question: What do we actually call RPG?
Titles in question are:
Banner Saga
XCom EU
Expeditions Conquistador

Expeditions Conquistador - for sure

Banner saga - I think so.

I don't know much about XCom EU.