Jam Voting Changes

How is that fair to games with consistently high player engagement? Catz and Ratz averages around 8 minutes of playtime, yet it’s in top 5. Should poorly performing games really lead nominations simply because OG players like the developer? Several games with fewer than 100 users are leading as well. Surely isn’t going to be the outcome of this game jam right? 

Do you want to get rid of the voting and have the game with the most players/playtime win instead?

I understand that point of view, but that brings us back to the issue of purchased accounts or bots, doesn't it?

Hang in there, Garry; your situation is quite complex to manage!

Hey mr. Newman, imo top five already seems far fairer—as if the last-minute changes aren't necessary anymore. Thank you for your concern. 

I think this system could work I just think it values old dev's way way too much. also would not be surprised if more dev teams like mighty brick leave there org just to vote on there game today.

best game should win thets it. nobody cares how: voting/ play time/brooklyn doesent matter

Holy shit, okay... I just realized why games went from 3 or 4 devs down to just one... I hadn't made the connection.

To be fair they should have blocked org removals while the game jam was going on they are just playing the game s&box is making for them

At this stage, Facepunch should select the finalists—choosing those they feel best showcase S&box's potential and will generate the most promotion down the line.
Like GAMMA TEAM, which serves as a fantastic showcase.

Any system with public voting will have issues. A bandaid can address specific avenues for abusing the system, but people will just find another way to abuse it. When it comes to a completely open format that has a prize pool, you can't rely on good faith from the competitors.
 

To add to that:

This is effectively the same as public voting, just voting with time instead of a button. 

I still think ideally players should be presented a selection of say 10-20 games to nominate from, some sort of tournament style system that will eventually flush out the unpopular entries and leave you will the popular ones. This would help ease the developer popularity contest a bit and encourage people to nominate based on the games they're playing rather than the people they know. It'd let players feel like they're contributing and you could perhaps reward people that take part with a cosmetic, a progress bar asking them to complete their presented games much like the weekly rewards you already have in place. You'd also get people playing games in return. 

There'll definitely be changes next time. I am kind of happy with the nominations to be honest now. I kind of like it. But I'm thinking for next time around..

1. No games visible during the building phase
2. No voting during the building phase
3. Nominations start and last a week
4. Explicitly say whether pre-existing assets are allowed or not

Hi. Will Facepunch staff, especially those who are already voting, review all submissions? Right now, some of them effectively have heavily weighted votes, but there is no guarantee that they will even see most of the games.

The main problem for me isn't TrustScore itself, but whether every game gets a comparable chance to be noticed.

For example, one developer releases their game after 10 days, is already well known in the community, and gets several more weeks of exposure and nominations. Another spends 20 days developing their game, ends up near the bottom of the list with much less time to be discovered, and there isn't even a fixed group of judges guaranteed to review their submission.

If a developer is given a certain number of days to create a game, it seems strange to me that using that time could reduce their chances of being noticed.

I would suggest (in brief):

1. Separate development and voting . During development, nominations are closed. After the deadline, all games enter the voting period at the same time.

2. Don't sort games by nominations during certain stages of voting. Randomize the list for each user or use a rotation system that tries to give each game a comparable number of impressions. Otherwise: more nominations → more visibility → more players → even more nominations.

3. Add a separate Facepunch jury that systematically reviews entries

I don't think TrustScore itself is the main problem. TrustScore tries to answer the question:

"How much should the system trust this vote?"

But other questions remain:

"Did each game have a comparable chance of receiving this vote?"
"Did late submissions have a chance to be noticed?"
"Is there anyone systematically reviewing entries, not just those that have already become popular?"

I think the Game Jam system should try to address these problems as well.

4. Explicitly say whether pre-existing assets are allowed or not 

Do you have any comment on this for the current game jam? I'm sure you've seen some of the drama around certain entries

Yeah so like, not to state something obvious but facepunch probably knew the old system would have problems ahead of time lol

People will game any system with clearly stated rules. The only real way to prevent people from going against the spirit of a competition is by demonstrating a heavy handed executive decisions against people like that.
Apparently some guy spent 2k to promote their game on tiktok. People probably don't want that kind of thing to be a part of the jam but I don't think you can really write rules to cover all cases like that. Because of what facepunch did they don't really need to add a rules to prevent things against the spirit of the competition to the next jam, people just won't try it a second time.

Also, in terms of placing in this, the actual frontrunners are competently made projects. In terms of getting a prize the potential winners are about what you would expect for this, so its not like things are "unfair" as they are now.

Ahhh, I have more opinions about how I think they could be improving the system that I was going to write, but facepunch just posted above me about changing the system. So whatever. Come to think about it, its pretty pretentious of me to want to write it out. Obviously they have their own plans on that...

Any word on the games that were created before the jam and submitted, which have reached the top 5 multiple times, including right now?

Any world, what do you think helped your game reach the top 5?

Do you think releasing around 15 days earlier - giving it two extra Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays - and as u are already being known in the community played a significant role?

Do you think this kind of voting is fair right now?

I created my game in the jam time period, as the rules say.

I honestly had high hopes that we’d see more changes today, but after Garry’s most recent reply, it looks like we’re stuck with these unfair nominations 

Give it a week and most of these nominated games will probably be dead and unplayed… just what S&box needs. 

Thanks, it’s fine not to answer the question. That’s understandable.

But I will answer urs:

Also, regarding the rule: “It should be a new creation, not something you've already made.” What exactly counts as a “new creation”? Not released on platfrom?

For example, if I had 10 experimental prototypes in the editor just to test different concepts, but after the Game Jam was announced, 90-99% of the actual Git history and development happened in September - would you consider that not a new creation? How do you confirm this?

Sure, I do have some advantage. Not a big community, a 300 member Discord server of mostly legacy inactive people from Garry's Mod times. I can't deny that. But is it a bigger advantage than giving away the game to communities and having them vote for a game? Because that was happening like crazy before this update.

It's a bit more nuanced than that. There's proof for the worst offenders currently participating in the jam, with having most of the game ready long before the jam. If it was a simple graybox as an abandoned project with no polish at all or barely any functional gameplay then yes, then we're speaking more fairly.

Reposting because this is the active thread today

The only ethical solution is to remove the cash prize. All of this behavior is caused by simple human greed. 

Give the winners an in-game item and a title on their profile instead and you'd have a system that rewards people who want to participate for the joy of it and to make good games instead of grifters looking to spend $100 to make $20k

If they want cash, sell the item on the steam page like a TF2 or CS2 community prize. 

Well... I think the whole point of the gamejam having a prize pool like this was to bring in skilled developers to the platform. Like come on, its not just about the "joy" to make games. But seeing as sbox's player counts are still abysmal even with 400 new games made by developers who promoted it around their communities, I don't think that Hail Mary pass worked. Assuming my understanding of this is at least somewhat true, I'm not sure what facepunch's motivation would be for another jam in the foreseeable future... There needs to be some changes to promoting sbox to regular players. I know they wanted the platform to be discovered "naturally" but going back on that and putting the money that would have gone to prize pool to advertising might be a better idea. The game jam has added finally a large number of decent games to sbox that people may actually want to play, so nothing about the jam is a waste so far they just need to catch the rebound... hm...

Well, a cash prize naturally attracts a lot of developers from outside the community. It also brings new players to the platform, and some of them find something they like here and stick around. That's just how it works.

As for games that were developed significantly before the jam - the current wording is pretty vague. But in short, even a game that was worked on for four months beforehand can benefit everyone: Facepunch, the players, and the platform. That's also the developer's own choice and investment.

Human greed will always exist. But that's not really the point. The point is that 432 developers are getting a meat grinder instead of a celebration of games.

At first it was 1 person = 1 vote. Bring your friends, bring bots - take the prize.

Now a single vote can apparently have a weight of 30+. Be well known in the community, publish your game after 7 days - take the prize.

I just think this should be a celebration of games with clear and sensible rules - something that gives those 432 developers a chance to get feedback, improve their games, stay in the community, and bring in new players. And I'm not saying you need to please everyone, give everyone a prize, or give everyone players. Of course not. There are plenty of good games with fewer than 100 votes and 10 votes (they dont even get players).

But with the ideas I and garry suggested above today, this could actually feel like a celebration of games rather than a meat grinder for every developer involved

They just haven't been implemented yet. And that's a shame

You said "joy" like you don't get joy from making things. And because of that, I don't think your heart is in the right place, like many others here. I make games because I love gaming. I joined S&Box because Garry changed my life over ten years ago on Facepunch Forums, and Gmod made me join Steam in 2009. Now I have several games of my own, that I made, on Steam. I didn't do it because Garry got rich, I did it because Garry had a fire and a passion and was making something he loved. And I joined S&Box with the same vision and passion, but as Prime mentioned:

I became a dev to celebrate games. I made Jumpbox for S&Box several months ago, for the joy of it. I thought I could find joy here too, but the bad actors lying about when they started, cheating the vote system, and using AI to cut corners took all of that joy away.

I am a skilled developer. And this Jam has done the exact opposite of what you say the prize pool was supposed to do. It has shown me that S&Box is full of grifters and slop.

A box of Greggs sausage rolls for any FacePunch staff to nom my game..

JK

Ahhhh, that's not what I meant. My post probably came off as quite negative, but I'm not trying to be. I'm just pragmatic by nature.
The truth is I wouldn't describe myself as game developer but I made a game for the jam knowing there wasn't a chance of me winning because I thought it would be fun. In fact, I take offense to you assuming I made a game chasing prize money when its obvious there are plenty of people like me in this who knew they wouldn't be able to compete with actual teams; the default assumption should be that most people are doing this as a hobby. When I said it wasn't just about the "joy", I meant I didn't think facepunch's only motivation for decisions related to hosting the jam was just a love for videogames. What I meant was I thought some of this was to promote the platform and I think that's fine; they're trying to get this platform off the ground. We would all love for more players on sbox.

But anyways, sorry about that, I could have been more clear.

Hey Garry, can we do a smaller jam fairly quickly after this one to test the new ideas for the voting system? If we iterate on it on a smaller scale, we'll know what works well for the next big one. 

Doing more, smaller, jams with no cash prize would be an amazing way to build community and make good games. I agree. 

The prize of being featured would be good enough imo