Games with awful review scores or bad like ratios are still being pushed to the front page and I think it's a bad look on s&box.
There should be a threshold for games to appear in the front page, at least 60% positive review ratio, which is still considered not great, but at least filters out all the "slop".
This is currently what the "Trending" page looks like:image.png1.56 MBMarked with X are the games that have less than 60% positive reviews, they usually consist of repetitive and frustrating gameplay made to farm playtime, and heavily feature AI assets and thumbnails.
Note that not all "low effort" games have been marked with an X, since it's not a question of wheter or not someone put effort into making the game as that's relative to their skill, it's strictly related to the game's quality.
I've seen people mention that there aren't enough games to showcase if we excluded the "slop", which is just not true, the bad games are currently pushing down better ones.
I agree that bad games should be hidden, but you should also consider the game's publication date and rating date, because otherwise, it'll be easier to delete the game and republish it than to try to get back to the main page. In general, the platform doesn't promote games right now, and that's the most important thing for developers. Players need to be offered games that match their interests so they don't leave unsatisfied.
However, there are still a few issues: the first is optimization, the engine's PC requirements are incredibly high, even for the simplest games, and the second is download speed. Either the file size needs to be reduced or the transfer speed increased, because sometimes people don't want to download a game just because it's too big.
I feel like there should be some sort of manual review system at least for suspicious clickbaity games but I feel like that would also limit creativity in the platform. I'm guessing something like how itch.io would do it would work?
i think its a good way to promote new games , and even as you mention slop games, could be in other eyes a good game ...
even though , the review system is easily to manipulate , so it should consider completly removed since people write shit in there and give negative feedback for no reason ...
consider the featured list which is controlled by the "algorithm" says everything
For trending wouldn't sorting on recent average session lenght make more sense ? Review % doens't say much imo.
But more importantly what if a game got updated and is now much better ? The reviews don't magically become all positive nor do people always re-review the games.
But I would agree with the sentement of front-page should showoff the best to get players engaged with the platform. And currently it doesn't do that.
image.png3.57 KBA lot of games a bit older on the platform that were broken for a period of times. Have there reviews in the lower numbers. Just because people couldn't play them. (Even if the games were hidden)
Maybe having recent reviews stat like on steam would be helpful
I oppose vehemently and without qualification the characterization of my art as "slop".
Unlike the cloying, dopaminergic effluvia of so-called "game devs," my prescient, incisive polemic against the evils of this world do not beg for your blasted attention.
I hereby retract my generous contribution to the nascent artform of narrative software - an artform taken for granted by the ingrates and jackasses who, despite their maladaptive braying, have yet to submit a critique of my work unclouded by the void in their soul whence curiosity and joy was doubtless prised by a formative cruelty of which I am made a cathartic effigy so that I must suffer the vanity and animus of unthinking hedonists who mistake for injury their discomfort at my work, and for this imagined crime seek to impose a penalty of expulsion from the noble tradition of writing software that you can click on and press buttons and different things happen depending on what you did.
Unlike the cloying, dopaminergic effluvia of so-called "game devs," my prescient, incisive polemic against the evils of this world do not beg for your blasted attention.
I oppose vehemently and without qualification the characterization of my art as "slop".
Unlike the cloying, dopaminergic effluvia of so-called "game devs," my prescient, incisive polemic against the evils of this world do not beg for your blasted attention.
I hereby retract my generous contribution to the nascent artform of narrative software - an artform taken for granted by the ingrates and jackasses who, despite their maladaptive braying, have yet to submit a critique of my work unclouded by the void in their soul whence curiosity and joy was doubtless prised by a formative cruelty of which I am made a cathartic effigy so that I must suffer the vanity and animus of unthinking hedonists who mistake for injury their discomfort at my work, and for this imagined crime seek to impose a penalty of expulsion from the noble tradition of writing software that you can click on and press buttons and different things happen depending on what you did.
I would like to see a better recommendation algorithm too. Having all this uninspired bullshit on the front page just looks bad and will incentivize people to create more of it.
I oppose vehemently and without qualification the characterization of my art as "slop".
Unlike the cloying, dopaminergic effluvia of so-called "game devs," my prescient, incisive polemic against the evils of this world do not beg for your blasted attention.
I hereby retract my generous contribution to the nascent artform of narrative software - an artform taken for granted by the ingrates and jackasses who, despite their maladaptive braying, have yet to submit a critique of my work unclouded by the void in their soul whence curiosity and joy was doubtless prised by a formative cruelty of which I am made a cathartic effigy so that I must suffer the vanity and animus of unthinking hedonists who mistake for injury their discomfort at my work, and for this imagined crime seek to impose a penalty of expulsion from the noble tradition of writing software that you can click on and press buttons and different things happen depending on what you did.
Half of the crossed-out games in the screenshot don't have so many bad reviews that they would be removed if this change will be introduced. Just need to filter by the likes/dislikes ratio, since that's the only parameter that reflects how trashy a game is. But FP won't do that because they simply don't care...
Filters would be awesome way to do it, downvotes become way too powerful when you are able to group together and downvote people's games. If the pool of people who are downvoting is > 500.
A system like this would easily fail to individual opinion, biases and malicious intent.
What is a good game? What game should get recommended? I feel this will become increasingly difficult with masses of games. Also there will be big effort to cheat - already is the playfund being finagled. "Slop" games will be a big problem to come. I'm not talking about low quality per se, but "processed meat" and spam games.
Quality of a game isn't measured in effort or soul. Silly fun or relateable experiences are not necessarily quality. There needs to be a great filter system. Simple to use reviews are a good way to start, but perhaps lack player interactions and are skewed easily, especially for trending or up-and-coming games.
