Encouraging Feedback

[LadyThief]

[Eggo von Eggo]

[adgboss]

There are two things to keep in mind with regard to the feedback issue:

1) To have feedback you have to make sure you share a significant portion of your game. I shared quite a bit but I am not talking that much but more then two or three sentences. I know it can be tough designing AND remembering to share on the thread and some people like to keep their recipe under wraps on purpose. I myself just made posting here part of the process of game design.

2) It is going to be difficult to qualify commentary as opposed to quantifying it. I can make 70 comments which sound like absolute crap or I can make 3 useful comments. How do we judge that?

One suggestion I might make is do something called the Commercial Break where you get extra points if you can write a decent summary on at least 3 different games, before the end of the Contest. I know, not everyone has the time. Any judgement of commentary, IMHO should be positive only. You do not lose points for not commenting but you can gain them by doing so intelligently.

Sean

[Tobias]

I just put up a post on the 'peer review' thread. At the end of that, I had an idea: a kinda chain-letter review system.

You could do the same thing in a 'chain questions' thread. The way it works: there're one thread in which someone can ask a question about their game. The next post should be by someone else, and an attempt to answer that question. After the attempted answer, they can also ask a question themselves, etc. etc. etc.

Honor system on actually trying to formulate a reasonable answer.

How about that?

Also, thread (generation) moderation is an option - keeping the number of threads low enough for people to be able to keep track a bit better.

[Eggo von Eggo]

I think that the chain forum idea is excellent.

It would also be nice (in keeping with the "thread moderation" concept) to be able (as thread creators) to lock our own threads once their purpose is complet -- if we start one as a "brain dump" and want to shut it down once actual writing starts (in another thread) f'rex.

[Jason Petrasko]

[CodexArcanum]

This was sort of a personal problem, but the timing for this contest just didn't work for me. I've been moving this week, so finding any time to work was maddening.

I finally cleared my schedule and pretty much just wrote the whole game on Saturday and Sunday, mostly Sunday. So if my game reads less like Game-Chef and more like 24-Hour RPG, now you know.

It also didn't help that I wasted the first weekend on an idea that I abondoned.


So what I'm saying is, the reason I provided less than stellar feedback was a general lack of time. I didn't want to interrupt my mad dash at the end, so I cut off my net connection. During the week, I didn't even have time to work on my own game, let alone read other people's and try to provide quality commentary. Because for me, "That sounds cool," feels not-so-good. I'd rather give helpful banter, offer my own insights into design, and that kind of thing.

Maybe it would be better to hold the contest a little later in the summer? I understand that memorial day is the biggest moving day in the US, so maybe I'm not the only one that was crunched on time.

ADDED:
Another thing I just thought of, a lot of people seem to be gearing up for playtests of their own games. Maybe we should organize some kind of playtest exchange? Similar to the reviews thread, set up a "I'll playtest this game is someone can playtest mine." Some games might even be possible to run over the net.