Creeper World User Space

Grauniad · September 23, 2011, 07:43:48 PM

Oh noes.. CW:US has slipped to 3rd. What a fickle world we live in. It seems the rating alone, not a factor of ratings and play counts is what ranks the game.

knucracker · September 23, 2011, 07:58:10 PM

Yeah, it's simple rating at the moment the contest ends that they look at. For the weekly I think that is midnight pacific daylight time (I assume). For the monthly... that's a ways off.

The top three games have been bouncing around. I have watched it about every 2 hours through the day and noted how the other two games have varied from 1st to 3rd at different times. CW:US has been in all three positions over the last 24 hours but has mostly been in 2nd and 3rd today. The other two have oscillated.

All of the games have thousands of votes so you would guess that if the voters were unbiased judges, that the score would settle down. But Kongregate lets you change your vote and people aren't unbiased, so they often tend to down vote games in a winning position if they like lower games better. I'm sure its pretty interesting to work at Kongregate and analyse the data...

And of course DH's votes have been manually adjusted by Kong (as presumably have other games, not sure) because of illegal votes. The top comment used to describe this. DH started at a low score but shot up to 2nd place after the correction by Kongregate staff. If I was in a physics lab, we'd have to throw everything out and start over again... but this (thankfully) isn't science. :)

It's a long haul before the end of the month, and there could yet be another popular game to show up. The timing of a release can often influence the monthly winner more than the ultimate quality of the games. (I wish Kongregate would separate the entry time cutoff from the monthly contests by two weeks, but that's another story.)

UpperKEES · September 23, 2011, 08:13:06 PM

QuoteAny game first published during September is eligible for our monthly contest. Voting will last through October 3rd, 2011, and we'll be awarding $1500* to the highest-rated game, $1000* to the second-highest, $700* for the third, $500 for fourth, and $250 for 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th. Games must have a minimum of 30 votes to qualify.

So if you release your game on October 3 at 11 PM and make sure you get 30 votes of 5 stars within 1 hour you are the winner? :-\

Grauniad · September 23, 2011, 08:25:24 PM

LOL, yes, but that is not all of it. I'm sure the thousands of plays and lesser amount of click-through to Virgil's site and then the even smaller conversion rate into buyers is worth more than the prize money - or at least I'd hope so.

knucracker · September 23, 2011, 08:36:13 PM

I believe that would be the case... I see nothing to indicate any other interpretation of the rules.
Now it would be hard to do this, and those 30 votes would be very suspicious.... so I bet the kongregate staff would look very carefully at it.

Also, the game would lose exposure since the month would end immediately. One reason to put a game up early is that is gets more time in the monthly high score chart and hence more plays. But if someone is trolling for prize money, I suppose a very late entry might do well. Most people with flash games are going for total worldwide plays. That's what their sponsors want and it all relates to ad revenue.

For me, I care mostly about total plays as well. About 10% of unique players click a link that brings them here. And some tiny fraction of them see something they like and join the Creeper Nation. It converts at less than 1% of global _unique_ players, so it's like extracting gold from seawater... you can do it, you just need a lot of seawater and a lot time. But, I can tell you empirically that it beats any money you make in ad revenue. This is another story, but it boggles my mind why more of the top end flash games don't offer desktop versions in the more 'traditional' indie game sense. It's a real pain to run a store, and a website, etc.... but if you have the fortitude to do so, it's worth it. Anyway, I digress :)

Fisherck · September 23, 2011, 08:44:49 PM

I just looked and the top three games are all at an average score of 4.38. That's close! 8)
But the funny thing I noticed is that CW:US is sitting at 3rd (moved up to second while I was typing this), and has a lot more votes than the other games. Come on. :)

Kithros · September 23, 2011, 08:46:23 PM

Quote from: UpperKEES on September 23, 2011, 08:13:06 PM
QuoteAny game first published during September is eligible for our monthly contest. Voting will last through October 3rd, 2011, and we'll be awarding $1500* to the highest-rated game, $1000* to the second-highest, $700* for the third, $500 for fourth, and $250 for 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th. Games must have a minimum of 30 votes to qualify.

So if you release your game on October 3 at 11 PM and make sure you get 30 votes of 5 stars within 1 hour you are the winner? :-\

It says that it has to be published during september - that means there will be at least 3 days where a game can be voted on.

mthw2vc · September 23, 2011, 08:59:16 PM

At this point, even a few votes could disrupt the balance. Let every last vote count...

F0R · September 23, 2011, 10:53:50 PM

Thanks Virgil for adding my map, i love you and rated the others one star

CobraKill · September 23, 2011, 11:23:25 PM

Tsk... tsk. Virgil specifficly said not to do that.

allu · September 24, 2011, 02:12:19 AM

Virgil actually said that he dont want us to do that or he dont ask that form us...but surely we can stil do it :)

crazyone76 · September 24, 2011, 04:47:08 AM

oops I rated the other 4/5 Im sorry Virgil dun eat me I change it right away

UpperKEES · September 24, 2011, 08:32:27 AM

Quote from: Kithros on September 23, 2011, 08:46:23 PM
It says that it has to be published during september - that means there will be at least 3 days where a game can be voted on.

Literally that's true, but I think September lasts till the 3rd of Oktober on Kong.... ;)

crazyone76 · September 24, 2011, 09:00:20 AM

getting ppl on transformice to vote 5/5
(not forced just asking nicely)

knucracker · September 24, 2011, 10:12:20 AM

The end of the month is the real goal here...
So we'll have to see how the games hold up over the coming week. The other games have had the benefit of being distributed on other sites, but that will change for CW:US this coming week. I've put it up for distribution so other sites will start to host it. That will collect fans from a wider area and bring them in for the final push this coming week.

I do encourage people who visit knucklecracker.com to head over and vote 5 stars (and some do), but knucklecracker.com doesn't get the kind of traffic that flash game portals get. Casting a wider net by letting CW:US be hosted around the world will both bring more people to knucklecracker.com and should also ever so slightly bring up the score on kongregate.

Also, remember this is a battle not the whole war. Kongregate will once again get a visit from the Creeper Nation around the December time frame. CW2:T will leave its own mark on the scene at that time.