I've been noticing a trend - It seems to me that the number of votes an obscure game gets maxes at around 10-12 votes, and this seems like a decline from previous years. Yet, within a day of a Mario, Sonic, or Mega Man submission, there are already 40+ votes. I extrapolate this to mean that we have more than 40 registered members of the forum checking the workbench daily; yet the obscure runs go largely ignored for days, or weeks.
I'm fishing for reasons why users don't vote or comment, and if there is anything I can do as a judge to encourage more active participation in these disregarded submissions.
I'd also like to thank Mr. Kelly R. Flewin and mklip2001, not only do you watch and vote on nearly every submission, you give detailed feedback.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
I used to try to watch everything, especially things with little feedback, but now I usually just watch things that sound interesting. If I watch something I'll usually vote, but only comment if I have something to add to the discussion beyond "i liked/hated it".
Let's face it, stuff like M64 has a devoted speedrunning community to itself -- but most people don't care about obscure NES titles like Linus Spacehead.
Also, people don't like being wrong and if you never say anything you can't be wrong :P
I at least begin watching most runs that get encodes, but it's hard for them to hold my interest if I am not familiar with them already. Compound that with the unfortunate truth that lots of games aren't that good. Take, for example, the American Gladiators run that's currently in workbench. I started watching it, but the game is clearly made of pure gorilla shit. Maybe x2poet tassed it well, but I don't really care to find out. So I didn't vote.
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3573)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
Pointless Boy wrote:
I started watching it, but the game is clearly made of pure gorilla shit. Maybe x2poet tassed it well, but I don't really care to find out. So I didn't vote.
You are missing DarkKobold's whole point then. You watched, you didn't like it, vote No! Don't just not vote
To my understanding, I'm not allowed to vote unless I have watched the whole movie. I won't sit through a movie I don't enjoy watching just to be able to vote though. I'd rather move on to something else.
Let's face it, stuff like M64 has a devoted speedrunning community to itself -- but most people don't care about obscure NES titles like Linus Spacehead.
Meh, I was hoping I could make that game less obscure with a TAS. Or I was hoping its having a funny name would make more people care to check it out. >_<
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
You are missing DarkKobold's whole point then. You watched, you didn't like it, vote No! Don't just not vote
I disagree. Someone bothered to TAS the game, therefore it is reasonable to assume some nonzero number of people would be entertained by its publication. I don't feel it is correct to vote no for a TAS just because I don't appreciate the game, especially when I can't/won't evaluate the TAS on its technical and artistic merits.
I can't recall if I've ever voted 'no' for a TAS or not, but if I did, it was only because I was intimately familiar with the game and recognized the TAS was not well-made. I know other people don't share my laissez faire attitude, but that is the correct way to vote in my opinion. If the American Gladiators TAS is reasonably well made, I believe it deserves publication on TASVideos, even if I won't watch it.
I don't feel it is correct to vote no for a TAS just because I don't appreciate the game, especially when I can't/won't evaluate the TAS on its technical and artistic merits.
The "meh" vote is for you.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I only can give feedback on games I know, or that speak somewhat for themselves. Also, I lack the attention span to watch anything longer than 20 minutes unless I know the game really well. Hence, I only give feedback if I actually know what I'm talking about (or it's clearly a bad game choice IMO) and I only vote when the run's quite short.
Let's face it, stuff like M64 has a devoted speedrunning community to itself -- but most people don't care about obscure NES titles like Linus Spacehead.
Meh, I was hoping I could make that game less obscure with a TAS. Or I was hoping its having a funny name would make more people care to check it out. >_<
You did make it less obscure! The only reason I knew about it was because of my research on Code Masters when doing my dizzy run. But still, I don't think it's surprising that most people were daunted by an almost half hour run of a game no one had ever heard of. A shame, but not surprising :)
Nowadays I take a glance at almost all submissions. Occasionally I'm too busy or disinterested to concentrate on a run enough as to give it a decent, objective vote (and commentary). Another reason for not voting is that I may start to feel fatalistic or uncertain while watching and just leave the submission's fate to others' hands, happens more often than you'd think.
It's good that an institution like TASvideos exists to shower obscure games with even this much attention that they get now.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Admittedly, my flow of encodes has dried up recently (Thanks to a holiday I recently took), but I do try and watch and review every game that I encode. Granted... I don't usually give much more criticism than 'Yes vote' or 'No vote'. I do give proper feedback when I feel it is appropriate, however.
I've actually been watching less movies due to the fact that mmarks and Mister Epic are encoding things before I get the chance.
I watch almost practically every movie I can. I sometimes just vote when I can't really think of anything to say other then "Yes" (or No, or Meh, or whatever the fuck)
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2178
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
I watch pretty much all submissions, I do however not vote or comment when I cannot make up my mind to what to think of the run which is mostly caused by my inability to make sense of what happens even with reading the notes and playing the game myself. This usually makes me think those submissions are incredibly boring and not worthy of publication... thus I do not vote or comment on them because I feel it would be unfair to those who can actually appreciate the movie.
Joined: 6/11/2006
Posts: 818
Location: Arboga, Sweden
The issue here is most likely that people either a) watch the obscure runs and dislike them, and does not want to vote no, as voting no makes you a bad person who slays kittens, or b) does not watch the obscure runs because they don't know the game, and suppose that they will dislike it, and once again, the fear of voting no.
The issue here is also that you are forced to explain your No-vote, and with people (not just the author, but fans of the game (which more often is the case)) sometimes go apeshit over a No-vote on their favorite game. If you are so sure that you are "not going to like a run", watch it, confirm that you disliked it and do some contribution by casting a vote according to your opinion. And oh yeah. You might turn out positively surprised.
I'm not saying "EVERYBODY SHOULD WATCH EVERY RUUUUN" but with so many great contributers who encode pretty much every run for even the most obscure systems, take 12 minutes of the time you'd spend snickering at icanhazcheezeburger or stalking hot girls on Facebook and watch a run starring something which can hardly be defined as a human being. Do this every now and then, especially for runs which seems to have gone forgotten, and you'll do some contribution to the site.
Warp wrote:
omg lol this is so fake!!!1 the nes cant produce music like this!
By the way, what does anybody think about such an option where a post explaining a voter's opinion is only visible to a judge (for instance, one who has claimed the movie)? That could help at least some of those who are afraid of public pressure.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I think I can definitely relate on this matter since most of my runs get ignored into oblivion.
But I dont think that its the obscurity of the game, but rather just lack of interest. Take for example the two submissions that came today. One got over 10 votes in less than 10 minutes. The other one barely has 1.
But I dont think that its the obscurity of the game, but rather just lack of interest.
The obscurity of the game probably greatly influences the amount of interest a run of it generates. Now for a sub-10 minutes run, obscurity isn't really an issue, but if I have no idea what is going on 20 minutes is one hell of a long watch.
What most people said.
I don't like it, but fact is, people in general do not have time to watch 1000 movies. They tend to be very selective in what they want to watch. If they don't have a reason to watch a movie, they won't. Sometimes, having one reason not to watch a movie is enough to put the thought of watching it out of their mind.
