Are You Smarter Than An Alien? by smallboss
Here is my game. Not too proud of it but hey atleast it is something. A Bullet Hell Mixed with a Quiz show. Shoot your way through aliens and answer tricky questions in this amazing GameShow of a game.
Made By SmallBoss. Voice By Ebil.(@UltimateEbil)
| Windows | https://smallboss00.itch.io/are-you-smarter-than-an-alien |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/are-you-smarter-than-an-alien |
Ratings
| Overall | 21th | 4.306⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1th | 4.528⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 2th | 4.556⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1th | 4.722⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 1th | 4.694⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1th | 4.806⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 74th | 4.056⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 9🗨️ |
=)
I hope you continue with the project.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape
Congrats on 1st in so many caregories!
Also note that the minimum ratings is actually 17, not 20. But, then again, the person might not know that
The system works /s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSetQroJe-U
You really need to opt out of categories where you don't make the stuff.
I can say for sure that i did not manipulate the rating in anyway because i don't know how to do it, and even if i knew i won't do that.
Also for the people that are wondering about the music, I did not make any of it. This is my first LD ever and i decided to join the jam (not the compo) because i needed help.
Both pieces of music are royalty free from youtube,and again i am very sorry if i did something not correct and i hope someone tells me how to fix this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RubzbJziIoo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhD0MIxBVbw
Anyway, congrats on the rest of your results!
It's your first LD, I can totally understand the confusion.
Maybe the rules need to be more clarified on that.
Still, congrats on doing well in the other categories, and I definitely enjoyed the game!
So much honesty, 5/5 meaning perfect, no room for improvement, top of the crop when comparing and contrasting to the rest of the competition.
Maybe I need some of that honest feedback to help me improve my games... :)
PS: The dev made a fun game, and I think he was likely innocent of encouraging positive votes here.
However I cannot deny the voting system has left a serious bitter taste. In the end, I am seriously doubting if it was worth sacrificing the entire weekend... I hope I'm not breaking an illusion here, the game jam is not about winning or losing, but fairness and respect is definitely not reflected as it should be. As I was to deduct from the results, this voting quotum is not representative to anything at all. It would only work in the case where the law of big numbers applies where "friendly" scores (by lack of better terms as "pitty scores" sounds a bit harsh) are balanced to the average or median, which here clearly is not the case, making all the rankings utterly meaningless. I can only make the suggestion to upgrade the voting system from its current state to include a peer reviewed rating with a predefined panel of non-participating "experts". Their votes could be weighted in with the "public/popular" votes. Referees could for example be found on Twitch, as several developers have already picked up playing ludum dare entries live on stream. Giving out an official state of LD Referee would not only reward their initiatives, it would avoid particular situations where conflict arises due to a non-discriminating form of voting. Furthermore, there already is a mention for streamers on the LD page, so I assume it is not a big overhead to implement this. Offcourse this would imply more work, but I am confident that it is possible and will only benefit the quality of our developer lives.
So in the end and hopefully contributing with some value to the discussion... Congratulations to you AND to everyone else that has submitted an entry! We have all finished a game and we all sacrificied something, be it in different proportions. But keep in the back of your minds, the rankings are statistically meaningless and even worse, they are plain wrong.
Until next edition (should the rating system be updated) !
People are very adamant about not letting people who have not participated in the jam from voting, as they would not know how much work goes into everything.
I personally rather the current system then giving some popular people voting power, I feel it's cooler to have everyone vote and share their feedback.
@smallboss You should opt-out from audio. You should even try to do so now as there people who deserve to be ranked fairly. I can imagine if I were focused on Audio I'd be pretty pissed about the fact the winner of the category actually hadn't made the music...
@david-boeger
> The developer is part of a community called Game Dev Underground, and we do rate each other’s games frequently, so they probably account for a good portion of the 20. However, we grade each other pretty tough, as any of the members can attest to. We’re all about honest feedback and releasing finished games.
You realise how much bias you are introducing by rating within a community? Even if you happen to be more critical, that's the other extreme which doesn't helper either. Don't get me wrong, communities are great, but as far competitions goes, there should ideally be no groups.
> Yet another game I’m giving 5 stars all around. That is the 5th one so far. Man, GDU members are kicking butt this jam!
This doesn't really seem very critical to me. The polar opposite, really...
Also, you shouldn't ever disclose how you rated a game. That's potentially preassuring the rated dev to give you similar treatment. (So do overly harsh comments, obviously, but that's a different discussion).
> In the end, I think this is just an honest case of a game being more than the sum of it’s parts.
That's why there's an overall category.
GDU: "Underground" is really just to sound cool; there's nothing secretive about it! The proof is online:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_hwKJdF3KRAy4QIaiCSMgQ
Tim has been posting daily advice videos for a long time now. He does interviews with game developers. He attends conferences. He does Feedback Friday streams. He's participated in numerous game jams and made dozens of games. Nobody is more transparent. It was really not my intention to call into question the integrity of the community at all, because the founder Tim has worked tirelessly for many months, if not years, to build up a community that offers help to all game developers, especially newer ones. If at any point you feel anything surrounding GDU is suspicious, feel free to visit the web site, watch the YouTube channel, join the Discord chat server, send Tim an email, etc. In no way should anything I say or do be interpreted as the opinions or actions of any other members.
BIAS: You literally can't have a jam with thousands of submissions and not have biased group affiliations. Before talking down about someone's game, consider if you've ever tried to gain favor with a streamer or anyone else for your submission. If you posted a blog post on the jam's home page asking people to review your game, or posted a comment asking for a review in exchange, you've literally gone every bit as far as any GDU member in trying to gain special favor. It's called marketing.
MY PUBLIC RATINGS: Me stating I rated games 5/5 by the previous poster is taken out of context. Admittedly my fault, not yours. GDU recently hosted its own jam, the Jim Jam:
https://itch.io/jam/jimjam
We had a very large number of participants making our first game ever, myself included. The reason I publicly posted how many GDU games I was giving perfect scores to was because I felt the average quality of GDU submissions improved significantly between jams, and I wanted to congratulate my fellow members. A single post on a single game looks isolated, but I was actively discussing this with our fellow members in the Discord server the entire time. It's all there in the chat history if anyone is inclined to dig so deeply. The games I rated highly were games like Bunnyderps, Honest Dan's Trout, Tennis Z, and Ready Set Dress, which were all highly ranked by LD41 participants at large. I apologize if publicly posting which games I gave perfect scores to resulted in any confusion.
MY CRITICALITY: The previous poster called into question my criticality, which is funny, because I may very well give the harshest ratings of anyone in GDU, lol. I'm not going to give any names, but I've given fellow GDU members minimum scores on what I think were their first games for things I consider inexcusable, like lying about which platforms are supported, not having a way to reset the game without closing it, not having enough of a tutorial, etc. There was one guy who clearly gave my previous game a very negative response just out of spite for the things I said about his game. So yeah, no, I can assure you, if this or any game ranks #1 in any category, it's not because I'm doing it any favors. I legitimately had a blast with this game. I have a VERY SMALL folder of jam games I want to keep playing on my PC, and this is one of them. It mostly contains GDU games, but only because I was rating those as people posted in the chat. It also has non-GDU games I loved. It's all about quality for me. Stealth Truckers is a perfect example of a non-GDU game I loved and kept in the folder.
Just, for next time, if you use audio from other sources, or that was created before the events, even if you are in the Jam, opt out of audio.
There is no reason to believe that there are fake ratings, groups of friends rate each other all the time, this is normal.
Also, in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with saying "this was a 5 star game", it is nice to give immediate feedback to people sometimes. I have done this before as well.
The referee system being reffered to is just the opposite of what Ludum Dare is about, and I feel that has better place in another Game Jam, but not here
However, as I posted earlier, this system renders any form of ranking meaningless. If this game would have had over 100 votes, the story would be completely different. This fact is completely disjunct from who made the game or even who voted for it, the fact to the matter is that an average score taken over 20 votes versus an average score taken over 200 votes is meaningless. My previous posts were clear, I congratulate everyone submitting, but I will not congratulate people on "winning".
With all respect to the developer as I agree, it is a very nice entry... But it is not a winner for 4 categories and being second in "innovation" and where the core game concept has existed since the earliest era of games for example, the audio should be disqualified when rules are strictly applied.
In summary and I hope this closes any quarrel or irritation and I once more would like to politely congratulate the developer and all other participants of LD41, the voting system is corrupt and has inadvertently been abused, no matter what defensive arguments are posted here.
So I suggest we either change the rating system (see my previous post) or remove it all together.
Have a nice evening and DEV ON !
As I specified earlier in my suggestion, this system of public voting needs a referee layer on top, potentially with a layer of experts surpassing even that. That way the voting system can stay the same and be appended over multiple rounds. If this game really is that good there would be nothing to worry about as the selected jurymembers would clearly give high scores as well.
I keep wondering why everyone keeps being so defensive... Was there any trace of anything offensive in my comments? Maybe the following sentence is a bit harsh, but as a scientist it needs to be said. If you want to have any form of comparison to other games, which clearly is the entire intention of voting and ranking them, you need to do it serious. And yes, that might take longer, but at least that is an objective process. Would anyone have minded to wait untill the next LD before knowing his actual score? Playing 10 minutes a game for a selection of " voted" winners is not that bad. Heck most games don't even offer that much "varying" content, if they do it already is a very good entry !
However, should people be bothered they have to wait longer to get ranked, even if it would take 3 months, your argument that it isn't about competition becomes completely invalid...
Even in technical areas, what matters if the entertainment value. For example, this game clearly has primitive graphics, with hand-drawn text and such. Yet I gave it a 5/5 on graphics. Why? Because I don't expect AAA graphics in a jam game, and I care more about their cohesiveness and support of the core game experience. There were fantastic-looking 3D games in this jam that I gave lower graphics scores because something seemed out of place or under-developed. I didn't feel that way playing this game. The same could be said of pixel art, windowed games, reduced color palettes, etc. If it serves the game's entertainment value, the graphics are more effective than technically superior graphics. Tons of people love certain art styles, like retro, low-poly, pixel, particle effects, advanced lighting, smooth animation, etc. So your assertion that there is and must be an objective ranking system, which seems to be the source of much of your frustration, is simply not valid.
As for self-promotion, I was simply defending the integrity of GDU after accidentally bringing it into question, as it was unfair of me to do that. I am a GDU member, but my name is David, my fictitious company name is Slug Games, and my LD41 submission is War Maker. It got 3.0 ratings across the board, except for a 2.3, which was quite disappointing. I thought it deserved higher, but clearly, my players did not. Nothing in the previous posts was meant as self-promotion. I did not post anything about myself above. It does nothing for me to promote GDU or @smallboss in any way. I simply wanted to ease people's suspicions, as I felt some of the posters above were misinterpreting things.
In short, is the outcome surprising? Yes. @smallboss will tell you as much. He even posted he was not that proud of the game. But should we go so far as to be upset and claim the only way more objectively deserving games didn't win is that there was an abuse of the ratings system, intentional or not? No. It's just the nature of game jams, especially one as large as this. You do realize there were thousands of submissions, right? Even 200 ratings is not that significant in the grand scheme of things. There simply isn't enough data to get accurate results. Any game that is an all-around good game is likely to win by simple virtue of being a good game and getting lucky with who plays it. This game was a good enough game that it had a chance, and it made it. That's all there is to it.
And, I ideally people will need 15 - 20 minutes to rate a game and think of feedback, maybe more
It looks like @smallboss did opt out of audio now, thank you very much :)
_"For example, this game clearly has primitive graphics, with hand-drawn text and such. Yet I gave it a 5/5 on graphics. Why? Because I don’t expect AAA graphics in a jam game, and I care more about their cohesiveness and support of the core game experience. There were fantastic-looking 3D games in this jam that I gave lower graphics scores because something seemed out of place or under-developed. I didn’t feel that way playing this game."_
Essentially, you're saying if you think the game was overall good and it worked together well, so you just give everything 5s. Personally, I feel that's what the "overall" category is. The fact you say you gave lower scores to games that were better graphically than this is really contradicting to how I rate games. I imagine it's contradictory to how many others rate games, too. I feel your voting style means that you really skew the results for specific categories. I really do understand the concept of something having "poorer graphics" still really suiting the game / feeling complete, but... I cannot fathom the idea that you would hypothetically give this game 5/5 graphics. I feel like you might as well just have one category to vote on - "Did I like it?".
This just highlights the problem that will always exist with voting of this type - the contrast in the way people vote is always going to be different. So unless you can get the same X votes rating every single game, the results will likely be inconsistent.
As for mister/misses Anonymous (I can't figure out if this is one person or multiple, but I try to respect the opinion of people that are hiding out of fear to touch sensitive nerves), I tried to put out another summary of what I am trying to provide a suggestion on. Maybe it is just a seed to the future of LD, as I will not be entering it again until winners are selected fully randomly, but did receive a score OR there is a proper ranking system. And this again will lead to people claiming it is just about fun and this and that... But for the sake of this comment, I really do not care about "moral noblesse" taking over.
FACT : The system is unfit, biased towards lower number of voters (in the extreme case votes are sampled from a developers environment and not from the entire community, such as clearly is the case here, deny it or not). TO AVOID THIS, the system could use an ADDITIONAL layer of voting. To everyone that keeps argumenting that it is not LD if there is no public voting, there would still be public voting, it just would not be final. On top of that, I see everyone posting time and time again that this is not the spirit of LD... Then why be opposed against a new voting sytem? Contrary to someone voting audio when it is not applicable, that IS being hypocrit.
Ok now we got that out of the way and I hope other developers here will understand it.
Furthermore, something a bit more personal that hit home. I received some connotations that I would be a salty, jealous developer... I am, but I do my very best to allow for constructive discussion and for those that are bright enough to follow the entire thread and read through all the comments (I am sorry, I like writing), I only blame a system, not individuals. I know very well I can't change the rating and yes, this is the internet and I already anticipate the same comments over and over, which is why I do not post anonymous.
I was glad with my personal first LD ranking until I discovered it means nothing at all. People saying doing an LD is not for the prestige and just for fun... It is, don't try to make yourself look better, we all chose LD because it is the biggest. There were plenty other jams going on at the time. Even people like @David Boeger , who has to stand ground deflecting the pitchforks and torches of the so called "witch hunt" for a friend who hasn't jumped back into the spotlights... To me that just proves that LD is more than for fun. You do it for a reason.
@JavaSaurus 's discussion about changing the voting system should be somewhere else, that's all I was saying.
@David-Boeger I agree with you, I probably would have given a 4.5 or 5 star to this game, when I first played through, I did not realise it was made by Kevin MacLeod, and that is not my fault. You should not be blamed
And I would like to repeat, that this game was really fun, I feel bad now that maybe this conversation isaking smallboss not want to participate in LD again or is discouraged in some way. He has now done everything possible to fix his mistakes and I apologize that this discussion is continuing.
To that, I agree *something* should change with the rating system but I really don't know what that could be there just isn't a way to normalize everyone voting standard that I can see. Not even down to personal preference for what they like, but how harshly they rate things.
For instance, I watched one streamer rate games, and the comments were like "Hmm, graphics, Yeah, I they were really great, I loved the effect. 3.5" To him, graphics he considered REALLY GOOD are a 3.5. Yet I've watched other streams and they are like, "Graphics, yeah, they are serviceable, eehhh, 4"
So yea, I blame the system more than anything.
As for this game, and I hesitate to even say anything because it makes me look petty at this point. But it shows the problem with the system. This game is pretty decent, but it's by no means a winning game. None of the other top games have this kind of conversation going on and I think it's pretty clear that there is a reason why. Even if you don't particularity like some of the others, it's clear how they could be ranked the way they are. But this game feels like it purely won the "who decided to try my game lottery" @smallboss I'm sorry if I'm offending you with this I really do congratulate you for finishing and submitting a a game. Just finishing is a huge accomplishment, and you really did make a pretty good game, better than my first (and at least second) game. But even you yourself claimed you weren't too proud of it. I'm just rambling at this point so I'm going to cut it off. I just had to get my thoughts out there.
There doesn't appear to be a centralized "About" page on the new LD site, so I can't find anything specifically stating the current purpose of LD. I remember reading prior to LD41 that it was about encouraging the development and sharing of games. That's not to say you can't get anything else out of LD. But that's kind of the stated purpose. Correct me if I'm wrong. A very informal community voting process, despite obvious flaws, accomplishes that. But in doing so, it creates the potential for rankings to vastly differ from the opinions of the community at large. So you guys want a better ranking system, right? Well, I would urge you to be careful what you wish for, or at least recognize that a "better" ranking system might go against the stated goals of the jam.
There is another LD41 submission called Tennis Z (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/tennis-z-a-zombie-apocalypse-tennis-game). At one point, Tim, the group's leader, posted a spreadsheet for people to put their games on to basically request that he and other streamers play their game (gasp!). In the end, that list was never used, as Tim made a completely separate queue when he did his stream much later. In fact, that spreadsheet got buried in the group's chat and most members didn't even know it existed. But I saw it, and I personally rated every game on that list. One of them was Tennis Z. However, the developer pretty much disappeared. It's like they went off grid. They were never present in chat, I couldn't look them up in the group by name, and they never responded to anything on the game's submission page. They didn't even rate any other games. Not a single one. I can't tell you to what degree the developer of Tennis Z is or ever was a GDU member. Somehow, their game ended up on this forgotten spreadsheet, and that's all I know.
I played the game, and immediately fell in love with it. Read the game's comments, and you'll see other people love it too. Even better is the fact that it may just be one of the finest Blender games ever made, at a time when Blender's game engine is being deprecated. It was one of the games I gave perfect scores all around, and it ended up ranking very well. I can say with certainty that the game got ranked, not because of me, GDU, or cheating, but because of the LD41 community at large. How can I say this? The game was in serious danger of not being ranked, which I couldn't just allow, because it was easily one of the best submissions. I personally, in the GDU chat, asked numerous times for other members to rate the game, not to cheat, but to get it ranked. This got it a few ratings, but not nearly enough. And finally, near the end of the rating period, some YouTuber picked it up, and apparently got it enough views to generate ratings and get it ranked. So despite my best efforts at getting it ranked myself, it was lucky enough to do so outside of GDU.
So here are the questions you have to ask yourselves: Was I wrong to promote Tennis Z? Is preserving the infallibility of the ranking system worth reducing the exposure of a great game, potentially historically significant game? Are the hours of enjoyment people received playing the game not the ultimate prize? Is the fact that I personally rated the game a 5/5 and promoted it far more than I ever promoted this game proof of cheating? Could the reason that Tennis Z and all the other games I gave perfect perfect scores to have yet to generate any controversy is that the discussion was never about cheating, but about the coveted #1 slot? Is the fact that this game was discovered through GDU, despite the fact that it's developer is a ghost online, relevant at all? Did I at any point hurt LD or disturb its intended purpose in any way? Is LD really still about making and sharing games?
It's never been meant to be a perfect voting system, and is obviously easy to abuse, but that's ok. In the end, it still encourages people to create a game, and to give feedback to others. Finally, looking at the final results, you still can find amazing games like this one to play if you want. The exact placement doesn't matter much, what matters is what Ludum Dare helps people to do, and that the top games are well made.
I've been doing this since LD30 now (every LD from then to now inclusive), and there have always been abuses, but that is ok.
I feel Ludum Dare is fulfilling it's intended purpose.
http://ludumdare.com/compo/rules/
http://ludumdare.com/compo/about-ludum-dare/
http://ludumdare.com/compo/faq/
http://ludumdare.com/compo/old-rules/
Everything I and from what I can tell JavaSaurus have said is that there is a problem with the ranking system, because a game with so few ratings can easily have it's rating skewed far to one side or the other solely based on who ends up rating the game.
I don't believe you, or smallboss cheated in the rankings (at least I really hope not) and I'm pretty sure competing in the audio category was an honest mistake.
The only thing I think I disagreed with you on was that you believe there is more importance to the competition aspect of LD than I do, and so you are more interested in a solution to the flaws of the rating system, whereas I personally believe the competitive aspect is largely irrelevant and may even go against the stated purpose of LD. That's pretty much splitting hairs, and that debate does not attack anyone's integrity. It's strictly about the details of the jam. I totally respect your opinion on that, and am glad to call you a friendly neighbor of the Internet for voicing your opinion on that matter, even though I see things a bit differently. And yes, I admit, my previous long post sounded like I was accusing you of perhaps being against the stated purpose of LD in some indirect way, but I'd like to retract that insofar as you are concerned, because you personally give me no hint of being that way. The post still applies to some people, because there were definitely people who cared more about who wins than who makes a game. But it was unfair of me to judge you on that in any way, so if I did, I'm sorry. You're totally cool so far, and you have this jam's best interests in mind.
A lot of flak and talk have been happening here and it's turning more and more into a shouting contest and personally i would like it to stop.. from both sides. i didn't ask anyone to rate my game and i didn't ask anyone to give me all 5 stars.. if you want to assume that i did then go ahead.. what i think about the voting system is as a lot of people said which is easy to abuse and i agree that there must be a better system out there.. this is the first time doing LD and i barely got to 20 and i couldn't have time to play other LD games because of exams but that is besides the point .. i think the voting system (while flawed) is the best bet for the LD, A jam that doesn't have any prizes and rewards.. The only reward you get is getting recognition so if that is what pissed people off.. i am ready to opt out of every single category because i never cared about such things.. my prediction going into the result was "i hope i am in the 500 club atleast", because i didn't ask to be first, im very greatful but i didn't enter with the mindset of "winning" ... i did a lot of mistakes that i learned from, for example, i didn't opt out of audio even though i used free music i didn't make, i opted out of graphics because i didn't like them even though they should be judged, and in development i did many other mistakes..reasons for making mistakes like these is i didn't read the rules enough but hopefully next LD i will stick to the rules .... if people still think i asked for "Friendly" votes as some people say (looking at you @JavaSaurus ..i know you are not attacking me but you are the must invested in this shouting contest) then go ahead and assume that .. it doesn't matter how much i tell you i didn't care about getting high votes and now that i realized how the voting system works .. being first doesn't mean anything to me.. i would like for everyone to have a walk outside and chill out realizing that they have made a game and had fun doing it in the process because i did even though even me thinks the final game could have been a lot better and a lot more fun.
please don't keep bothering @smallboss .
And @smallboss , you should be proud of your accomplishments, you made a very polished and fun game in only 72 hours, following a pretty hard theme. Just because people have had some accusations should not make you not feel proud, I am sad to hear this :( . Good luck on your future ventures as well.
Another note for everyone:
Take a load off....
relax.....
[Reference](https://bit.ly/2GuuT8S)
TAKE A LOAD OFF..
RELAX..