I can understand that the RPGMs allow you to get away with simplistic games, but it doesn't have to be garbage to be simplistic. Seriously, we have enough regular games that turned out to be garbage, you don't need to make yours garbage on purpose.

And that's my poor excuse for a rant.

Poor perhaps, but justified. I would even take it a step farther and say the games not even ment to be garbage have a good deal of flaws that could easily be taken care of with just a few minutes of paying attention to detail. Weither it's making sure a party member doesn't dopplegang when he/she first joins your party from an event or whatever.

this is why i want to have every game on the site reviewed, so we know which games should be avoided. no one wants to play a crappy game so we need to send one brave soul out into the field to let the rest of us know if we should make the journey ourselves or just run for the hills.

if you want a simplistic game then make it fun and enjoyable, not as an epic pile of trash that no one will touch. id like to see the best games list expanded to reflect more game scores.

Wow. With the timing of my game release, I wonder if it caused this topic to appear?

Garbage games, epic games, it's all the same to me. I personally don't mind it so much; it keeps the place full of activity, at the very least, and they can be genuinely fun to make.

I say who cares? People will make them. And if it bothers you, there's always people willing who are willing to make longer, better games. Hell, look at the development studios. everyone has some epic, awesome game they want to make, myself included.

I'd just rather have the game archive not flooded with games people put no good effort in. Don't need to make it even harder to find the good games out of the bad.

I apologize for creating this genre.

I dont think garbage games belong with the normal games. they're TONS of fun for the creator to make, and funny in an "oh my god, this actually exists" kind of way, but people SHOULD BE WARNED. at the pavilion, every garbage game is marked, and I have a seperate listing at the bottom of the directory for them, so no one can accidentally download one. The thought of someone accidentally downloading smitpok or DOOR: THE GAME expecting something actually worth playing is pretty depressing!

Well yes, reviews would help, and the achive not "flooded" with garbage would help, but this place is supposed to post games that people themselves think are post-worthy. I agree that the idea of a garbage game being "cool" is old, but when someone proudly posts a game they think is good but that others find full of bugs, it is up to the player to decide not to play the game (and possibly bring it to the developer/mag attention). We are essentially all playtesters for each others games because this IS an amateur site. I myself have downloaded several games that I found were far to difficult unnecessarily so I simply stopped playing them and chose another. I admit that this may be more of a problem for RPGM1 but one could always keep their own list of games they played and those not worth completing after trying it out first.

Well if it's a game the creator thought was good but didn't turn out as good as they hoped, that's another story. I don't have a problem with those games. But if it's a game where somebody intentionally made it crappy, perhaps we should follow the Pav's example and make a category specifically for intentionally bad games.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

I'm up for the category idea.

But are there that many intentionally bad games at the Mag? How would we know unless they are already advertised as such or are copies of "Garbage Contest" games.

Compared to how many games are already out? No. But to me it seems like there's more garbage games coming out than there should be, at least compared to how many not-garbage games are coming out. And if people are going by the "recent releases" section of the archive, that increases the likelihood of somebody downloading one of these.

as the law says, the difference is in the intent. if you intentionally go out and make a crap game then its a garbage game. however if you go out trying to make a proper game and end up producing a mess then i really cant place you with the garbage games. infact, as terrible as many rpg maker games are, i dont think ive played one thats worse then some garbage entries - lord have i played terrible games!

overall thats why i want to review every game. this way we will know which ones to avoid and not have to worry much about garbage games.

Again, I agree that reviews would help, but I don't think knowing "which ones to avoid" is good for this community. It might help before hand in some ways, but it might also dissuade Magonians from even trying each others games rather than giving it a try and just saying, "you know what this game isn't for me".

I say this especially because the level of professionalism expected here by many vocal Magonians is far to high for amatuer games.

As a matter of fact, with the level of professionalism expected here the "ones to avoid" is probably actually all of them except for a handful on each RPGM when in fact on the contrary, probably only a handful on each RPGM have absolutely nothing to offer.

I guess you think that Amatuer litterally means bottom of the bucket. Even the best game here is still amatuer. No one says that games have to be professional, but if you don't draw a line for quality somewhere, we'll just keep getting garbage.

Seriously, you got to have some kind of standards.

Besides, it's not like giving games reviews is exactly a new idea here. This place has had them since the very beginning. And really, if you look at how many games here have recieved a Bronze award or higher (24), that's definately more than a handful. Even more if you extend all the way down to 7.0 games.

I agree that there needs to be standards but I am suggesting that the standards be personal (each gamer in trying the game deciding for themselves) and with respect to this "amateur" community (people just trying to express themselves) instead of universal (i.e. Karr's reviews for all) and based on what would be expected to look professional (i.e. if there are professional games that are better than somehow these are not worth playing).

In other words why not simply play only professional games and non-Mag games. One reason is because some want to see what can be done with the RPGMs. But everyone knows that spelling correctly (for example) does not push the limits of RPGMs so to care about misspelling is not to see what can be done with the RPGMS (because we all know they enable accurate spelling if done properly) but rather to attempt to see how close to a professional game one can make with RPGMs.

But not everygame out there is intended to be an attempt at looking professional but rather an attempt at personally expressing one's self for others to embrace.

In a sense, maybe the reviews should be based on how well a given individual expresses their inner spirit instead of how well event 1 was layed out next to event 12 with mode conditions properly triggering the correct spelling of "Hello" to look professional.

If we rely only on these reviews, we will not be connecting to each other very much. Relationships are about engaging and disengaging. A bad review precludes engagement often times. And a good review, or any review oftentimes biases the community toward a particular game.

If we are a community then we would look to try each other's games and then say, "this isn't really for me, PERSONALLY".

If we ONLY want the best games and the most professional games, then seriously, why bother with ANY RPGM made game and not just stick to Halo/FF/Resident Evil, etc., etc.

Even with reviews, standards can still be personal. I'll try a 6.0 game if the idea still sounds like something I'd enjoy playing. After all, even reviews are written by that reviewer's own personal standards. Those standards are just written out in a standard format ending with a number. In the end, the reviews are simply a guide rather than the absolute. And isn't that how it is with professional reviews on sites like IGN and GameSpot?

With that said, how well event 1 was layed out next to event 12 is kinda important. Games aren't quite as enjoyable if they feel sloppy.

whats forgotten here is that our reviews are not based on industry standards. if this where the case then no game at the mag would score higher then perhaps a 3. your game is scored against your peers. if you compare some games that scored high when they where reviewed and compared them to some now you would find that their scoring isnt reflective of the current situation. each game has been scored against what came before it, the standards have been set and exceeded by the community, not the industry.

with that being said, i do have to concede that we are biased by the industry as a whole. we know what to expect in a game, yet we also know the limits of the software. we also know which standards must be applied to a rpg maker game - playability, fun, ect - basically the standard criteria for the mags reviews.

i do however think that our reviewing can be a bit unfair at times when we compare a first time developer to someone like myself who has spent 10 years with the software. the production polish of my games will of course exceed those of new developers so its unfair to heavily dock new designers yet at the same time certain mistakes should be critically pointed out. every designer should play test their game, every designer has to ensure that they have polished the game to their best. our review criteria is balanced, and even if a new designer doesnt get top marks they still score high if they do the basic requirements (many dont which is why they dont get good marks).

the highest marks are on a parabola scale. you have to put exponential effort to reach the top percentages. scoring 70 is not hard even for a lame game or a new designer. i enjoy 70 scoring game too.

as long as the reviewer remains objective then there shouldnt be any problems and a garbage game will score garbage for no other reason then for the fact that it didnt meet even the most basic of standards.

@Draygone,
About the games not being as enjoyable if they are sloppy I would like to suggest this example. I think I may have asked you this before so you don't have to answer if you don't want. If you were in a community of people who wrote fan fiction and you valued these people in your community, even if their writing was sloppy, as long as you could get through the story wouldn't you want to read the story, their story, the one they presented regardless of whether it was sloppy or not. Otherwise why wouldn't you simply read only less sloppy professional stories. I see this community as being more of reading our "friend's" story instead of looking for an "enjoyable" story. And all the better when it turns out that our friend's story WAS an enjoyable story. Even if I stopped reading my friend's story because it was too far from being enjoyable, the last thing I want to do is prejudge it (via "objective" reviews) and maybe even not give it a chance if suspect it may not be enjoyable because I still "subjectively" value that it comes from my friend and that is what is important.

@Karr Lord of Chaos
It would help to have reviews when they are not judged to professional standards but having standards based on what has been done before in the community IS a problem that I am talking about. That means that if someone pours their heart into a game which is itself not groundbreaking it may not score very high and that may prevent others from even trying the game out.

I can't really argue with an objective set of standards applied across the board but it is a bit unfair if any after the fact reviews of previously released games (like what you would be doing now) come out before the reviews of others (instead of all at the same time in one big review list), both because of the extra attention or lack of attention given these games (before getting to others) as well as the fact that if the standards are based on what was done before, if you are reviewing them now after the fact, you are going to have to, to be fair, try to remember what was already delivered by an RPGM game at the the time the game was released even though you are reviewing them now.

Nevertheless, all that aside, I return to the point that a game that doesn't score very high because it is "ho hum" might still be a very important work to the developer (i.e. our friends) and many people may choose not to play it because of a "ho hum" score.

lol

anyway,
I say its a matter of care. Take some time to test play, regardless of if you want a "garbage" or epic, test. It's a given.

Valk has a great idea. Put garbage games on the bottom or somehow flag them before dl'ing.