ROTY advertisement fairness

[Z]

Some people think that methods used by DarkGod to promote ToME's success in the ROTY 2012 poll are unfair (like messages which pop up when you start the game, or e-mails sent to all registered players).

http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/not-happy.html
http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/badly-worded-apology.html

I am not sure how to phrase the question, but I would like to run a poll to know how our community feels about this. The question is simple, and of course many other questions remain (should the rules change? was ADOM cheating? etc.)

[Legend]

I can see how some others might see it as being unfair to a degree.

Personally, I'm not sure I would really call it unfair myself. If someone is interested enough in the game to register it, I don't think an email or pop up would really sway their decision to vote for it or not.

I doubt a new player would really be that likely to go and vote for it just cause they saw the pop up before really getting into the game.

Although I do find the pop up a little annoying. Not unfair though.

It might even be a good thing in a sense. Some players may be more casual and not even aware of the rloty poll if it weren't for the pop up.

I would like it if there was a sub-poll though for best new rl of the year. Some newer games simply can't compete with older more fully developed ones like ToME that already have a long running following. Newer, smaller games that are great like Infra Arcana just don't really stand a chance against big ones like crawl or tome in my opinion. Not so because they aren't as good ( I actually prefer IA to ToME) but because they are much newer and don't have the same long standing dedicated fan base.

[XLambda]

Having a competition is a dumb idea/offensive/stupid when you can't police the results.

 Yep. Doesn't stop it being fun. You can vote for multiple different roguelikes. The idea here is that you will be encouraged to go out and download a roguelike that other people consider interesting, not that there is any kind of real competition element involved.

That was part of the initial RotY poll post over at ASCII Dreams. Funny how people are accused of cheating even when there's supposedly "no competition element involved".

I personally find it completely OK to send mails and stuff. I mean, I see why Andrew Doull and others get upset about large-scale community mobilization. But I just think this is a very fine line and none of us should really get to decide where it is drawn. So Andrew thinks sending emails and informing folks in-game about the poll is unfair. Yet apparently he didn't consider Biskup sending emails to his folks unfair. What about notifications in forums or websites? Is that unfair as well? If, say, Toady went and posted on the Bay12 forums "Hey everyone, help us win RotY", he would bring several hundreds of loyal Bay12ers to the poll. I think that is about how many active players ToME has. Would that be any fairer than DG sending mails and popups? The size of a community is always going to influence the numbers, whether you mobilize it or not. I always thought that was the purpose of the poll - to measure the game popularity - but apparently I was wrong.

I'd like to echo Thomas Biskup's statement: It's the 21st century.

[Darren Grey]

I think it's silly that there's any controversy over this.  Modern methods of mobilising communities should be celebrated, not demonised.  The more people that vote on the poll the better.

[getter77]

Ultimately, it is the games that are compelling for the players---devs that keep players in the loop via the game or otherwise just being another facet and help to draw attention to the poll in general and plant the seed of curiosity to poke at Hottest Thing X's competition.

I do hope next year's poll has a few categories to it, some perhaps a bit more generally curated than list-dumped alphabetically.  Just because DG and Biskup did as they did does not guarantee victory in 2013---any number of things can happen as the scene of quality projects is the liveliest it has ever been and stands to be even moreo true in the new year.

[kraflab]

I am unsure what the problem is here.  Having a notice in-game about the poll is something we should be encouraging.  You want everyone to know the poll is going on so we get more votes overall, right?

Not sure who put a stick up you-know-who's rear end

[guest509]

  Non-issue.

  I voted "don't care."

  It's Andrew's poll though, so that's an issue if he thinks it's an issue. I fear that if he's not careful he'll put a cloud over an otherwise fine yearly event. One I look forward to.

-Jo

[kraflab]

  Non-issue.

  I voted "don't care."

  It's Andrew's poll though, so that's an issue if he thinks it's an issue. I fear that if he's not careful he'll put a cloud over an otherwise fine yearly event. One I look forward to.

-Jo

Maybe next year we can have "Jo's No-Nonsense ROTY Poll 2013"

[Krice]

I think for ToME and ADOM it's all about visibility. That way more people buy the game if it's high on some poll that the RL players may see. So it's money that makes developers try everything they can. I think both ToME and ADOM suck. Well, ADOM didn't suck that much 20 years ago when it was still cardware. Now it's too little too late.

[guest509]

Maybe next year we can have "Jo's No-Nonsense ROTY Poll 2013"

Oh god...please no...

EDIT: It's way too much work. Way too much aggravation. Mr. Doull does a great job.

[AgingMinotaur]

I was kind of sad about the whole argument as it played out. I honestly find that DarkGod got more pepper on his plate than he deserves for putting out ToME. Still, the incident didn't exactly shake my belief in any particular community or person Other than that, a lot of sensible things have already been said in this thread, as elsewhere.

As always,
Minotauros

PS. This made me smile wide:

"Jo's No-Nonsense ROTY Poll 2013"

[andrewdoull]

So Andrew thinks sending emails and informing folks in-game about the poll is unfair.

I have issues with informing folks in-game. I don't have issues with sending emails, forum posts or anything else as I explained in the follow up blog post. (http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/badly-worded-apology.html )

I however also don't understand why DarkGod feels the need to continue to try to get the ToME community worked up about this poll. He's already won it twice. What does winning it again prove?

[DarkGod]

And I really do not understand why you did not, before the poll started, say "ToME has won enough so I have not included it in the list".
Do not tell me you had no idea it would have a chance to win again you knew it would be a contender. So why did you not?
So, again, I suggest that you forbid previous winners from entering the contest in the next years, clearly state this in advance and I'm pretty sure nobody will find it unfair; I sure wont. But rules have to be set *before it starts*.

If you do not (I fully respect that it's your poll you do as you please), why would I not want to win?
To put it bluntly, your poll is not fair. Why? because it happens on your blog, which is only visited by a small subset of RL players, which is made of for a good part of "hardcore" ones. So if none of the participating games would ask their players to come over it would not be a poll on RLs but a poll on RLs as seen by a small minority. How is that fair to games that try to bring in new players ?

That you want it or not your poll has become the indicator of which roguelike is big, it is probably not what you want and I understand, thus my proposal by email (and that I also posted in a comment there http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.fr/2012/12/badly-worded-apology.html).
TLDR: Proposal is: make it the "new roguelike of the year poll"; only RLs whose first release is this year can participate. And if you truly want to help upcoming RLs, also forbid commercial ones as they have marketing power small indie ones do not. This would be fair and nice to help promote small new ones.

As for the ingame thing, as thomas biskup so eloquently put it: this is 2012 (well 2013 now!), you have to live with your time.
How is mailing in any way better ? So mailing a person that didnt play for 6 months to come vote is better than asking people that are *playing right now* ? (and I have obviously nothing against mailing either).
I have mailed about 9k people, I could have mailed thrice as much and by the way this are going currently next year I could probably mail six times that.... How the hell would this have been more fair than an ingame thing???

So you'll say, as you already said, that it would "force" other RLs to make the same kind of features. But having a huge list of emails to send to be ok is not forcing other RLs to have one too ? Where is the logic ?
And no it is not unthinkable to imagine devs actually implementing it. "Oh but they are all alone on their game they can not do it all!"
Can't they ? In 3 years I made ToME from scratch, along with a complete engine not tied to it, along with the server, along with the website and quite a few other side-things. And for 95% of it I was all alone on it. So either my nickname is true and I am a god, or, more realistically, you think lower than they are really worth of other devs. Hell quite a few RLs have devteams, DCSS, ADOM to name a few. Do not come telling me they can not implement such things.

Let's take another example, auto-explore. DCSS got it. Players loved it. ToME players started asking for it more and more (and more). What did I do?
Did I go to a forum to complain DCSS was unfair and I was feeling a pressure to implement it?
No. I pondered if it would be good for ToME, decided that it would, and made it happen. This is how progress is made; friendly rivalry that promotes progress on all sides.

To finish, if you do not exclude previous winners next years but keep on a specific rule that is very obviously targeted at one game in particular, I would kindly ask you to not include ToME in the list. As for myself I would make a post making it clear why I requested as such.
Because, once again, my deepest belief is in transparency.

Oh and please (this is not for you andrew), keep the "I dont like/hate ToME" "I dont get ToME" and such like out of the discussion. You can like or not a game, we all do; but you can not hate a game. You can only hate people making games. And if you hate me, please kindly explain why, as it is my deep belief that I always tried to be a good guy in my long RL history.

Thanks for reading this overly long post

[Darren Grey]

I however also don't understand why DarkGod feels the need to continue to try to get the ToME community worked up about this poll. He's already won it twice. What does winning it again prove?

That it's the top roguelike of 2012.  Which, quite frankly, it is.  Whilst ADOM made a good challenge for the winner this year I still think the best roguelike won.  Of all the games on the list ToME has had the most updates, the most modern features (both in terms of gameplay and interface), and the most active community.  You should be happy that your poll has so accurately reflected the times 

Also at a time when both ToME and ADOM are trying/planning to get on Steam through its Greenlight service it's clear they'd try to do whatever they can to win any awards or accolades.  Again, you should be happy that people take your poll so seriously and consider it worthy of winning!  It seems bizarre to me that you're directly asking a leading roguelike developer to not care about your Roguelike of the Year poll.

[getter77]

Yep, and besides, winning streaks are good so long as they are well wrought---can't win a poll each year if you've not been staying sharp and/or a step ahead of all else since it isn't the sort of thing you can rest on your laurels and coast to victory on.

"Just a poll" can be a good motivator---there are Roguelike devs that have kept projects going from just as much as a few e-mails.  Lively and good spirited competition helps keep things lively which ultimately benefits everybody as the Big Ones moreso generate a bright light than cast an especially dark shadow over the rest on the whole.