There are several excellent lists of interactive fiction available, such as the Top 50. I was however unable to find one that made use of the large amount of ratings on IFDB. Being a sucker for rankings, I decided to create one using an IMDb style Bayes estimator. Here it is, based on what I scraped from IFDB a few hours ago:
Only two Iâm unfamiliar with are #20 Flexible Survival (2010): âAn erotic survival game set after a bioterrorism attack.â #95 Raising the Flag on Mount Yo Momma (2010): âGus is a smug numbskull who doesnât deserve to have the insult battle championship. You are here to take the title from him with the best yo momma insults there are. You just have to find them first.â
Yeah, itâs interesting that Flexible Survival scores so high, actually.
Hmmm, all the ratings were cast within the same five-day-or-so period. I guess the IFDB entry was announced at their place and they flocked over to rate it highly.
Ah well. I donât think anything can be done about it. It does leave us with Flexible Survival being, apparently, higher rated than A Mind Forever Voyaging and Babel and Endless, Nameless and well, that does irk me a bit. But this is only a bit of fun anyway, so.
Flexible Survival is a pretty amazing achievementâlots of people try to implement a massive RPG in text but theyâre the only ones whoâve done it. And people who donât like it probably donât play enough to rate it.
It does seem like the people who rate it highly pretty much donât rate anything else, which is unfortunate, but itâs not like thereâs an official award theyâre gaming or something.
Heh, I didnât mean to downsay FS quite that much. Itâs an amazing achievement, just like you said. I am just a bit uncomfortable that a rating exists where it gets to be higher rated than a bunch of other games.
Including, actually, Kerkerkruip. FS is listed higher than Kerker.
(so sad Aisle didnât make it to this rating. Ah well).
[rant]Before anyone says it, yes, I am perfectly aware that this is a purely mechanical rating extracted from a rating system in a database where there are umpteen variables. I know itâs a curio-only list. Regardless, Iâm still sad Aisle didnât make the cut. Iâm just an emotional guy[/rant]
EDIT - Hmmmm. All the information on IFDB on FS mentions RPG and erotica (closer to porn, but ah well), but it does not mention the significant fact that all of the sexual encounters are yiffy in nature. Wouldnât it be relevant? I can add it myself, but I figured I might as well ask.
So, thereâs no need to differentiate a game about consensual sex from a game about rape? Or a game that is specifically about BSDM? Or beastiality? Or scat? All of these fall neatly under âeroticaâ?
I mean, these days there are trigger words for everything. If thereâs one place where a bit of fair warning seems reasonable is in an adult game with specialised tastes, whatever those tastes may be.
If you were certain of the answer, what did you ask the question for? Go ahead and make the change if you think itâs important.
Also - based on your examples, your definition of âtrigger warningâ appears to be incorrect, as a trigger warning doesnât mean âSome people will find this content icky.â A trigger warning means âThis content will be actively harmful to a significant enough subsection of the population that we are notifying that subsection of the population about the content involved.â (See geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Trigger_warning for a detailed explanation.)
If youâd like to discuss trigger warnings further, please open a new thread in General and Off-Topic, as it would be off-topic for this thread.
Like most everyone else, I have a set of assumptions, and I act on those assumptions. According to my assumptions I would have thought the IFDB page would have the information I thought was useful. I was surprised to find that it didnât.
Rather than go ahead and add the information - which would mean disregarding the opinion of pretty much everyone else and giving priority to my assumptions alone - I stopped to think about the reason for the lack of that information. I therefore asked. Maybe no one actually knew. Maybe no one thought it was important. Maybe itâs just not policy to differentiate.
You did not see any reason for the information to be specified. Along the lines of the useful argument and exchange of ideas I thought we were having, I provided the arguments that seemed most sensible to me.
I was not expecting an answer of this sort, I admit.
RE trigger warnings, it seems I did not completly understand what they were. Thank you for the detailed information.
EDIT - It is ok to ask questions when youâre certain of the answer, BTW. For one thing, maybe youâll find out you werenât right. For another, maybe youâll engage the other person in useful discussion. Everyone does it all the time, and hardly ever with ill intent. Your admonishment seems very strange to me. Iâve had amazing discussions that started with someone asking a question they were certain of the answer to, and being answered in a completely unexpected way.
Okay, I see your perspective better now. Hereâs a better explanation of my perspective.
Either:
The information should be added, because games should have accurate descriptions in the IFDB.
Or:
2) The information shouldnât be added, because thereâs no need to detail the exact nature of sexual content in the IFDB.
I lean toward the latter. Iâm okay with the former. I donât have much of a horse in this race. (I havenât played this game, and donât play AIF in general.)
I think itâs important for value judgments to be presented in reviews, rather than the main game information. I responded to your post because including a content warning about yiffing feels like a value judgment to me.
But I may have read too much into your question, and if so, I apologize.
Apology not necessary, I think you had flashbacks of some earlier posts of mine soon after the CoC was established and you had some misgivings. Itâs ok. Thanks for your response.
Yes, a content warning would probably be overkill, I see your point. On the other hand itâs not just to ward off people - some people would prefer, and actively seek, all those sub-cathegories I mentioned - including, yes, yiffy, which is all the more curious because - fursuits aside - it is exclusively about fictional creatures on fictional worlds, and as such, an actual game revolving around it would be of great interest to those whoâd care.
Maybe tag the game? And other games involving other unusual erotica, like the optional rape/forced sex and coprophilia in One Girl? Hmm, but if I add those tags it will probably put some people off, just as you sayâŚ
Well, actually, in the end a review is definitely the best way, I agree. If I canât be arsed to write one myself I should stop complaining.
EDIT - It just dawned on me. Itâs not a âvalue judgementâ, is a statement of fact.
EDIT 2 - It just dawned on me. Iâm spending too much time dwelling on this.
Actually, the difference between this list and the Top 50 is not that big. The median deviation of rank position when comparing all works in the latest Top 50 with this list is 10.5. As a comparison, the median deviation between the 2011 and 2015 version of the Top 50 is 9.5. Any overlap of position interval is in this example counted as zero deviation.
Lists and Lists has an average rating of 4.2 on IFDB, while For a Change has 3.9. The latter does however have more ratings and would be ranked higher if I had set m to at least 11.
The Edifice got ranked 122, with a weighted rating of 3.79.
Aisle got ranked 115, with a weighted rating of 3.80.
Iâd say that the biggest difference between the Top 50 I organise and this Top 100 based on IFDB ratings is that the former counts positive votes and the latter counts positive and negative votes. A game like The Baron, which some people really like and some people really donât see the point of, does well in the former but badly in the latter. A game about which everyone is positive but which nobody believes to be fantastic has a much better chance of getting into the latter than it has of getting into the former.
Mostly, this means that the two lists are nice complements to each other. The Top 50 gives you games that some people really recommend; the Top 100 gives you games that you can hardly go wrong with. (Thatâs actually how I generally see IMDB ratings. A high IMDB rating means that the movie canât be bad, though it might not be my cup of tea. But I generally get more excited by a recommendation by someone whose sense of taste I trust.)
Thereâs also a bit of a social component, of course. A game with a niche audience might have a high rating on the IFDB, since only people from the niche rate it, but might not appear in the Top 50, since the niche might not participate on this forum. That could be the Flexible Survival story.
Beyond Zork and Zork Zero are the only Zorks represented, somewhat surprisingly to me. No Losing Your Grip or Change in the Weather. Agree with Victor that more polarizing games are less likely to be reflected in the IFDB ratings, which makes it surprising that The Gostak shows up at #29 (with 41 votes), as that game appears to have the highest standard deviation in the history of the IFComp (the comp page doesnât have those stats for 1995-1998, but itâs not obvious what entry from those years would have been more polarizing).
But people who play it nowadays do so because they heard about it and are interested. Outside of a competition, itâs not something you play for longer than two minutes unless youâre keen on the precise experience it delivers.
Itâs an amazing achievement, just like you said. I am just a bit uncomfortable that a rating exists where it gets to be higher rated than a bunch of other games.
Thanks for your response.