The Inaugural IF Review-a-thon

Welcome…

…to the inaugural IF Review-a-thon! (Thanks to @manonamora for the graphic idea—“thon” means “tuna” in French!)

Backstory

First mentioned in this post (four months ago… :sweat_smile:), this idea had a dual inspiration. One motivator was, simply, my love of the community’s reviewing culture. I came to the community via Spring Thing 2023, and it was an amazing experience to receive so many thoughtful, in-depth reviews of my work. I’ve also very much enjoyed reading reviewers’ takes on others’ games (and writing reviews myself) during events since then. Basically, the reviews and reviewers here are great.

However, the community’s review culture is specifically tied to the few big annual comps, and I’ve seen and been part of multiple discussions about how non-comp games receive less attention. This is something the community has attempted to address in various ways in the past—see the IF Review Conspiracy, the Non-Comp Review Project, and Emily Short’s impetus for SmoochieComp. So, in the spirit of these past efforts, here’s my own initiative!

What is the Review-a-thon?

The IF Review-a-thon is an event meant to spur reviews of games released outside the major comps—specifically, games whose authors have indicated they’d like more reviews by submitting them to this poll. From now until August 30, I’m encouraging anyone who’d like to participate to play and review games from that list, posting your reviews both on IFDB and in forum threads. I’m hoping to replicate the experience of multiple people reviewing the same games at the same time that happens during comps.

There’s a review spreadsheet here, which has a second sheet with info about the games (author, whether parser or choice, etc.). Thanks to @Zed for extracting the info from IFDB! For any authors who are just learning of this and would like to add your games, please do so via the IFDB poll; I’ll be keeping an eye on it and will add any new entries to the spreadsheet.

For Fun

At the end of the event, I’ll give out some awards to reviews/reviewers (“award” meaning recognition in a forum post :smile:)—one will be for most reviews, with the others TBD.

I’ve also created a bingo card you can also fill in as you go if you like, or just use to help you choose games. Thanks to @manonamora for the idea!

Sponsorships

Finally, this event will incorporate reviewer sponsorships in order to raise more money for the GoFundMe for Pinkunz. Thanks to @DeusIrae for the idea and helping me work out the details! The way this will work is that reviewers can opt in to be sponsored, and then anyone can sign up to sponsor a reviewer at either $2 or $5 per review, donating the end total to the GFM. So the more reviews, the more money donated—although sponsors are free to cap their max donation amount (e.g., committing $5 per review for up to 5 reviews). As an extra incentive for the $5 tier, sponsors can choose one of the games the reviewer reviews (unless the reviewer has opted out of this—see below).

Here is the sponsorship spreadsheet. Reviewers: if you’d like to be available for sponsorships, add your name to the Reviewer column. If you’re not comfortable with sponsors picking one of the games you review, you can opt out of the $5 tier by putting “($2 only)” after your name. Sponsors: check back soon to see which reviewers have signed up, then pick one (or more) to sponsor! Enter your name, tier, and cap if applicable (I’ve put in some fake entries as examples). Or, if you’d like to remain anonymous, reach out to me via direct message with your tier and cap, and I’ll add you to the sheet as “anonymous”. For those sponsoring reviewers at the $5 tier, DM them to let them know which game you’re requesting they review.

Now… let’s get reviewing!

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Special ping for @jjmcc :smile:

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I love the bingo card format!

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(As an aside, thank you sincerely for the help. I can promise you it’s definitely needed if not deserved. We got through rent on the 1st by robbing Peter to pay Paul, but that’s a one-trick pony and I haven’t gotten anywhere trying to find remote work as of yet.)

Regardless, this is a really cool idea in and of itself and I hope authors get much appreciated feedback.

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I currently have 21 games in IFDB. All, apart from the three Dr Dooriddle games, were entered in smaller competitions like Adventuron, Puny, ParserComp, SeedComp or TALJ game jams or competitions. As a consequence, they don’t get the attention of IFComp games and don’t have many reviews or ratings. Some don’t have any reviews or ratings at all.

Would it be rude of me to enter all my games in the IFDB poll so that they are eligible for review?

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Hmm, I did initially say in the poll that there was no limit to how many games an author could add, but now that the event is actually underway, I’d ask that authors stick to five games max. There are 33 games on the list right now, and I don’t want it to end up being dominated by a single author. Thank you for checking!

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What do you do @pinkunz, if you don’t mind me asking? Happy to try referring you at Experian.

Adam

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Curiously, how many reviews would you say is “enough” for a game? I honestly have no idea.

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The median game has no reviews out all (slightly more than 50% of games have no reviews).

Out of games that have at least one review:

The median number of reviews is 2.

The top 25 percent have at least 4 reviews.

The top 10 percent have 6 reviews or more.

The top 5 percent have at least 7 reviews.

The top 1 percent have at least 12 reviews.

The average number of reviews for games that have at least one review is 2.38.

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I guess it really depends on the author—a game could have 10 reviews and the author still might want more, although it wouldn’t be a good fit for that author to try to get more reviews through this specific event. I think, last time I checked, the max number of reviews any game on the Review-a-thon list had was three. Reviewers may choose to prioritize games with no reviews or only one, or not—up to them!

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These are shocking statistics. I had no idea review numbers were so poor. Maybe this is because the majority of games aren’t really serious games? Like, I have really low review numbers for my speed IF and that is totally fine with me because those are embarrassingly bad because they’re speed IF. Surely stuff like that accounts for some of this?

I have a serious aversion to putting my reviews on IFDB and I’m not sure why, but perhaps I should reconsider that. I guess maybe they feel really permanent there?

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As a reader of reviews, I like them being on IFDB; I’ll look up old IF Comp games, for instance, and see only a few reviews, but then I’ll come here and search and find way more. It would be nice to have them all collected in one place for easier findability.

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Me too. I like GETTING reviews on IFDB. But there’s something that keeps me from posting my reviews there, which makes me a giant hypocrite. Ugh. I hate being a hypocrite. Now would be a great time for someone to give me a free therapy session on what my problem is there.

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You could compromise by just linking these reviews as “off-site reviews” with a preview paragraph.

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Yay, very excited this is happening! I’m going to try to finish my ParserComp reviews before digging in, but I think this event is a really cool idea and the list of games is already filling me with anticipation.

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Honestly, Adam, I’m not in the position to decline such help. I’d appreciate a referral if you’re willing, fwiw. I can send you a CV via DM.

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And, after an entirely unscientific sorting of the games and scrolling, slightly less than half of the games on IFDB aren’t even ranked.

Lots of them are likely to be old games not available for play, but that’s still a huge backlog.

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I’d like, if possibile, to get some new insight on my last year’s games, specifically A1RL0CK and RUIN. The latter, especially, went straight below the radar.
You can find them here: https://jpking.itch.io/

Both are short puny games aimed at mature audience due to subject and language.

Thanks! (Hoping I’m not late to the party.)

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If your game are listed on the IFDB, you can still add it to the poll:

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Thanks! I was not aware of the poll (a bit distracted, here :slight_smile: )

Added both!

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