There’s a biiiig spread in the number of votes per game, from 3 to 16. Encouraging anyone who hasn’t yet and has the time to spend a few minutes playing and rating some of the games at the low end! The list of games sorted by number of ratings is at Unrated entries in IF Short Games Showcase 2024 - itch.io.
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Last year the most-rated game had 15 ratings, the least-rated games had 6, and there was an average of about 9 ratings per game. I think it’s promising that we already have a game with 16 ratings, and we’re at about an average of 7 ratings per game with a number of days left to go, but I’d definitely love to get the least-rated games up to 6 ratings again this time.
Three people have submitted votes on the category awards so far; I assume most of those votes are going to come in at the last minute when people have played all the games they expect to play, but do remember that you can edit your votes at any time after casting them (as long as you provide a valid email address for the edit link to be sent to, which, we hope everyone is providing a valid email address anyway). Last year we only got about 15 of those total and that resulted in a lot of ties, but I’m hoping letting everyone pick up to three games per award will help, maybe.
Do people feel like they need more time? I know there are more games than last year, which we didn’t know was going to happen when we set the voting period. I wouldn’t want to drag it out very much, but we could push it out through the end of next weekend, perhaps.
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I had somehow thought that the short game showcase ran for several months, so I hadn’t even looked at it yet; now seeing there are only a few days left, I felt like there was no way to make any meaningful impact, so I haven’t looked at any at all.
If you did extend the deadline, I would try some more of the games I haven’t played and vote on them. If not, I’ll just put in votes for every game I played last year.
Either way, sorry for forgetting the showcase structure! You made it clear, I just didn’t read anything because I assumed I knew.
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I don’t know if it’s appropriate for me to comment about this, since I have an entry, but I suppose more time would be better? If only three people have submitted category votes so far, I suppose anyone who has yet to do so needs more time. (I mean, they’re probably not doing it just for the thrill of submitting something a minute before the deadline. 
)
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Agreed, more time might be beneficial. I can’t say exactly how much would be needed, but i think extra time would be good.
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It’s absolutely appropriate for entrants to weigh in on this stuff, especially because we not only allow but encourage entrants to vote as well.
Anyway, thanks for the input, everyone—I think that’s enough interest in extending the voting period to confirm that it’s a good idea, so Encorm and I will talk it over and let everyone know the new ending date probably later today.
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I went ahead and submitted the google form vote thing. I admit I was saving it for the last minute in case I played more of the games.
In terms of the ratings, I was curious about last year so I looked it up:
Last year: 669 Ratings for 70 Entries (avg. 9.56 ratings per entry)
This year so far: 675 Ratings for 94 Entries (avg. 7.18 ratings per entry)
You’d need at least 899 ratings to reach that same average, just because of how many more entries there are.
It’s hard not to feel like the entries with not a lot of ratings are drawing dead in both the overall rating (the algorithm will probably adjust those scores down heavily even if they do well) and the category voting (what are the odds that of the 3-5 people who played your game, all of them will happen to vote for you in a category out of the many possible choices and that will be enough to get nominated or whatever?). It just seems like with the huge number of entries the voting is really diffuse and not that concentrated, the results are going to be kind of, uh, zany 
But, in terms of just, getting more visibility on games from events that were overlooked, I’ve been happy to see that more people have read my entry than had been reading it otherwise, so that’s been really cool!
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After talking it over with EJ, we’ve decided to extend the voting period to 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, January 25th. This gives people a little over an extra week to vote, and includes an extra weekend as well!
Thanks for the feedback, everyone!
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Yeah, I wish there was a way to ensure more even voting! I’m also curious why there’s such a big spread—some of the ones at the low end are download-only, so fewer ratings makes sense for those, but that’s only the case for a few games. The top five ratings-wise each, right now at least, have 10+ more ratings than those in the lower half, which makes me wonder if we should study the cover art/blurbs on those to see why people are apparently drawn to them so much more than the others. 
But with the extension, maybe it’ll even out more!
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A lot (but not all!) of the most rated games have also been previously entered into the major comps of the year (IFComp, Spring Thing, and EctoComp). Not only have they already had a bunch of eyes on them, people likely voted on them up front since they already had played them. I’d expect the voting gap for those entries specifically to close as we approach the new deadline.
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It’s gone up to 801 ratings in just the last two days, so that’s a good sign!
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Up to 873 ratings now—we just might get that 899!
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Yeah I think that extra week is really helping! 
I know I was able to get to more games than I had originally. I think I need still need to look over my category votes again in case any of the new ones that I played should get into the mix.
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It just hit 899!
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Wow, it’s now at 968! Maybe we’ll hit 1k!
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I just made the 1,000th rating on Thornfell Manor: 1984! Remember to get your ratings in if you can!
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… And results are out!
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wakes up, checks the results Oh. Oh!
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Congratulations, everybody, and good work!
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Have I missed where the specific category winners (Best Previously Unawarded, Best Use of Short Form etc etc) are listed, or are they to follow later?
(I know they weren’t voted on using itch’s voting mechanism, and that this may not be an official results announcement)
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