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I'm really glad GOG made a Wishlist page... in fact, early on in the beta I created a thread in this forum asking for one. As you can imagine, I was absolutely floored when they announced it - it means they actually listen to us, which is a wonderful thing :-)
But I can't help in thinking that the Wishlist is slightly flawed in its design...
Someone goes to the Wishlist for the first time - they see the top 10 requested games. By the nature of the design, those top 10 will consistently get more votes than the rest of the requested games... basically, they will reign supreme atop the list until GOG has the rights to distribute them.
My reasoning? Look at Full Throttle on that list. Full Throttle happens to be one of my favorite games of all time... absolutely amazing game. But I'm incredibly shocked that it's in the top 10, and that DOTT isn't more requested as it's generally a more appreciated game. I think that people will forget to search for some games they want requested, and others may just vote for some of the top 10, search for one or two titles, and then forget about it.
I have no proof, but it seems to me that that's what's going on - I'd bet that the top 10 list won't change until GOG scores the rights to one of those games.
Unfortunately, I haven't thought of a better design than what they have already :p
Thoughts?
Edit: Just realized that I named this thread "The Wishist Page" without an "L"... I don't know who the Wishist is, but I'm not him :-)
Post edited October 30, 2008 by acyclic
I have had the same concerns as well, Outcast is the other game that is questionable. Dont get me wrong its not a bad game, but it didnt get great reviews when it launched and it is hardly well known.
The only suggestion I have is to either increase the size to top 15 to help relax the difference between 'most voted' and 'the rest'. Or make the recently added sortable by date. Though the GOG crew probably have more pressing issues, and the wishlist is really only a minor thing (doesnt have much influence on games that actually appear afaik).
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chaotix: I have had the same concerns as well, Outcast is the other game that is questionable. Dont get me wrong its not a bad game, but it didnt get great reviews when it launched and it is hardly well known.
The only suggestion I have is to either increase the size to top 15 to help relax the difference between 'most voted' and 'the rest'. Or make the recently added sortable by date. Though the GOG crew probably have more pressing issues, and the wishlist is really only a minor thing (doesnt have much influence on games that actually appear afaik).

Totally agree that the wishlist is a more minor issue, but since they took the time to build it in the first place, I thought this problem might be worth bringing up.
Not sure if increasing the "top" size to 15 will help though... I think that would just freeze the top 15.
I suppose the freeze isn't the worst thing in the world though, as it gives GOG a sense of where their focus should be, even if it may not be the most accurate portrayal of games users want.
Well it can be always 'almost not voted 10' instead of 'top 10'... Throw in some kind of cap, like games should have at least 100 votes to get to the list, and it could be worth considering.
Post edited October 30, 2008 by Fenixp
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Fenixp: Well it can be always 'almost not voted 10' instead of 'top 10'... Throw in some kind of cap, like game has to have at least 100 votes to get to the list, and it could be worth considering.

Not a bad idea, but again, I'm wondering if that list would end up being frozen too... I guess if they institute some logic rules behind it, it might be avoidable, like you said...
They have the "most recently voted for" list, but there's so much garbage on there (mis-spellings, duplicates, etc) that I don't think it was used to it's potential. There has to be some solid way of designing it so that games outside the top 10 can get actively promoted up.
Funny, this very problem was on my mind and I actually went to the forum to start a discussion on this to see that acrylic had just opened this topic about an hour ago.
I think that there should a tab you must click on to see the top 10, and by default in its place there could be a list of perhaps 30 randomly-selected games which meet some condition, like >100 votes as Fenix's suggests.
there should be a way to search by genre and to browse submissions without having to click through pages and pages, beginning with the most recent submission. browsing should be possible alphabetically, allowing the user to click on any letter to skip to those titles.
i'd say to remove the top ten all together, there's really no need for it, and like the OP says, it encourages groupthink. only GOG needs to know what the top voted games are.
i like the concept of randomly displaying submissions, but i don't think there should be any conditions. conditions will just limit the pool of games that GOG gives people to "stumble" upon. there's no reason that all submissions shouldn't be on equal footing in this regard. randomly displaying submissions would be a lot like muxtape's old system (if anyone here remembers that website), and there it worked well to expose users to new music.
it'd also be nice if there was some kind of moderation of the wishlist by GOG -- e.g., to remove duplicates, correct errors, etc.
Post edited October 30, 2008 by illegalyouth
The page should show the most recently VOTED, and a random selection in two columns.
Then it should give options to get the whole list sorted by Alphabetical order, or number of votes.
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illegalyouth: i like the concept of randomly displaying submissions, but i don't think there should be any conditions. conditions will just limit the pool of games that GOG gives people to "stumble" upon. there's no reason that all submissions shouldn't be on equal footing in this regard. randomly displaying submissions would be a lot like muxtape's old system (if anyone here remembers that website), and there it worked well to expose users to new music.

I'm kinda afraid that would encourage people to vote for games like Bioshock or Crysis, as well as grind votes to several entrances on one game in wishlist (f. e. Quake II)
Edit: Wote... Wote... How did I come up with THAT word?
Post edited October 30, 2008 by Fenixp
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Fenixp: I'm kinda afraid that would encourage people to wote for games like Bioshock or Crysis, as well as grind votes to several entrances on one game in wishlist (f. e. Quake II)

how so? if every submission has an equal chance of being randomly displayed, then bioshock or crysis wouldn't appear any more often than simcity 2000 or mechwarrior 2.
couple that with GOG moderation of the wishlist, and there wouldn't be any instances of more than one submission of the same game.
Of course they shouldn't, it's more about they shouldn't be on the list in the first place :D But I guess they wouldn't get enough voices anyway and it's not a problem that coudln't be in the end solved by moderation of wishlist, so you're right, if it was moderated, these problems would be solved...
I just wanted to say that I fully support the suggestions made above.
However, these very same suggestions have been made elsewhere as well.
[url=]http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/New_feature_Games_Wishlist/174/1[/url]
You might want to check that topic and mention your suggestions/support there as well? Or forward them to the support staff directly.
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Zer0: I just wanted to say that I fully support the suggestions made above.
However, these very same suggestions have been made elsewhere as well.
[url=]http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/New_feature_Games_Wishlist/174/1[/url]
You might want to check that topic and mention your suggestions/support there as well? Or forward them to the support staff directly.

My bad... I didn't realize I was rehashing an old conversation. I merely had an observation and was curious if people felt the same way or had any ideas... apparently they do... and they do :-)
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illegalyouth: it'd also be nice if there was some kind of moderation of the wishlist by GOG -- e.g., to remove duplicates, correct errors, etc.

Ugh... I don't know anyone who would want that job...
"Hey buddy, you want to come clean duplicates entries, each group of which are spelled similarly but not similarly enough to be taken care of by a simple script, so you'll likely have to clean everything manually, from our massive database of free text game titles that our users are constantly adding to?"
"No."
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acyclic: Ugh... I don't know anyone who would want that job...
"Hey buddy, you want to come clean duplicates entries, each group of which are spelled similarly but not similarly enough to be taken care of by a simple script, so you'll likely have to clean everything manually, from our massive database of free text game titles that our users are constantly adding to?"
"No."

unpaid interns, working for school credit, anyone? haha