I think you're seeing an issue that does not really exist. Your argumentation sounds plausible on first sight, but doesn't hold up very well when one actually thinks about it.

For your suggestion to make sense, all of the following assumptions need to be true:

1. There must be a statistically significant number of people who do not vote when the outcome seems to be a foregone conclusion. You say that this "this has a bigger occurrence than you might think". That's a rather bold statement considering that no one except GOG is supposed to have the data to come to such a conclusion, and an assumption that I wouldn't expect anyone to make without proper data to back it up - so where is your data?

2. These people (the non-voters) must be dumb or lazy enough to make a wrong prediction. Because if they _correctly_ assume that the vote won't be turned around any more, then your argument is pointless, because the end result of the vote is the same no matter whether these people vote or not.

3. The people who give the first 2000 votes must have significantly different preferences from the people who vote later. If people's preferences are roughly evenly distributed (as one would expect from a mostly random sample such as this vote), then your argumentation is pointless, as the outcome of the vote would not be changed even if everybody voted. I see no reason to assume that early voters have significantly different preferences from later voters - what exactly are you basing this assumption on?

4. The effect described in (3) must be enormous in size. Your argumentation only works if a) early voters produce a difference in votes that is large enough to keep others from voting, and b) late voters prefer the other option by _so much more_ that they would be able to turn the vote around. That doesn't make sense, where should such enormous differences between earlier and later voters' preferences be coming from?

In short, I believe that your argumentation rests on rather bold assumptions which are extremely unlikely to be correct. I believe that instead of resorting to such complicated assumptions, people's behavior (and the voting results) can be explained much better and easier by these statements:
- Early voters and late voters are both random samples and have similar distributions of preferences.
- If there's a clear favorite, then some people may correctly assume that the result is a foregone conclusion, and not vote themselves
- This has no bearing on the outcome of the vote. If they don't vote, then the current leader will win, and if they vote, then the current leader will win as well.

I also think that most of this "let's hide the votes" movement is based on the frustration that one's own preferred choice is currently losing hard, as well as the irrational assumption that it could somehow win if the votes were hidden. There is no way how a bundle of games of which some were discounted on a special sale 3 days earlier, could somehow magically win a vote against a bundle of the consistently highest selling games in GOG's history (which haven't been discounted during the last months) on an 80% discount.

Btw I also would have preferred the "Memorable Dungeons", and I did vote for them, and I'm a bit sad that this offer is doing so badly in this vote. But I see no indication at all that there were masses of people who would have turned the vote, but abstained because of the current tally. I simply see one offer that is (as was to be expected) much more popular than the other. That's life.

TL;DR: You're upset about bad news (we won't get the offer that we both wanted), and you now want to kill the messenger (i.e. the numbers which tell that result). Which does not make sense, and will not have the positive effect that you hoped for, but will deprive others (like me) from useful information.

This happens when all large (of you could argue this isn't a large vote but it is for gamers on this site) voting and has happened through out history. Hence why almost all votes don't show the numbers until after voting is done, to prevent people from being deterred from voting. Why do you think there's always a giant effort to get people to vote whether it's a big vote or a small vote on twitch.tv? The lazy aren't what I'm going after. The lazy that don't vote won't be affected by this change. The "dumb" people aren't dumb if they're deterred by feeling their vote won't matter. That's what I'm trying to change, so people don't feel discouraged enough to not vote. 2000 was a hypothetical number. All I meant was a large enough number for those who feel after X amount of votes their vote is worthless. I want to make it so they don't feel like not voting because after their own threshold has been met they won't vote and thus it it becomes a snowball effect. I more or less answered this in 3. But to again the term "enormous enough" is sort of ambiguous and depends on each person's threshold. (which we don't personally know so again hiding the vote until after can help). Perhaps my assumptions and hypothetical assumptions were a tad bold. However:
-There are spurts where more votes can happens for one over another and meet a persons threshold.
-A clear favorite isn't an issue here. That's a totally different topic and not what I'm discussing here, I'm talking about those that are close together like Day 1 (which I made this on).
-This does have a bearing on this, again I don't understand how if they vote they won't win and if they don't they won't win. Your issue here is thinking that I made this on day 2 when the numbers were obvious (which I didn't). I'm not upset about bad news, I made this on day 1 with my vote winning, not day 2. I don't care about what you voted on day 2 that's a moot point. I'm not personally planning on buying anything during this sale and don't care who wins or loses, I care that people don't feel like their vote matters and want it changed so people feel comfortable with their outcome (instead of down that their vote didn't matter which way).

I'm sorry, I think you still don't understand why your suggestion wouldn't work. I'm not sure if I can make it clearer, but I'll try.

- You're saying that the difference in votes can be _large_, i.e. large enough to discourage others from voting.
- At the same time, you're saying that this same difference in votes is _small_, i.e. small enough for the outcome to be turned around if everybody voted.

This contradiction makes most of your argumentation moot, because for it to work, you must assume that:
- somehow, magically, the first voters favor the less popular "offer A" by _so much_ that the difference would even deter others from voting
- somehow, magically, only (or mostly) the people favoring "offer B" are deterred from voting (because if both groups are deterred, then the outcome is unlikely to change)
- somehow, magically, these effects are large enough to first swing the entire vote in one direction (offer A), and then swing it even harder in the other direction (offer B)

You are basing these bold assumptions on some extremely general and vague statements like "it happened in history" and that there could be a "snowball effect". You have no solid data to back your assumptions up. We are not voting on the future of a country, we are voting on a deal for computer games. We are not having regionally diverse groups of voters who would skew the early tally (as would be the case in a country's general election). Your vague reference to "history" is not only unrelated to the matter at hand, it also makes no sense in the context of the vote we're having here.

Again, you are worrying about an issue that simply isn't there. Worse even, you are suggesting to remove useful information with no proper justification.

Why do you think that people are so "dumb" that they can't properly estimate when adding a vote makes no sense any more and when it does? Why do you think that people need to be "protected from feeling uncomfortable" and need to be left in ignorance until the vote has ended (as if that would feel more comfortable)? I'd rather think for myself, and make use of the information available to me, thanks.

These do not contradict one another. I don't understand what's so hard about it. Large enough to discourage people from voting, but small enough in the large picture that it could still make the difference. Such as a persons threshold (this term means when a person considers their vote a waste, it could be any number that in the long term is very small but to the individual is large). Again, this is not a contradiction. It''s part of the snowball effect (a non-vague term that is used quite commonly. It describes the effect of a snowball rolling down the hill where it starts out small then keeps getting bigger and bigger). Early on voters go for one offer enough to reach the threshold for some people (obviously this might not be at the very start of the thing, but in the middle/later) then those people don't vote and it keeps continuing as people don't vote. There will still be people voting for the stuff as you have stated previously but their will be fewer people who vote for the losing option (and thus more deterred voters).

reserved for too long stuff X.x Not vague, look up "snowball effect" above again if you're still confused or hell even google it. The whole voting for country/games point is moot because some people take their leisure time more seriously than their country, why else would there always be giant "go vote for whatever reason" campaigns in multiple countries? I know people who vote on websites but not political votes. You still haven't explained how this is useful information for a proactive consumer who uses a wishlist and budget so they know what they're willing to buy. Do you just buy whatever you see at impulse all the time? Not meaning as an insult or jab but genuinely curious.

If a consumer is proactive then not seeing a vote doesn't matter and your whole argument is moot. Again, I have never stated nor do I think these people are "dumb," you were the one to call them that and I only said that to correct your opinion in my previous post. Also, as you have stated this is a multinational site, where people vote at all hours etc. They don't know how the others will vote, this takes part of another different topic about what people will favor and to this effect (which you brought up earlier) will make people think more or less if a certain thing will win when it has a genuine chance of winning but that's a smaller effect and not the point I'm trying to deal with.

It's quite simple, if people don't feel comfortable with a site they're less likely to participate in something. If this happens often then people are less likely to buy from the site (take the recent experiment a couple months ago. Already a lot of new people didn't like that and stated they wouldn't be dealing with GOG in the future (i know, I know a lot of people will claim to do something but not actually go through with it but the point is that there are those out there that will and that's lost business). It's a lot easier to keep a person's business than to get a new one. Uncomfortable in this context means anywhere from iffy to really despising it.

Again, how, if you are using a wishlist and budget, are you getting more out of seeing a vote than not? it shouldn't affect you personally either way. This is purely benefiting those that wouldn't vote.

From what I understand a majority of GOG's catalog at the moment is still only available here. For those that aren't (and avail on stuff like steam) you could get the same discount (or more in the case of greenmangaming and gamefly) and save the same/more money (unless you want DRM free then you could check out Amazon or Gamersgate).

Since his arguments don't count because he's using examples from democratic elections and this is about voting for video game promos your arguments are worth shit because you are not basing them on anything. And as for "useful information" - it's perfectly useless information, the only one who *needs* it is GOG in order to evaluate which promo to pick.

Also for someone with a brain on his avatar you seem to care little for psychology. The effect Giltonnam is addressing would certainly be taken seriously by anyone who pays the slightest attention to psychological factors in a survey that is supposed to track people's perfectly honest personal opinions (and GOG certainly is interested in that since an honest outcome of the voting process will result in higher sales).

Also, as for "We are not having regionally diverse groups of voters who would skew the early tally". Oh my God... GOG's service covers customers throughout the whole world with groups with custom preferences and whose activity is largely determined by the time of day and since there's a thing called time zones there's a good chance that over time many votes from groups with completely different preferences will come in. So yes, it's a perfect example of "regionally diverse groups of voters". If the only thing you have to say now is expressing doubt about gamers having different tastes throughout the world - please... don't even start talking. You live in a country with VERY specific preferences (the term "German Games" wasn't introduced for no reason), don't ask me to explain to you how different the general tastes in games are throughout the world.

Thanks to knowing the votes I now have all night to consider whether Spelunky is worth it.

Anyone?

And yes, this derail was totally deliberate! :D

There was voting all of this time? :S

I did not see the little "vote for tomorrow's deal" clicky so I've been missing out on that. ;(

Same LOL, I was all focused on the Daily Surprise clicky.

just a small derailment though :P But about your question, if you like roguelikes from all that I've heard It's completely worth it.

100% agreement with OP:

Don't show the numbers before the poll is over.

There are reasons, why (in political elections) the votes aren't counted and made public, before the polling stations are closed and hereby no further votes can influence the outcome of the elections.

Has something to do with human psychology.

No one wants his vote to "be lost" and no one wants to end on the "Loser's couch" (TM by W.Wheaton); so many -if not most- people (quite often the undecided ones) would /will tend to vote for the -at that time seemingly- winner, instead of "throwing their vote away" or "join the losers".

Not sure about that. I saw the vote disparity for this one and voted for the bundle that had the games i wanted to get. Having said that, yes most polls are hidden for obvious reasons (ie no one knows the winner til its revealed)

I also have voted on the "losing" side...that's why I wrote "many -if not most" here, instead of all. ;o)

I didn't vote today because I didn't like both options. I don't want any of the games in them. I think one should vote if he/she really wants the games in an option, otherwise should'nt. No need to complicate things more than that. This is my opinion.

Yay, another German on our side. Now Psyringe has no chance anymore. His "German intellectuality" bonus has been eliminated thanks to you supporting OUR side. The RIGHT side. Here, have a virtual cookie: @ (sadly it tastes the way it looks).