AtariMania Top Games by Rating (101+)

[Guy1]

Hi folks.

 

Does anyone know if it is possible to view beyond the Top 100 Games on AtariMania?

 

There are some great games that unfortunately miss that cut-off - and some of them are exclusive to Atari 8-bit computers.

 

It would be awesome to be able to see the votes/rating/downloads for every title.  Does anyone have access to such a spreadsheet?

[+MrFish]

I'll tell you something about Atarimania's ratings.

 

For long period of time, it was possible for anyone to rate any single title as often as they wanted to. As a result, some people who had an interest in driving up the rating for their favorite titles, voted constantly and sometimes excessively in a very short space of time for them (maybe using some scripting to repeat the vote over and over). Conversely, I think people were also heavily voting titles down that they didn't like. I noticed some titles being voted up or down by the thousands in a single day or week, at times.

 

I can't remember when this actually changed, and they linked people's IP's to their vote as a way to prevent multiple votes. But, of course, it's still possible to vote multiple times for the same title, merely by getting a new IP (reset your home modem); however, that's rather difficult and slow to do, even if automated. So, at least it's not prone to the former abuses that were seen.

 

Thus, although the likelihood of bad titles having good ratings is low, and the likelihood of good titles have bad ratings is low, the chances that the specific order of the best games compared with each other reflecting anything very meaningful is probably low as well. I'm sure it's evened out somewhat over the years -- but who knows, really.

 

What they should have done to start with, was require people to register with their site in order to vote (which probably would have made their site more popular too). This wouldn't stop people from registering for multiple accounts, but someone would have to be nuts to attempt upping or lowering votes by that method.

 

Conclusion: I think very little of Atarimania's ratings, although they give some moderately reliable indication of general popularity.

 

[Guy1]

That's a real shame about the ratings.

 

Not even sure what can (or should) be done about it now.

 

I'm still interested in seeing that data (if anyone has access) - perhaps holding on to the hope that the ratings evened-out over time.

 

I do wonder if certain "Top 100" quirks caused the vote scumming in the first place...

Not being able to see past the Top 100 effectively means that your favourite #101-ranked Atari game is invisible to most visitors.

Likewise, any obscure, but highly-rated game with only 19 votes will remain completely off the charts until that precious 20th player takes the plunge.

 

Does Atari Age have a community-voted Top Games list?

Edited April 22, 2020 by Guy1
Formatting

[+Philsan]

I like very much Atarimania Top 100 pages, but there are the problems mentioned by @MrFish

 

I do think too only registered users should be allowed to vote. Poor "revenge" votes would be still possible; perhaps reducing voting range (1-10) could help.

 

Top 100 Downloads page is more faithful but obviously top 100 titles will continue to be the most downloaded because people will continually download them because they are in that page.

 

I agree with @Guy1 that it would be interesting to see titles pas #100.

 

[+CharlieChaplin]

It also occured to me that almost every new title that can be voted for gets a 10.0 with its first vote, no matter if its a very good or extremely bad program. Whenever I notice such a title with just one vote of 10.0, I look at it and decide what would be my vote, then lower the vote so that the 10.0 and my vote divided by two give the vote I want (e.g. if I want the program to have a voting of 8.0, I vote 6.0, since 10.0+6.0 = 16.0 divided by two gives the wanted 8.0). I only do this to programs that have just one ridiculous vote of 10.0, since even the best A8 programs do not have a 10.0 !

 

In my eyes they should do a TOP 1000, but only programs should appear there that have a minimum of 100 votes or are at least 12 months old. It's a bit ridiculous if a new(er) title with just 10 or 20 votes gets the same ranking as an older title from the early 80s with several thousand votes...

 

And errmmm, evil as I am, I always vote 1.0 (pathetic/redundant) for programs from ALA Software and/or General Masters Corporation and 2.0-3.0 for any pinball created with the PCS... (including my own ones)...  

 

[+Philsan]

The 1-10 range in my opinion is a problem of ABBUC Software contest too.

 

I use the range 4-10 because I don't bash programmers that enters competition for fun. Someone else could be naughty and give 1 to poor games. Someone else could give 10 to his preferred game and 1 to other games to make his vote more "powerful".

I prefer KazKompo voting system, 10 votes to the best game, 9 to second, 8 to third and so on.

[+davidcalgary29]

9 hours ago, Guy1 said:

That's a real shame about the ratings.

 

Not even sure what can (or should) be done about it now.

 

I'm still interested in seeing that data (if anyone has access) - perhaps holding on to the hope that the ratings evened-out over time.

 

I do wonder if certain "Top 100" quirks caused the vote scumming in the first place...

Not being able to see past the Top 100 effectively means that your favourite #101-ranked Atari game is invisible to most visitors.

Likewise, any obscure, but highly-rated game with only 19 votes will remain completely off the charts until that precious 20th player takes the plunge.

 

Does Atari Age have a community-voted Top Games list?

Why not just restart the entire scoring system on a different basis? If there was a lot of tooting and hollering about it, old scores could be maintained as a "historic" rating system beside the new one.

[+MrFish]

13 hours ago, Guy1 said:

Does anyone know if it is possible to view beyond the Top 100 Games on AtariMania?

It wouldn't be hard to add what you're asking for. All that's needed is a column for "Rating" added to the normal search results list, and then have that added to the "Sort By" list.

 

[www.atarimania.com]

Currently discussing this with our programmer / webmaster / big boss Franck.

 

Not sure listing a thousand titles is realistic considering there are "only" 6,800 dumps in the database and many have very few votes or just none at all.

 

I don't have all the numbers but, depending on the data, extending this to 500 or 750 could be a compromise, what do you think?

[Guy1]

28 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said:

Currently discussing this with our programmer / webmaster / big boss Franck.

 

Not sure listing a thousand titles is realistic considering there are "only" 6,800 dumps in the database and many have very few votes or just none at all.

 

I don't have all the numbers but, depending on the data, extending this to 500 or 750 could be a compromise, what do you think?

That sounds fantastic. Did I mention how awesome you and Franck are?

 

Regarding that second point - I was under the impression that games needed over 20 votes to be included in the Top 100 List. 

At least, that's why I thought Operation Blood (8.0 - 21 votes) was included, but Super Breakout (8.2 - 20 votes) wasn't.

 

I still hope a "Sort By Rating" option is added to the Advanced Search someday - considering this "over 20 votes" requirement.

Otherwise, people could completely miss out on obscure titles like Super Breakout.

But overall, I am very happy with this compromise. ?

[www.atarimania.com]

An extension to 500 titles for games with at least five votes should be ready within the next few days

[Guy1]

On 4/23/2020 at 7:20 PM, www.atarimania.com said:

An extension to 500 titles for games with at least five votes should be ready within the next few days

HEY! Did you update the website without saying anything?

You sly dog... Thanks a billion! ?

 

I'm already seeing some interesting titles... like Air Support (1984) - Anyone know if this is the very first RTS game? It's older than Herzog Zwei (1989), which Wikipedia cites as "often considered the first real-time strategy game".

 

Pretty much all of the gems I found while digging through the catalog are in the Top 500... except for one.

More people need to try out Maxwell Manor (7.6 - 16 Votes). It's quite an interesting action-adventure if you can get over the primitive camera and platforming sections.

 

I'm sure there are other gems just like Maxwell Manor hidden in the depths of the catalog...

But as for now, I'm a very happy camper - with 400 new games to check out! ?

 

Any plans to make an announcement?

[Atari8guy]

Well done!  Looking forward to find undercover gems!!!

[wwdkong]

so, is it no longer possible to vote on the 8-bit games on the atarimania website?  i can't find how to do it.  i'm going through obscure titles and i was looking to supply a first rating to give anyone a general idea, though it's still just my opinion.  maybe they didn't wanna deal with the hassle & issues anymore, i don't know.

[rdefabri]

6 minutes ago, wwdkong said:

so, is it no longer possible to vote on the 8-bit games on the atarimania website?  i can't find how to do it.  i'm going through obscure titles and i was looking to supply a first rating to give anyone a general idea, though it's still just my opinion.  maybe they didn't wanna deal with the hassle & issues anymore, i don't know.

Yep, I'm pretty sure they stopped that due to the skew it creates (mentioned above). 

[wwdkong]

hey thanks for the response.  i don't blame 'em, but i was looking forward to dropping those ratings.  ah well, i love that website anyway.

[wwdkong]

ooo, just occurred to me i can go about it another way, within a comment.  yay.

[www.atarimania.com]

We hope to have the option back at some point. A number of f***wits thought it would be fun to attack some coders by downvoting the games they made or had a participation in so we had to take this measure.

 

You can still leave comments, though. Actually, it's a bit surprising so few people use this feature.