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GameMaker Community “Reviewer’s Choice” Forum Still Redundant

In not-so-breaking news, the unpopular Reviewer’s Choice forum over at the official GameMaker Community board remains a neglected, inbred part of the community, where game reviews are written by and for the same people.

Reviewer’s Choice allows game developers (namely hobbyists) to submit their GameMaker creations for review. A team of writers, made up of general forum-goers, play and review submitted games. Each game and subsequent review is given an individual thread within the forum.

At the time of writing, not a single review has been published within the past 2 months, making the forum a lifeless pillar within a thriving community. There has only been a single review published within the past 3 months.

New reviews trickle out at an impractical rate; typically there is a one to four month gap between submissions, an issue which has long plagued the community-powered service.

While Reviewer’s Choice seems to draw limited interest from both reviewers and readers, the forum has been historically mismanaged by staff members.

Reviewer’s Choice was established in February 2010 but was quickly bogged down by administrative issues, despite initial optimism. By early 2011, content was being ignored for several months at a time leading to a series of complaints from disheartened GameMaker users.

GameMaker Community staff members came close to removing the Reviewer’s Choice forum in May 2011, according to a moderator who revealed there had been discussion of “axeing it completely.” After an open debate over the issue, the forum remained.

As the GameMaker Community continues to grow, one has to question whether a forum that offers reviews internal to the community itself has any tangible use, especially when the only consistent element of the Reviewer’s Choice forum is how poorly it has been managed.

Perhaps it is time to cut the thin, whispy string holding up this lifeless part of the GameMaker Community.

What do you think?

16 Comments

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  1. While I agree with some of the points in the article, I also agree we should give the review jam a chance to catch hold before dismissing the entire section.

  2. I don’t see the point of it really.
    If you post your game in the WIP or Completed Games Forums, you get opinions on it, as well as a means to show off what you believe to be the high points of your games.

  3. This is where a setup “similar” to steams greenlight might help the Reviewers choice forum. If it was possible for people to rate games in the Completed section and after so many ‘thumbs up’ you could say from the community warranted a review of the game. I do not know if it would honestly help but it may increase the reviews a little.

    Otherwise it really should just be removed or perhaps a community member with a pension for writing skills and playing games could start a dedicated site for reviewing GMC games. There have been a few so it might need a more dedicated person.

  4. Finding a game maker game that is both enjoyable and has enough content to cover in any detail can often be difficult. I’ve been looking for decent games to review’may as well use the forum, but its been quite difficult to find something less well known to cover.

    Ye would have been nice to see the review jam mentioned here too which will likely add 4-8 reviews in a short timespan.

  5. Kind of known fact, though it would be nice to throw in a mention to the GMC Review Jam, which is in it’s second wave currently and aiming to increase the number of people who review games!

        • How is that sad? GMC is driven by the community and that’s the community coming together to make content. That’s an example of the forum working correctly.

          This whole article is horribly slanted. Almost every paragraph places the “blame” in the laps of the staff despite correctly pointing out that the forums are community powered.

          As a GMC admin and a moderator of that forum for over two years, I’ve only been contacted by members seeking a reviewership position twice.

        • “As a GMC admin and a moderator of that forum for over two years, I’ve only been contacted by members seeking a reviewership position twice.”

          That’s probably because you’re not listed as being associated with that forum in any way whatsoever.

  6. The GMC is waaaay to big at the moment, and will be undergoing a restructure in the future. This sub-forum will be examined along with all the others. However, the underlying problem isn’t with the mismanagement nor the forum structure, its with the general disinterest of most GMC users in playing/reviewing other peoples games. Basically, its a devs forum, not a players forum, so any review/critic/comment is going to go on the Game topic itself. Most people on the forums are there to get help with their own projects and have little or no interest/time to play and review other peoples work.

    • Bollocks. I don’t know about now, but personally in 2011 or 2012 my application to write reviews was ignored and my submission of reviews was, again, ignored. I wasn’t alone either, I know at least one other person who complained about the same.

      The articles on this site about the subforum seem pretty spot on to me.

      • I didn’t say that the beginnings were not rocky and that there were no mistakes in how it was handled… There were! However, I was saying that (IMHO) this type of sub-forum is never going to work on the GMC as it currently is. It’s too development orientated and not player orientated enough for it to work, and that’s not something I see changing in the future.

        • Motivating content creation of this type is a long-lasting problem. Most of game development related forums that I visit share the issue with people not actively playing (and even less actively reviewing) each other’s creations… which is sort of an expected effect.
          Sure, it is possible to “lure” some extra participants that are less involved in game development itself (thus would hypothetically take a look at creations of others), but even that would not warrant a significant increase in volume of (quality) reviews.

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