Archive: 14 posts

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Some search improvements, which I hope haven't appeared elsewhere and apologies if they have. In no real order: - When a hearted creator publishes a new level, tell me! The key to participative cultures (part of the "network effect") is giving value back to the user for participating, based on their interactions and aggregate views - I am getting no value out of my hearted creators. - If you look at folksonomy theory (that's tagging!), value lies in the community being able to use its own terms. There is a lot of debate around uncontrolled vs controlled classification - personally, I think both should co-exist. How would I approach this for LBP? I'd keep the controlled tags which are currently offered, BUT I'd let users add their own tags just for their own view of their LBP universe. At MM, I'd be then analysing what the individuals are using as personal tags and looking for patterns. Where they emerge, I'd be floating these up into the set of controlled tags OR bring out as functionality. So, if I was adding my own tags, some things I'd use would be "MGS", "Survival", "Waterfall", "ToTryAgain", "Tutorial", "5 minute blast", etc. Other people may use different one's for different reasons. As trends emerge from MM analysis, they can choose how to implement on them. So, "ToTryAgain" could be a flag I'd set on a level and is relevent to the individual. "Surivial" is a tag which may emerge as value for the whole community. (Note: In the ideal world, the personal tags should be "open" for all to see (e.g. del.icio.us) but MM do need to be slightly careful to avoid abuse). - Are there other metrics to find the levels that more people think are really good? One idea I had is if you divide total plays by total hearts, you can get an interesting stat. If Level A has 10,0000 plays and 1000 hearts, but Level B has 500 plays with 250 hearts, the first gets a loved rating of 10% and the second of 50%. Could this help raise those levels around which a small community has emerged who love the level, but where the level is just not getting the exposure it deserves? This idea may need some tweaking (1 heart, 2 plays - still gives 50% but its a working theory - any others?) Ok, being too wordy. Will try to be more concise... - Analyse my hearted levels and look for trends. Is there a particular type of level I'm favouring (difficult to determine currently, hence the importance of user tagging in describing level content)? Tell me if other "hearted" (or "loved"?!) levels similar to my favored type appear. - Analyse between my hearted creators - I respect their opinions and taste. Give me a "hearted creators combined view thing" which shows all the levels hearted by all my hearted creators,. If 20 of my hearted creators have all hearted a level I haven't played, tell me - give me a view or alert! Let me filter within this subset of levels, just within my own hearted, or when I do a global search. So, within my search set (say after a global search), let me remove those levels rated 2 or less and only show with/out certain tags. I've had a few other ideas, but these are all I can remember and I have a beer beckoning to me downstairs. I would be interested if any of these chime, or if I'm just stating the obvious, or if I'm just missing the ball entirely.

2009-03-21 22:37:00 Author: Unknown User

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Pretty good suggestions, we could use all of these.

2009-03-22 00:17:00 Author: olit123 Posts: 1341

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You see? This is the thought of someone who does understand how a community works and why. Sadly, Media Molecule don't have a clue. All your ideas there can be found in successful communities like YouTube for instance (first one that came on top of my head). It's too late now for like a complete redesign of the community aspect. At least I think Media Molecule did good patching their crap so far. They really are making it "less worse" for real. I hope they continue to improve over since I freaking love this game anyways. .

2009-03-22 00:28:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901

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Yeah, well at least they've learnt for future games.

2009-03-22 00:34:00 Author: olit123 Posts: 1341

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Absolutely ingenious ideas, I've thought of several of these some times. Theres so much great talent buried deep in the endless caverns we call LBP, and you probably won't see any. That's why being a member of such a great community as this one helps, you can see lots of great levels, a lot! Most of the time when I don't have any level to play I will think of a good game that I like, and search that, but even then I find a group of terrible levels, and after pages and pages of them I find ONE great one. MM really needs to make a MUCH better search system, and really take some time with it.

2009-03-22 02:57:00 Author: Kog Posts: 2358

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- Are there other metrics to find the levels that more people think are really good? One idea I had is if you divide total plays by total hearts, you can get an interesting stat. If Level A has 10,0000 plays and 1000 hearts, but Level B has 500 plays with 250 hearts, the first gets a loved rating of 10% and the second of 50%. Could this help raise those levels around which a small community has emerged who love the level, but where the level is just not getting the exposure it deserves? This idea may need some tweaking (1 heart, 2 plays - still gives 50% but its a working theory - any others?) If they count distinct players in stead of the currently shown total number of plays, this could be useful. I think 1 heart/2 play levels will drop fast enough if they don't deserve it, should not be a problem. I like the rest of the ideas.

2009-03-24 08:18:00 Author: Rogar Posts: 2284

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If they count distinct players in stead of the currently shown total number of plays, this could be useful. I think 1 heart/2 play levels will drop fast enough if they don't deserve it, should not be a problem. I like the rest of the ideas. Right now you can't trust the ration play/heart. As soon as you stay for one second in a level it counts for a play. This means you can play a level 3 thousand times if you want but only heart it once. .

2009-03-24 17:48:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901

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Yup, this is REALLY a problem in their stats. Take Wexfordians and Thegides pinball games - I must have played each of these 50 times each (addicting....). So, 1 heart 50 plays? The levels are horrible, right??? Any level that is challenging and requires a little practice - automatically makes it look bad, right?? There are a LOT of things that need to be improved here. Hopefully the reason their latest update is taking a while to be released is because they are looking into these things. In their defense, it is POSSIBLE they didn't think about it much originally because they had no IDEA people like us would be spending hundreds of hours putting out high quality levels.

2009-03-24 18:27:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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In their defense, it is POSSIBLE they didn't think about it much originally because they had no IDEA people like us would be spending hundreds of hours putting out high quality levels. The community aspect of their game design was generally lacking. I think it's just they should have given it more time and started to focus on it earlier. I'm sure that "share" was the last tierce of the devellopment process. .

2009-03-24 21:37:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901

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Excellent ideas, MM could do a lot reading them points. I agree with the hearted creators point in particular, they do nothing. You only ever get to know of a new level published when they are on your freinds list, that is a massive oversight on their part. This should also work on levels they have hearted, as you suggested, a good creator will more than likely heart well created levels. The create your own tag idea could lead to a load of moderation problems though, many times I have wanted use words you cannot mention to describe a level, lousy and rubbish sometimes don't just cut it.

2009-03-24 22:07:00 Author: GruntosUK Posts: 1754

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The create your own tag idea could lead to a load of moderation problems though, many times I have wanted use words you cannot mention to describe a level, lousy and rubbish sometimes don't just cut it. Actually it would be zero moderation, just like the comments or anything you write in the game. Of course it's not possible to write anything but it's not necessary to properly tag levels. .

2009-03-24 23:11:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901

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On the tagging points, don't think I explained myself. I'd keep them personal to avoid the abuse issue. However, as MM, I'd be analysing trends in the personal tags and floating them up into community use. Its a fairly standard model where you have a moderation approach to community. I get frustrated, seeing how smart the MM guys are and how they recognised the importance of community, how much they actually messed it up. There's a lot of established principles/patterns, lots of web two-ee literature and analysis, which it surprises me they didn't pick up on. Ultimately, it could be the biggest threat to the long term success of LBP (it pains me to say it, as I am a big devotee). When I spend 5mins trying to find a level me and the girlfriend will like in the morass out there, something is wrong as I get annoyed - doubly so, as I know a lot of it is a no brainer to fix. I work in the semantic web world (web3.0 - kid you not) and the potential around the corner regularly blows my mind. Anyhoo, back to work on my first level (well, 5th - but my PS3 died a month or so back and I lost all work in progress - gah!) PS: To RangerZero - it was your DigIt level that made me think of the "5 minute blast" tag. Its one of the three levels me and the missus play as a "best of 3". We even have a little sack-dance at the end which the winning sackboy gets to do (which I normally would be embarrassed to confess up to, but it just seems so right in the LBP universe!). So, cheers dude - you've bought much pleasure!

2009-03-25 21:43:00 Author: Unknown User

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To RangerZero - it was your DigIt level that made me think of the "5 minute blast" tag. Its one of the three levels me and the missus play as a "best of 3". We even have a little sack-dance at the end which the winning sackboy gets to do (which I normally would be embarrassed to confess up to, but it just seems so right in the LBP universe!). So, cheers dude - you've bought much pleasure! I don't know if i'm easily pleased or something but your comment actually made my day! About what you before that, it also pains me to see how badly planned was the community aspect of the game and it comes out as odd for me too. And whatever the legs LBP is having right now, if the community aspect was properly designed those legs would AT LEAST get 2 times longer i'm sure. .

2009-03-25 22:18:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901

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I completely agree about being notified when a hearted creator posts a new level. I thinking 'hearting' someone should act as a subscription on YouTube (or for those obsessed with Twitter, it should be the same as 'following' someone). I don't care when one of my PSN friends makes a new level, especially when I have the kind of friends on PSN who only publish trophy levels...

2009-03-28 08:09:00 Author: CheesyMcFly Posts: 211

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