Brian Crick

A Jury of Your Peers

As I write this, I’m sitting in a waiting room in the Cuyahoga County Justice Center, waiting for my name to be called, to serve on a jury. I’ve never done this before. I’m pretty excited, though from the sound of things there’s a good chance my service will just consist of coming to sit in this waiting room for a few days, and then getting sent home.

For some reason, I find myself thinking of this kerfuffle involving a movie star accused of shoplifting, and the prosecutor said of the defendant,

I find [her] to be very nice. This was never about her character, only her conduct.

That quote really stuck with me.

* * *

Last weekend I participated in a 48 hour game jam. I thought it was over, but in many ways it’s just starting.

I didn’t realize this going in, but apparently after you finish your game, there’s a three-week voting period where people play your game and you play other people’s games and rate them. I was assuming there would be some small, pre-selected panel rating things… not the actual programmers doing the ratings.

I have mixed feelings about this. I like the idea of everybody who participated in the contest being a judge and developing this sense community… but I don’t see myself as particularly impartial judge of games, and rating these things feels like this heavy, serious responsibility.

I’d also specifically want the opinions of non-programmers for my own stuff. Not that I’m sure how you’d get such people on board. This contest is structured in such a way that if you want feedback, you have to rate other people’s stuff. There’s a lot of motivation to go out there and rate things and comment on them.

It’s silly, but now I’m imagining this multi-disiplinary jam where game programmers rate 48-hour novellas, the novella writers rate 48-hour symphonies, and the composers rate the games. 😉

 

* * *

I have occasionally had people comment on how non-judgmental I am. And while I’ll take those sort of statements as the compliments they’re generally intended to be, it also gives me pause.

Like all things, tracing the source of a problem to a specific person is a skill. It is a skill I would not necessarily say I possess.

If there’s some work or social event I’m helping manage and something blows up, I think it’s fair to say I’m not quick to assign blame — both because I choose not to be too judgmental and because I couldn’t accurately pinpoint a culprit if I wanted to.

This lack of perception has been a problem occasionally, and there is, I hate to admit, value in knowing if the blame for a problem really does lie with a specific person. Having this information can only help you and your team or your friends or whatever make things better. You don’t have to be accusatory or mean about it; I think it important to remember that whole conduct vs. character thing — but I’m all for finding new ways to make things better.

2 thoughts on “A Jury of Your Peers”

  1. Ludum Dare ratings are highly subjective. It shouldn’t matter because the weight of averages should (in theory anyway) correct for bad judges, even if everyone is a bad judge.

    It’s not a perfect system and it’s not intended to be. There’s almost nothing at stake beyond how much value you personally place on the rankings, so it’s not a big deal. It’s a pragmatic solution to find a way to recognize the better efforts among the pack of entrants, and it works well generally although, sure if you wanted to quibble about the #7 game being inferior to the #8 game in some category, I’m sure that happens. That’s why we all get to apply our own rating — we can rank however we want, secure in the knowledge that we know best. The overall ranking scores merely tell us what the participants as a whole felt about the games they rated.

    Not everyone rates every single game, most in fact do not, and it’s easy to overlook great games. Most of the best games from LD23 I didn’t even find until after the rankings were published.

    It’s best not to take rating (either rating someone else’s game, or how others rate your own game) too seriously. They’re just opinions, after all. You can use them to guide how you think about the objective quality of your game if you want, or you can discard them entirely, or rage at them, or anything you want to.

  2. I guess it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by just how many games there are out there. Wasn’t expecting that.

    Though I really love the comments — that’s another thing I wasn’t expecting.

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