Thank you both. In anatomy, Latin is quite universal outside the English-speaking world, so I hope someone will find a use for my games.

Completely agree with Tickman.
AFAIC, I always love people that make new games regarding new topic or different combination of the usual topics. I think your idea is good and could help anatomy students.
have fun !

It may not appeal to all. But you may eventually pick up a following of biology and medical students. And of course, the people who want the most ATHs might find you.

So by all means, continue....

I've just started my career as a game maker, with the intention of creating Latin-based games in the field of anatomy. Sounds interesting?

An original idea to be sure. There may be a way to make a longer game of it.

If you can get good, clear enough pictures, you should be able to put together somewhere between 4 and 10 sets of three or four clues in a line.

At the end of each line, two dots: upper for song title, lower for artist.

You could also add a dot beneath each pic. So for the Eagles' song the dots would be: Winslow, Arizona, Seven women, and Your own wheels.

Yes, it would make it less of a guessing game. But more playable. And it eliminates the "who found it first" factor.

Another idea, what if you need to qualify to give ratings?

Let's say you need to be a member for a certain time, 1 week?, 1 month?, before you will be able to rate games?

One way to stop vandals who rates gives 1-star ratings to a lot of games would be to limit the number of 1-star ratings you can give/day or some other suitable time.

This would solve some of the problems but not all of them.

i really like wentu's idea. i have had that problem on a few games, but other people who have played them have balanced that out, but it is quite irritating when someone votes on your game without giving it a try

Just another idea, it has drawbacks and it must be analyszed but heym it's midnight here and i need some sleep so take it "cum grano salis": what if the votes of each one of us had a weight ? I mean: a 5 given by Arturo, Bobolo, Niklas, Tickman, people who played and/or created a lot should weight more than a vote given by a person who enters here for the first time. The vote "sticks" but its weight changes. We should (and this is true in general as i more than once advocated) be able to change our ratings with thime (pls David, make this a n°1 priority) but the stars should be more important if given by more experienced ppl. How do you get experience ? well, playing game to completion, creating games that are played a lot (with respect to their exposition to public... if ur game doesn't reach first page and makes 15 plays it's worth more than a first page game with 20)

well ok, i really need to sleep...

have fun

I have developed a new game type.
The idea is like this: I create a game with three or four images. These images refer to the lyrics of a well-known song. If you guess the song, post your answer as a comment to the game. The first person with the right answer (song and performing artist) receives a nod.

To get this going and to give more than one person a chance, I have created three games at once:
http://www.purposegames.com/game/guess-the-song-1-quiz

http://www.purposegames.com/game/guess-the-song-2-quiz

http://www.purposegames.com/game/guess-the-song-3-quiz

Good luck!

The obvious drawback of this type of game is that the first person to notice the game is likely to win. The alternative would be to collect several answers, but this could only be done through pm, which means that only people on my friends list could participate. So I'd like to know whether anyone can think of a better alternative, or maybe even that the game type sucks anyway and doesn't need an alternative ;)

@ Paulfunl:

In the case of Wentu's hypothetical youngster vandal, he/she will just ignore your message, or respond rudely.

I have in some cases seen where the apparent down-rater leaves a message in the game comments:

"This game sucks"

"Too hard"

...or sometimes an obscenity.

You're not likely to get any constructive criticism.

I agree with you, it would reduce (not eliminate) the number of such events. True, you can (as Wentu noted) play to a low score and rate. But that requires effort (even if small), and I think many are not up for it. Some will be, but it would filter out a lot.

But it will also discourage people who will rate the game well. Especially those who are trying to improve their positions on the leaderboard. For them, once you play to completion, you have to keep playing until you reach 100%. Some people like that shun playing the more challenging games (BoboLo and a few others being major exceptions to that). If they can't rate it without playing it, they just won't rate it at all.

So, I'm not sure that there is a good solution to this problem.

Wentu, there is one advantage with my suggestion. You get a name and can thus write to this member and ask him/her why they did this. That is, if a game has not been played much, of course. Otherwise it's difficult to see who did it.

If you are interested in history, specifically military history, don't miss this game about the largest Cannons ever built

have fun !

Wentu

Paulfunl, if I am a youngster who is happy to vandalize games, it's just a minor problem if I have to finish your game with 33% accuracy to give it a 1 star. Of course it takes me more time to give 1 stars around but it's not a good solution. There will always be vandals and i don't think there are feasible solutions. I am sorry.

Well, now I can more easily feel the rage, when someone (a fellow member of PG!!!) rated my new game without even play it. With a single star. I. have been eager to see if someone liked it and what do I see... http://www.purposegames.com/game/jewish-refugees-quiz/info

No, I stick with my suggestion - only those who finishes a game may vote. I never vote on games I haven't played, myself. See also: http://www.purposegames.com/topic/922

I've done some games about floriography:
Floriography (Language of Flowers)
Flower Language, Roses
Flower Language, Number of Roses

And one with leaves:
Leaves

How about these two games:
Garden flowers
Garden Flowers II

Would this game on Australian Vegetation qualify, or are you looking more for individual plants?

These are the only contributions I gave to the genre... honestly I am not sure they can be considered "great", just interesting.

U.S. trees
Leaf shapes
Leaf margins

of course there were those wonderful games about poisonous mushrooms... :P

I know there are some terrific games about plants here, but you creative ones are being too modest - so far.

In order to properly fill out the next tournament at Creators' Faves, we need one great plant-themed game to be nominated by its creator for inclusion. Let's avoid poisonous plants, if possible.

You can't do that in the game creation engine.

But you can do it in a background you load yourself. In that case, you need to put your map into some sort of program that will let you modify it (PhotoShop, PowerPoint, etc. etc.), and draw your lines beforehand.

Then, save the finished product in a PG compatible format (PNG/GIF/JPG) and size (300 kb or less). After that, load it up on the creation page, and you're ready to go.

Good Luck, and Good Games.

Is it possible to draw lines from one dot to another, say for instance a line from LA to Phoenix? If so how is it done?

Yea, I just got a 1 star rating on my Dodge Vipers quiz game, and I am the only person who has finished it. I think the best way to protect games would be to rate every game you play, regardless of whether or not you finished it. That way, a single 1s rating would not destroy you.

Thanks to the people who gave a good rating to my game. I checked today to see more of my games just got a 1 rating too. I guess it's more common than I thought. This only reinforces my believe of keep rating all of your games after I play them. With more votes, the average is more fair.

Well, I read the discussion there, and I think that it truly did not result in anything. But, I agree with it. To get to the point of this game, I often look at a game, and don't play it, but still rate it low or high, depending on how complex and accurate it seems to be. But, I tend to be a bit perfectionist, if the spelling is bad, I might reduce my rating just for that. I also often play a game, and really like it, but forget to rate it, for one reason or another. Then there is the rather dangerous subject of games which don't deserve to be rated well. I recently (mistakenly, as I later realized) had a campaign to down-rate a gambling game, because it was very unfair for anyone trying to keep their average high. But that should also not happen. PG is a pretty well sorted out site, but, as with anything, there are still some problems.

Hi sunny1 and all the rest of you. Here you can see the former discussion: http://www.purposegames.com/topic/922
(I haven't yet learned to link, even though tickman and Wentu tried to learn us all the other day... I have tried several times!)

Has David given an opinion on the issue in the past?

A problem with people rating games without playing them is that some people finds it funny giving 1-star rating to a lot of games. It has happened to my top rated games 3-4 times, and then it is not just a couple of games, more like 20-50 or worse...

I think Wentu has had the same problem.

I see your point Slaaty. Sometimes I forget it doesn't count you as playing the game if you don't finish it.

Before you joined PG, paulfunI made the same suggestion.

I respectfully disagree, in spite of agreeing that such a limitation would eliminate some of the ratings abuse around here. The problem is that there is just no equitable way to really police it, and there are legitimate reasons for rating a game without playing it, just as there are bogus ratings and ratings vandalism that can be done in spite of such a rule. And FWIW, a quick look at your Geologic Clock game gave me sufficient cause to give it a compensatory 5 star rating, without even playing it.

As someone who likes making relatively challenging games, I would be concerned that many more games would remain unrated for longer if completing them were required. A discerning player can make an informed judgment about the merit of a game without completing it, and I do so fairly often. Some players who try to protect their 100% stat, will refrain from completing a game until they perfect it, but that doesn't mean that they are not very familiar with it before that time.

If anything, I kind of wish that the % stat didn't exist, or at least was not so instrumental in the ratings, because it produces some artificial behavior around completing (or not) difficult games that hurts the site. I confess to occasionally going back to get 100% on some game that I'm really not interested in, but truly that is pretty silly behavior.

As tickman frequently offers - good fun and good games! or something like that. :-)