kmau 2011-01-20 12:22:13

I noticed that some time ago too. There are lots of, sorry, crappy flash games coming in. While I don't say there's no effort involved I vote for the apocalypse.

If you choose to make a flash game you are usually aware of how difficult it can be to make a good innovative game, and if you lower your goals because of that and make a crappy 1 button game then you simply shouldn't make flash games at all except for practice because nobody will play it and it will be left in the virtual cellar of newgrounds, so basically theres no difference - it either hibernates on your harddrive or on newgrounds.

I must note however that there ARE simple flash games like Super Ryucopter.. so you shouldn't select what to blam by simplicity and bizarro-effortlessness alone.

Maybe just increase all users voting power against games only?
Like this:
My voting power for movies:
3,80
My voting power for games:
if score increases: 3,80
if score is lowered: 7,60

FrozenFire 2011-01-20 12:22:15

One issue I have is with Mofunzone who is quite stubborn with crediting the people he sponsors.

My official first game was a small one that I never got coauthored for.
I've noticed Mofunzone doing a bunch of cheap tricks for site views so I've always been bugged by his treatment of the people who provide his site with content. I've not ever had that problem elsewhere.

I'm not quite sure what issue you have with cookie cutter games. Im assuming it has to do with bandwidth and you wanting to save some dough on games that have been seen many times before. (which is understandable)

As for games which you don't know if it's stolen.. it's pretty challenging to tell unless you do some research or get a message from the original artist. I see a lot of my games jacked onto random small sites (desirable if they contain ads) but Newgrounds is above such things. Stolen games should def. be removed.

Mochi did an article recently about developers not getting credit for their sponsored work which really got my attention. So I think you should make a statement in the submission process (Bolded) that recommends the developers be credited somewhere.. be it description, coauthor, in game.. etc.

zhente 2011-01-20 12:24:41

Holocaust those cookie cutters.

Joelasticot 2011-01-20 12:30:22

Tom, these turds they keep laying upon the portal fall into the abyss once they leave the 50 latest listing. Seriously, even their older submissions average in the 1000s of views. While their stuff doesn't really hurt anyone, it's annoying to see people for whom Flash & Newgrounds are just a cheap way to make a few bucks and keep their crappy website(s) running

These things are below spam - which in most cases, has some entertaining value. I vote for deletion

OdHero 2011-01-20 12:30:38

Many cookie cutter games are also beginners making their very first games, they would be discouraged to be blammed, despite the fact their game isn't that original in the future those who stick to it will make better stuff.

Consider it a delicate balance, I would only delete the obviously swapped graphics kind of ones.

HollowK 2011-01-20 12:40:28

I'd say mass apocalypse.

A-Shift 2011-01-20 12:41:23

COOKIE CUTTER GAME APOCALYPSE!

biglou2128 2011-01-20 12:42:32

I can't stand it when people submit the same dumbass game over and over. I say blam them. I do it anyway.

Starogre 2011-01-20 12:45:21

hmm mass-blammed as in voted 0 or just blammed while they are under judgement?

i think we should have a 2012 apocalypse where everyone mass votes 0 on EVERYTHING to get the standards for a good score back down.

Sheizenhammer 2011-01-20 12:45:40

Honestly, I see these games as little different from spam submissions. Apart from the lack of deliberate attempts to annoy people, the premise of them is the same: Do as little work as possible and rely on the blind statwhores to pass them (<= Only reason they get such high scores, so far as I can tell). It's almost as if these companies are just using NG as file-hosting and / or free ad space.

IMO, there's only so many different re-skins a game can get before new ones become so similar to previous games that they're basically just re-submits. I think having a maximum limit on how many of the same underlying game you can submit would be a good idea... which would mean a blam apocalypse for most of the accounts uploading these things.

Also, I do like the idea of only allowing games made by recognisable individuals. I've often found it near impossible when trying to decide if a game is stolen or not when it comes from a big website or a huge team of people with no real mention of who exactly did most of the work. Worse still, e-mailing them to try to get a coherent answer about it is often met with ridiculous amounts of red-tape and time-wasting. I have honestly gotten more coherent replies out of 6 year olds than some of these companies.

If you want to change what gets passed and what gets flagged, though, you're probably going to need a better (or at least different) flagging system: the vast majority (and I do mean like 99%) of people who vote on UJ stuff either don't know, or simply don't care, about what should and shouldn't be allowed in here. And I know Wade's got better things to do than babysit the portal all day every day. The amount of times stolen stuff gets through is just sad, and making rules against these things is only going to be even less successful as long as the current flag system keeps relying on said UJ voters alone.

cortkiller 2011-01-20 12:45:57

It could have a time limit to post submissions on the site to prevent the 'mass cookie cutter games', then, when you try to submit another game in the period of 15 minutes (or more) you receive the message:

"You can only upload another submission 15 minutes after the last one"
^.-

Tydus 2011-01-20 12:46:37

I think there's too much grey area involved in who actually MADE content posted to the Portal. Even little things, like the now infamous "DOT DOT DOT" featuring Carl Orff's 'O Fortuna' will often go unnoticed. Obviously that song is ancient and has been used in more than a handful of NG submissions, but it's still proof that even though something may be credited in the author comments, it often times gets associated as work from the submitting author. As far as games go, there's a lot of companies (Like Armor Games) that do a great job of letting the developer get credit for their work, but there's so many more that don't. I know it sounds harsh, but I don't think a "Developer's Account" is out of the question for Newgrounds. It should have some incentives, though, like an upped filesize limit or an increased revenue program. And if at all possible, GET RID OF NON-NEWGROUNDS ADS AT THE BEGINNING OF GAMES. NG HAS IT'S OWN PROGRAM THAT PAYS BETTER.

YoinK 2011-01-20 12:47:38

COOKIE CUTTER GAME APOCALYPSE
also, in before LUIS!

Rabid-Animals 2011-01-20 12:50:26

I'm all for a cookie cutter game apocalypse. I'm so sick of seeing "find the difference games," and if they're using some kind of forced labor (the thought of a Flash-producing sweatshop terrifies me), then that just makes the issue more reprehensible.

I think that since they're such huge entities, the staff, or somebody, should be able to intervene. Obviously, the people submitting the games have resources for to make a site of their own, so I don't see why they need to clog up NG with them. I see why they would want to, but that doesn't make it any better.

Let's bring down the hammer!

wowpwner09 2011-01-20 12:53:21

i think that the blamming should stop, but low-rated submissions go somewhere else than the portal. like a crap portal. a C-Bot.

Kinsei 2011-01-20 13:00:33

Apocalypse!
We have a Day for saving, why not have a day for killing?

jmalouin7 2011-01-20 13:05:34

a good user i have noticed doing this is 123bee. If you look at their games, they are all the same fucking game, but different theme on the background.

when I use to go for b/p points i would look at there games, and they just have the most minimum effort needed to get by, while making sure everything looked pretty. however i thought the majority of their games could be packaged up into one bigger game. An example, they made a bunch of "find the hidden number games" where on the screen you would have to find 25 hidden numbers within a certain amount of time. but each of these things were just one level long and that was it.

I seen probably around 7-8 of these exact games that I can think of off the top of my head, and the only thing i could think about was "why were these single level games not thrown together?"

The only conclusion i can really think of on why they are doing this is to run as many ads as possible, without breaking any rules with the ads. If you can make one game several levels with only one ad, you wouldn't make that much money. however, if you make a bunch of games that are good enough to get the attention of most users, with an ad in each of them, they can collect a lot more money out of it.

Etackett2010 2011-01-20 13:06:32

Blam those pieces of shit

XXDreamMakerXX 2011-01-20 13:08:26

Newgrounds dedicate that day to AXMAN13.

Ronald-McDonald-LoL 2011-01-20 13:08:33

Tom, I'm sure you're aware by now, but it's practically impossible to blam something with a filesize over 1 MB these days. Users are voting on flashes without even pressing play.

People recognize these cookie-cutter games by name and they vote to protect immediately, with or without even opening them.