cormack12
Gold Member
Ay up gaf,
The last few years we've been doing what we could to run a sensible GOTY event, to keep the tradition going. And as always GAFs picks have been really interesting to see - and maintained that fun little end of year poll distraction. It was always meant to be an interim solution until we got something more integrated with the new software. This year, we've been working as a small group to put something in a bit more refined and something we can build on over the next few years.
Topher
has been the key member putting in a lot of the work and breathing life into the actual functionality,
Palliasso
has been lending his support from the admin/dev side and
EviLore
has been supportive and open to bringing the feature in house. I've been responsible for PMs saying 'can you do this?' and 'what about if we change that' 
. It has been a bit of a whirlwind the last couple of months but sometime tomorrow Neogaf's GOTY 2022 will start running and we just want to run through some changes, what's different (and why) and what to expect.
Why are we changing?
The Google form voting was very simple and had a really good uptake. However, off site voting is always subject to brigading, though we had some obvious and not so obvious ways of detecting duplicates/spamming. However, it was a point of discussion in certain years when more than usual 'protest votes' may have surfaced. We really wanted to preserve the integrity of the vote that was clearly visible. Linking it into the software means we can be assured that it's a single gaf vote per account.
What should I expect?
Tomorrow (19th December 2022), a new GOTY voting link will be published within the forum. It will remain open for approximately a month. The process for voting is below.
Is the format the same?
After reviewing the last few years worth of data, those who voted outside the mandatory three titles was not high. Obviously this serves only to extend the form. You will have seen a recent post asking for more categories. We wanted to replace a lot of the game 5, game 6, game 7 fields with categories that were meaningful to our members. After all, this is our own vote and we don't have to follow convention. This does mean we've reduced the vote down a singular 'game of the year'. We can still collate a top 3-5 list from all the results though.
The categories in full are:
The new voting process
A new route will be opened up tomorrow which is basically a link to a new section of the site. You'll see the new 'form' and how to enter your votes. It will look similar to below (hopefully everyone is using the superior classic dark theme).
At the bottom of the page is the actual selection button. So you will click next to the category you want to vote for and the page will jump down to the selection/submit part.
1. If you leave the criteria blank and just click 'Search', it will bring back all games listed, and you can browse manually before selecting your pick
2. This is where the results appear after clicking 'Search'. If you want to narrow your search then in
3. You can input a text query here and then click 'Search'. This will then only bring back results with that string in the title.
Once you've got your title returned in the results pane, then simply select the radio button at the left hand side and click 'Select'
Your chosen category will now update with your choice:
Can I change my vote?
Unlike the google form, yes you can! Up until voting closes you can change as many times as you want simply by updating your selection
Are the categories mandatory?
No
My game isn't listed
You can tag myself or Topher. Again, from previous years, approximately 90% of the games listed were never selected so there is a balance to strike. This year because of a lack of time we have elected to fall back to a list, as direct API queries were giving us some challenges on title consolidation. This should be a problem we can overcome for next year, but we wanted to make sure what we had actually worked, rather than introduce areas of instability at the same time.
The last few years we've been doing what we could to run a sensible GOTY event, to keep the tradition going. And as always GAFs picks have been really interesting to see - and maintained that fun little end of year poll distraction. It was always meant to be an interim solution until we got something more integrated with the new software. This year, we've been working as a small group to put something in a bit more refined and something we can build on over the next few years.
Topher
has been the key member putting in a lot of the work and breathing life into the actual functionality,
Palliasso
has been lending his support from the admin/dev side and
EviLore
has been supportive and open to bringing the feature in house. I've been responsible for PMs saying 'can you do this?' and 'what about if we change that' . It has been a bit of a whirlwind the last couple of months but sometime tomorrow Neogaf's GOTY 2022 will start running and we just want to run through some changes, what's different (and why) and what to expect.Why are we changing?
The Google form voting was very simple and had a really good uptake. However, off site voting is always subject to brigading, though we had some obvious and not so obvious ways of detecting duplicates/spamming. However, it was a point of discussion in certain years when more than usual 'protest votes' may have surfaced. We really wanted to preserve the integrity of the vote that was clearly visible. Linking it into the software means we can be assured that it's a single gaf vote per account.
What should I expect?
Tomorrow (19th December 2022), a new GOTY voting link will be published within the forum. It will remain open for approximately a month. The process for voting is below.
Is the format the same?
After reviewing the last few years worth of data, those who voted outside the mandatory three titles was not high. Obviously this serves only to extend the form. You will have seen a recent post asking for more categories. We wanted to replace a lot of the game 5, game 6, game 7 fields with categories that were meaningful to our members. After all, this is our own vote and we don't have to follow convention. This does mean we've reduced the vote down a singular 'game of the year'. We can still collate a top 3-5 list from all the results though.
The categories in full are:
The new voting process
A new route will be opened up tomorrow which is basically a link to a new section of the site. You'll see the new 'form' and how to enter your votes. It will look similar to below (hopefully everyone is using the superior classic dark theme).
At the bottom of the page is the actual selection button. So you will click next to the category you want to vote for and the page will jump down to the selection/submit part.
1. If you leave the criteria blank and just click 'Search', it will bring back all games listed, and you can browse manually before selecting your pick
2. This is where the results appear after clicking 'Search'. If you want to narrow your search then in
3. You can input a text query here and then click 'Search'. This will then only bring back results with that string in the title.
Once you've got your title returned in the results pane, then simply select the radio button at the left hand side and click 'Select'
Your chosen category will now update with your choice:
Can I change my vote?
Unlike the google form, yes you can! Up until voting closes you can change as many times as you want simply by updating your selection
Are the categories mandatory?
No
My game isn't listed
You can tag myself or Topher. Again, from previous years, approximately 90% of the games listed were never selected so there is a balance to strike. This year because of a lack of time we have elected to fall back to a list, as direct API queries were giving us some challenges on title consolidation. This should be a problem we can overcome for next year, but we wanted to make sure what we had actually worked, rather than introduce areas of instability at the same time.
