Travelling to DreamHack last month was not only a milestone for Gamocracy, it was one for me personally as it was my first trip to Sweden.
Visiting a country for the first time is always a feat, but this time even more so because I’ve had a fascination with Sweden and Swedes for years. It all started because of electronic sports, Counter-Strike in particular, around 2000 or 2001. I had been running a gaming team for a couple months when I realized Swedes were something special: they won almost everything.
That’s one of the first thing i learned when practicing in the field of pixel art. Bigger the better ! And talking about big, damn those King of fighters XII’s sprites are amazing.
Sometimes it’s tough navigating through feedback. And sometimes it’s not. My long time gaming friends, and many others, think there’s a problem with the Rating system. We know because they told us it sucks (in a friendly way).
Before I explain the problem to everyone, let me just say we agree. We’re doing the fix tonight.
Oh, and while we’re here… we do like negative feedback. Yes, oh yes! Keep slapping!!
A couple days ago, through the feedback form, RemiB sent us a template to help create Gamocracy backgrounds. It allows you to preview what a background will look like directly in Photoshop. It’s a good aiming tool. I made the same kind of template for PaintDOTnet, as it’s what I have, for us all visual vagrants.
Backgrounds are something I really enjoy about Gamocracy, while I didn’t even expect them to be there initially. The idea came from Morgan, our designer. Years ago, he joined a cult dedicated to visual neatness. Since then, he’s had to make everything he’s designed neat or his soul will burn in hell forever (resulting in never ending atrocious pain of course). When it comes to backgrounds as he designed them, the before/after test clearly shows the woawwwwwmeter reaching unusual heights.
I just added a background to Counter-Strike, see for yourself.
I’m so excited and I just can’t hiiide it! The Gamocracy beta started 23 days ago. Between feedback and Dreamhack, why would anyone need to sleep?
There are a little less than 200 people testing the site. Thank you all for your involvement, it’s very important to us. It allowed to fix a lot of small things already, and to think about bigger ones with you in mind. We’re working at that now.
One of the things I’ve had in mind about Gamocracy from the start is that we could make up stats directly from gamers’ activity and opinions. That’s why ratings are key and that’s also why – yes Sherlock! – I went into the admin and dug for some numbers by hand. (Links will work properly if you’re a tester only)
What games got rated the most (not the best rated!) for the first 3 weeks?
