A Question about how you rank games on the site

[Anthony1]

In the Classic Discussions area, where there are topics like:


"The 50 best Super Nintendo Games"

or

"The 20 best Sega CD Games"

or

"The 50 best Jaguar Games"


I don't see the games ranked in any particular order. They seem to be listed alphabetically.

I would like to make a suggestion on how games be ranked. I know that I'm a new guy to these forums, and who the hell am I to come in here and tell you guys how to rank your games, but it's just a suggestion, nothing more.


I think that you should rank the games by having members submit their top 50 lists, or top ten lists, or whatever and then based on how many times a game has been ranked no.1, but how many people, then it gets ranked like that.

For example. Let's say that you are having a discussion on the top 50 Super Nintendo games. What you could do, is have people submit their top 25 or whatever Super Nintendo games, in order from 1 to 25. Then you would assign points to the rankings. A game ranked number 1, would get the most points. 2 would get the second most points, and so on and so on. Then what you do is you add up all the points totals for all the games submitted, and then you get an overall points total ranking.

I believe this is the way they rank the top 20 College Football teams in the country, and the top 20 College Basketball teams in the Country by the associated press.

So this is a very respected and well recieved formula for ranking things.

If I were making the points breakdown, I would make it like this:


Games ranked No. 1 = 500 points
Games ranked No. 2 = 375 points
Games ranked No. 3 = 250 points
Games ranked No. 4 = 200 points
Games ranked No. 5 = 175 points
Games ranked No. 6 = 150 points
Games ranked No. 7 = 125 points
Games ranked No. 8 = 115 points
Games ranked No. 9 = 110 points
Games ranked No. 10 = 100 points
Games ranked No. 11 = 95 points
Games ranked No. 12 = 90 points
Games ranked No. 13 = 85 points
Games ranked No. 14 = 80 points
Games ranked No. 15 = 75 points
Games ranked No. 16 = 70 points
Games ranked No. 17 = 65 points
Games ranked No. 18 = 60 points
Games ranked No. 19 = 55 points
Games ranked No. 20 = 50 points
Games Ranked No. 21 = 45 points
Games Ranked No. 22 = 40 points
Games Ranked No. 23 = 35 points
Games Ranked No. 24 = 30 points
Games Ranked No. 25 = 25 points
Games ranked No. 26 to No. 49 = 20 points
Games ranked No. 50 to 100 = 10 points


So then what happens is you have people submit their lists.

Let me just do a top ten Super Nintendo List to give you an example.

Here is an example of somebodies top 10 SNES list:

1. Super Mario World
2. Super Metroid
3. Super Mario Kart
4. Zelda III
5. Yoshi's Island
6. Contra III
7. Castlevania IV
8. Chrono Trigger
9. Final Fantasy III
10. Donkey Kong Country


So Super Mario World would get 500 points. Super Metroid would get 375 points. Super Mario Kart would get 250 points, and so on and so on.


Then when you have at least 20 people who have submitted their rankings, then you add up the totals. You rank the games in order, by the games with the most points.

When more people submit their top tens, then you can add those numbers into the totals and change accordingly.


Like I said, this is just a suggestion, but I think it would be an awesome addition to the Classic Discussions board to have a more structured way of ranking the all time games.

[hydr0x]

yeah i do like that system and i'll second something like that, but it has a problem (which hopefully won't appear on this board). What it reflects is what games come into peoples mind when thinking of the best games. The problem with this is these are not necessarily the best games, see, every hyped game (which isn't as good as the hype makes u think) would be in the list cause it would come to everyones mind. On the other hand a lot of good but relatively unknown games will be left out. The risk of this scenario is far higher with your system than with the now used system!

[Anthony1]

Well, of course there is no question that any time you have a list of the Top 100 this or the Top 50 that, you will always have preconcieved notions and biases built into that list.


Some people are going to be big fans of RPG and Fighting games, other people are going to be into Racing games and Shooters, some might be into Platform games and Sports games. These different biases are going to reflect in their top 50 or 100 lists. There is no escaping it.


The only way that you could have a truly legit ranking would be to have a thousand gamers who have played every single game on the system from begining to end, having never seen a commercial or advertisement or reviews in the magazines to have formed a preconcieved notion.

It's just not possible.


But, what is possible is to have a list that would accurately depict what peoples notions of a Top 50 games are. However flawed those notions might be.

What I want is a list where a game that get's a No. 1 ranking is going to have to have some serious points to attain that. Same thing with the game that gets the No. 2 ranking and the No. 3 ranking. All the way down.

If we have 20 different people submit their top 25 games, then we are likely to end up with 20 different responses to the 17th best game on a system. And on peoples 17th and 18th and 19th choices are where you are going to see the games that don't get the hype and the pub.

Depending on how many points these games end up getting, they will be ranked accordingly and will give gamers a good idea as to some games that maybe they never had a chance to play, but they maybe should go out and try to play that game and see why people put it into the 20th spot.


What I'm looking for in a Top 50 list, isn't the games that make the top 25. Those are the games that are going to make the list regardles, because of all the hype and publicity and the fact that they received perfect reviews in the magazines. I'm looking for the bottom 25. To see if there are some real gems, that for whatever reason I never got a chance to play.

I think if we use my type of system. We will have a better idea, of how to rank these gems. Sure all the top games and the forgone conclusions will be ranked high, but it's the lower seeds that I'm most interested in.

I'm looking to see how many other people believe that Jurassic Park, and Aero the Acrobat and Axelay deserve a top 50 spot on the SNES list.

[hydr0x]

I'm looking to see how many other people believe that Jurassic Park, and Aero the Acrobat and Axelay deserve a top 50 spot on the SNES list.

hehe i think axelay would definetly be in most top25 lists and aero the acrobat also got good ratings when released, so expect it to get some points as for jurassic park, mh, i didn't really like the first one, though i also didn't dislike it, but i always liked part 2 more, i know, it's a different game

but back to topic, as i said, i'll 2nd your system!! But you/we/all should try to find a method to reduce those hyped entries, like not allowing to vote if u haven't played at least 500 games ok something else then a possibility would be that everyone would be allowed (optional) to also give a anti-top-10 or something like that, where he lists all the games (10 max) that he thinks are not worth being in the top50 or are just ranked to high, with a short explanation (to avoid things like votes for smw because "mario sucks") which results in a reduction of points for these games (something between 30-50 points)

[hydr0x]

btw, why don't you just start a snes-top50 with that system, let's see how it works

[digitalpress]

I like your idea, Anthony1, all I can say is that what has worked best with these forums over the years is a simple approach. There are newbies and experts and casual browsers and forum residents and everything in-between, so a very simple system... "what are your favorites" is something that everyone can understand and participate in. That's why it is the way it is.

However, this is YOUR forum. And everyone is free to try whatever system they think will work! Give it a shot.