<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nSo apparently there’s this thing happening on the Xbox LIVE Arcade. That’s the marketplace where you can buy casual and indie games for your Xbox. The marketplace has a customer-driven rating system, as online marketplaces do. Apparently, the fans of some games are voting down all other games so that their treasured titles can rise to the top<\/a>. That’s a serious problem. Something like that can make a hash out of the whole system, rendering the scores useless to prospective customers. It could lead to a fanboy-driven flamewar like we see in certain corners of March Mayhem<\/a>. Only here, instead of irritated fans you wind up with reluctant customers and lowered sales, which directly affects people trying to earn a living. I feel bad that Microsoft has a mess like this on their hands, and… <\/p>\n Hang on a second:<\/p>\n Many of the developers in the App Hub forum have been talking about ways to improve the system, but the biggest problem seems to be that users don’t have to play the game they are rating, or even own an Xbox. Changing that policy might go a long way to reducing this kind of manipulation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Really Microsoft? XBLA is seven years old. What possible excuse could you have for missing such a glaringly obvious and easily implemented feature? Have you not been in the software business very long? Are you new to the internet? Are you not getting the funding you need? Are you unfamiliar with your own userbase<\/a> of defective hatetrash?<\/strong> <\/p>\n How did you think this would turn out?<\/p>\n I would laugh at your misfortune, but it’s indie developers that are being hurt by your willful incompetence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So apparently there’s this thing happening on the Xbox LIVE Arcade. That’s the marketplace where you can buy casual and indie games for your Xbox. The marketplace has a customer-driven rating system, as online marketplaces do. Apparently, the fans of some games are voting down all other games so that their treasured titles can rise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}