Originally posted by: Dain
I do have some questions on how we should handle entering data for past contests -- should we have like a bulk loader or not worry about past scores?
Also, what types of scoring verification types should we allow?
I'd like people to be able to enter their own scores on their own behalf (to track their own personal progress), but these would need to be under a different "unofficial" type of verification. At any rate, right now we have games in the system, a way to track scores, but what we're a bit light on is how we should handle some of the fringe conditions.
Any ideas on "how it should work" would be VERY welcome right now. This is the chance to get things done the way you'd like it to work.
A few things come to mind. First, are you only planning on tracking games that have a points system? They would be the easiest to track I guess -- but there's also best lap times on racing games, etc. Assuming we're only considering point-based high scores...
I hadn't thought about a private high scores system. I can see the appeal but I'm not sure if I'd use it, personally. Perhaps there's a way to integrate the two? For example, let's say there's a new "High Scores" section of the site. On the main HS page you could search by platform, by game title, etc. When viewing a particular title, the top players will be listed such as:
Username -- Points -- Rank
With as many pages/ranks as there are entries for that game.
Perhaps uploading your own scores could be done from the same page OR from your My Home page. Basically the idea is, say I upload 15 scores for various games, and I'm 4th place in Donkey Kong. I upload all my scores--then if I go to the High Scores page, look at the high scores for Donkey Kong, my name's there as rank 4. But, you could also view your personal scores via your profile page. (...Name History - Collections - Blog - Gallery - High Scores - ...) where clicking on the High Scores tab will show you a page of all 15 scores I have uploaded.
The important thing is verification. I think to get the ball rolling we could just use the honor system with the scores Miss Clawful just posted. But perhaps you could require verification above a certain rank, but not below it? For example, some random member uploading a score of 55,000 on Pinball doesn't need to take a picture. But someone saying they broke the Rank 1 (or top 3, etc) place in Tetris or something should be required to prove it with video/pictures to some sufficient extent. I don't think many people will quibble over rank 45 vs 44, but dethroning someone in the top 5 or so would kind of require some type of proof. Whether you go as far as to take a picture of your NES to prove there's no Game Genie (a la Nintendo Power), I guess that's up to you guys
Now, here's another idea: maybe there could be an overall high score table with the combined scores across all games? So there could be an overall rank with your total accumulation of points across all titles. I think that would be pretty neat. But there's so many games out there, it's hard to say whether it'd really be useful or not.
Hope that sparks some ideas.
