So this was my first main Ludum Dare and I had a lot of fun. But I have now seen two posts accusing people of cheating the system. One guy was being accused of cheating because they commented ‘Good Job’ on every game they rated. ( http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/09/01/l-for-loser/ ) In the second one, people who don’t leave comments are being accused of being cheaters. ( http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/09/18/dirty-cheats/ ) I understand there are probably more than a few real cheaters out there. They will always exist. But I do not appreciate that people who don’t leave comments (and somebody that always left a comment) suddenly being lumped in, as if not leaving feedback or leaving too much feedback just meant you were rating randomly.

I rated 191 games. I might have left about 10 comments on various games, almost none of which was more than a Good Job. I played every single one of those games and left an honest rating as I am sure a whole lot of people did. Just because I didn’t have much or anything new to say has no relation to my rating habits. Maybe some games I should have played a little longer. Maybe next Dare I will try and leave more feedback since it is obviously strongly encouraged. But leaving a comment with your rating was not required and insinuating those of us with little to say are cheaters is unfair to say the least.

I am not against requiring feedback next time around as suggested in the second post but I can only guess that game pages will just be filled with a whole lot of “Good Job”‘s and “I don’t know what to say but I need to fill 100 characters. And Good Job”.

I don’t know how to actually catch cheaters but I feel like actively looking for them is only detrimental to my enjoyment of the entire process and being indirectly accused of cheating myself is even more so. I don’t know how the people running the show look for them but I assume they are doing their job. In the meantime, I am going to happily continue on with my life assuming everybody here wants the same thing I do, to make a game in 48/72 hours, and that any cheaters that are out there will get what they deserve.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 20th, 2013 at 8:29 am and is filed under LD #27. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.