Star Power is a term that was kinda popularized by the Guitar Hero games. In general use, it kind of got the meaning of using your "popularity" or "stardom" to get through something.
What am I refering to?
There's a situation that has been repeating in the latest LDCs, where the ones at the top always seem to be... the same. There's 4 or 5 names that often keep showing up. Like, MoD, Volkove, MP3, Star king... off the top of my head. And take a look at the Tier List. Look at the first four places. That's just a freaking coincidence, I wasn't looking at the Tier List when I wrote their names.
Sure, there's most likely a reason they're there. They do make excellent levels, I'm not gonna argue with that. However... no matter what, whoever's on top, will always stay on top, and new LDers rarely have a chance.
This post from Venexis sums it up quite nicely.
Venexis wrote:Judgings. But yeah, I have kindof an issue with the generally accepted review method too- An average level should be exactly 10/20 points. This, to me, would describe perfectly a playable level, but with no special effort put in whatsoever. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing to merit a higher score either. 18/20 or so would become the elusive "master designer" score (with only 3/5 in Other, as everything else would usually be covered- anything higher would be virtually godlike). That's radically different from how the current system is, with an average level being about 12/20 and "top-tier" work being a perfect 20/20. Because of the way it's set up (The other category not being on a sliding scale, for instance) a score should literally never be higher than 18.5... and yet it seems to happen regularly.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that things such as the above, while it only results in a difference of a few points, introduces a subconscious bias in judges (looking back I think this is particularly evident in my reviews). Instead of fixing a midpoint and rating a level in terms of how far it falls away (either above or below the average), we seem to have fixed only the perfect scores, and rate levels in terms how much worse they are. You'll notice how a new competitor in LDCs very rarely steals the show, but the universally accepted great designers tend to remain in the top places? They are the manifestation of that elusive 10/10, and should someone actually do better than them in any aspect, there is no higher score available.
...
tl;dr: don't subconsciously pick a winner before even starting to write your reviews, judge objectively and relative to a neutral midpoint. It's going to affect everyone, and that's why it's critically important in order to praise the designers that deserve it and not necessarily the ones who have been praised in the past.
Judges do seem biased towards the Designers who already seem to be awesome. The Tier List is actually kind of a good testament to that, just look at it, and you'll see that the higher one is in the Tier List, the most likely they are to win. A Bronze Tier just doesn't stand a chance against the people above.
I'm not saying that this bias might be on purpose, it might be unintentional, just like Venexis says. In the end this might just be a problem about the way Judges approach their job.
Maybe we should start thinking about better ways to approach the reviewing process. Define a standard or something.
Comments, suggestions, opinions, flames, all down below.
