Player rating systems

Peer-2-peer rating systems work quite well in systems like eBay and Slashdot.

But they do so because User A has no real interest in User B’s future. In brief: A has no real reason to be dishonest.

Not so for online gamers. Here a rating can be used strategically. You may get angry with someone, but you may also see a personal advantage (in terms of relative score) in bad-mouthing that person.

Thus, we essentially need a system which can

• distinguish between fair and unfair ratings OR
• in which ratings cannot be used strategically

But what on Earth, I ask you, would that look like?

What about (just brainstorming):

• Limited number of total karma points (you can’t just toss them aroud for the heck of it)
• A player can only give a limited amount of points to any given player (to minimize the consequence of evil ratings)
• The rating is given secretively (you can’t trust/threaten someone to be nice if you are)
• Karma points cannot be given at all until you’re fairly high-level (or whatever) to avoid people making dummy accounts to boost their own rating
• You only see ratings of your friends (or those you’ve rated positively) so the truthfulness of your rating actually affects your friends

Any good ideas?

Dette indlæg ligner…
Interesting article on player rating (16/11/2006)

Trusting those trusted by someone I trust (26/04/2006)

Communication: The act of asssuring a listener that the speaker would be harsh to other people (04/10/2006)

Sign me up as untrustworthy (04/05/2007)

Forward marines!! (20/10/2006)