Image Game Tournament 2018 - DISCUSSION THREAD - DO NOT POST GUESSES HERE

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philamental
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Re: Image Game Tournament 2018 - DISCUSSION THREAD - DO NOT POST GUESSES HERE

Post by philamental »

Thanks to you all for your kind words :D

As promised I have some stats I want to share with you. Some will find them interesting generally but the main reason I put them together was to assess whether there was clear evidence that the tournament was tougher this year than last and whether it negatively impacted participation.

Take a look at these babies ...

Image

18 Score: Overall Score for 2018 Tournament
18 Rnd Avg: EXCLUDING Bonus Rounds, this was the average score for the player per round in the 2018 tournament.
18 Rnd % : INCLUDING Bonus Rounds, this is the percentage of rounds where points were scored by the player in 2018.
17 Score: Overall Score for 2017 Tournament
17 Rnd Avg: EXCLUDING Bonus Rounds, this was the average score for the player per round in the 2017 tournament.
17 Rnd % : INCLUDING Bonus Rounds, this is the percentage of rounds where points were scored by the player in 2017.


Ok, lets start at the top. The top 5 all have very healthy numbers. All had slight if not notable increases in the average pts per round over last year with the exception of maax who was slightly down. In cosmic's case, their large increase can be attributed to them being more active in the tournament as shown by the 35% increase in round participation. The others in the top five all had comparable numbers to 2017 (5% equating to approximately one round).

Below them, the stats initially look quite bad as it's negative red figures everywhere. Brickwall has admitted he didn't have as much time to play this year and this can be reflected in his lower numbers. Bowfinger similarly had far less time although he believes he may not have done much better even with more time. Despite two red figures, mattorama12's stats are actually fairly consistent with last year. CMonster actually had a small pts average increase despite participating in notably fewer rounds. Everybody else was down overall.

I took further overall averages and found that Average Score Per Rnd was down 0.78 on last year and Round Participation was down 11.25% (which is the equivalent of playing two rounds less than last year)

So ... at the top, numbers were up or the same, but for the rest the numbers were down and the overall averages were down.

I think this strongly suggests that overall the tournament was a little harder this year than it was last year.

However it must be remembered we are not comparing like with like as 2017 had 22 regular rounds while 2018 only had 15. Additionally 21 people played last year and that reduced to 18 this year. From that perspective I was also able to determine that in 2017 on average 42% of players scored points in each round. In 2018, that figure was 43%. That doesn't necessarily back the 'this year was harder' narrative.

So what does this all mean? :lol:

Honestly, I don't think there is anything here that suggests the tournament was too tough. I know nobody suggested this but it was a slight concern of mine early last month at the same time. The top players continued to score at the same rates, and the couple of players who afforded more time to the tournament this year saw their scores improve notably. Some players afforded less time this year and their scores dropped. With less rounds and less images this year, it would have definitely felt tougher for the more casual player when they were faced with a couple of rounds they didn't know, whereas last year things moved along faster. Further to this the stats do show that the overall scores were down so it does seem the tournament was a little tougher overall, but nothing to be worried about from my perspective as tournament host.

I've more to add, but I'll break it up so it's easier to read .... brb ...

philamental
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Re: Image Game Tournament 2018 - DISCUSSION THREAD - DO NOT POST GUESSES HERE

Post by philamental »

Ok so while I'm happy that Tourney 2018 functioned well overall, I remain open to change and I would be interested in your feedback which will help me decide if I need to try and do anything a little differently for Tournament 2019, which I'm pretty sure I want to put together.

Currently I aim for movies with at least 1000 criticker rankings. The rules say 500 and that's true, but I aim for 1000 if I can as the more popular the movie is, the more chance the players will recognize it. However, as we saw pretty much none of the tournament's players had rated Last Man Standing despite it having 1300 ratings. Is there any point to playing a round when I can see nobody has rated it? I've two tournaments in the bag now and 15 names from this years 18 have played last time so I think it's fair to assume the majority of the 18 will go again next year. So do I need to start selecting movies that a set percentage of those names have seen?

On first reflection that seems a good suggestion, however it's not possible to only pick movies that everyone on the list has rated so some names are always going to be playing a movie they haven't seen. In that sense is it massively different to my current approach?

Secondly detective work has traditionally been a known and accepted tactic in these image identification games. There is often nothing more satisfying in the game than scoring points on a movie you haven't even seen.

Thirdly, just because you haven't rated a film doesn't mean you haven't seen it. The 'Kumpel Check' therefore is only an indicator, not a guarantee of how many players have seen the movie.

Lastly, I would be making an effort to tailor the game to a list of names that I can't guarantee will play next year. Life, family, work etc understandably gets in the way, and some of you might even be thinking already that you just can't see yourself committing to playing the tournament next year for no other reason than personal choice.

So my question is ... Should I change anything about playing movies where few of the regular players have seen it?

A) I don't change anything. I still select from a minimum of 500 ratings but aim for 1000. If people haven't seen it, either they put on their detective hats or 'tough'.

B) I abandon the overall number of ratings and instead focus on movies that have at least ratings from 40% of this years players(7 names) which should reduce the possibility of a low scoring round

C) I play the same as option A but I now start every round confirming how many of this years players have rated it. This would in effect give everyone a clue as to how popular the movie was, which may have a positive or negative impact on the challenge that is presented.

Is there anything else anyone can suggest to make improvements for next year? I can't guarantee I'll make the change but I'm happy to hear suggestions.

Oh, and one final point I wanted to make in terms of improvement for next year. For a small number of rounds I picked a movie and stuck with it even if I couldn't obtain a HD source. I can see now that wasn't the right decision as the images were fuzzy and made it harder to make out some details. Hellraiser and Bowfinger in particular suffered from this and I have learned from that and won't make the same mistake next year.

MacSwell
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Re: Image Game Tournament 2018 - DISCUSSION THREAD - DO NOT POST GUESSES HERE

Post by MacSwell »

Leave as is, I say.

bowfinger
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Re: Image Game Tournament 2018 - DISCUSSION THREAD - DO NOT POST GUESSES HERE

Post by bowfinger »

I like A. And call me masochistic, but despite the fact that I only scored in one bonus round, I liked this year's bonus rounds better.

mattorama12
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Re: Image Game Tournament 2018 - DISCUSSION THREAD - DO NOT POST GUESSES HERE

Post by mattorama12 »

First off, let me say thank you for another great tourney. As for difficulty, I think I was the first to mention to you that I was finding this year more difficult. I picked up substantially in the second half of the month, even though the movies for the second half of the month weren't movies that I'd seen more than the first half. Partly a combination of not having time to detective work early in the month and partly just some dumb luck I think.

As for next year's tourney, I tend to agree with option A. I'd prefer you just pick movies that are generally popular, rather than considering specifically what's been seen by the group of players. First, there's going to be some variation in who plays next year. Especially with video games on this site, I would not be surprised to see some influx of new people playing next year. More importantly, though, I think overall popularity is probably better than popularity specifically among the players. For those who have not seen the movie, they're more likely to get something that is generally popular since it'll be more in the zeitgeist.

philamental
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Re: Image Game Tournament 2018 - DISCUSSION THREAD - DO NOT POST GUESSES HERE

Post by philamental »

mattorama12 wrote:First off, let me say thank you for another great tourney. As for difficulty, I think I was the first to mention to you that I was finding this year more difficult. I picked up substantially in the second half of the month, even though the movies for the second half of the month weren't movies that I'd seen more than the first half. Partly a combination of not having time to detective work early in the month and partly just some dumb luck I think.

As for next year's tourney, I tend to agree with option A. I'd prefer you just pick movies that are generally popular, rather than considering specifically what's been seen by the group of players. First, there's going to be some variation in who plays next year. Especially with video games on this site, I would not be surprised to see some influx of new people playing next year. More importantly, though, I think overall popularity is probably better than popularity specifically among the players. For those who have not seen the movie, they're more likely to get something that is generally popular since it'll be more in the zeitgeist.


Thanks for this, Matt. While I'm interested in everyone's opinion, I'm not going to learn much if cet1412 says 'everything in the tournament is perfect' as what else would the champ say? :lol: As you said, you did voice some slight concerns early in the tournament so getting your feedback after the dust is settled is extremely valuable to me but I'm glad you felt the tournament balanced out for you overall.

With you and a few others not seeing the need for any significant changes to the format of the next tournament I think that is sufficient feedback for me to move forward at this point. At the same time if someone else wants to add their thoughts/suggestions here or via DM please feel free to do so :)

philamental
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Re: Image Game Tournament 2018 - DISCUSSION THREAD - DO NOT POST GUESSES HERE

Post by philamental »

I do have something else to put forward for discussion though. It's something I originally thought of last year, but I quickly forgot about it when I needed some head space from image games when Tourney 17 ended.

I would be happy to host a mid year tournament around June or July .... if .... you guys all chipped in with the images?

Think of it this way. The tournament that just finished had 15 rounds of 4 images. We had 18 players this year, 15 of which played both years and the majority of whom are regular image game players who are well used to selecting and posting images. If 15 people commit to producing one round (4 images that fit the tournament criteria) each, that's a full month long tournament right there. I even have an awesome idea starting to brew for a presentational theme that I think would be a lot of fun as well.

What do you guys think?

Any interest? How many of you could say 'yes, I could commit to picking a movie that has at least 1000 ratings, sourcing 4 non searchable images that represent a fair challenge, and present them to Phil before the end of May'? (Just to be clear the tournament would play the same as before. it would be open to everyone, not just those who submitted images.)

bowfinger
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Re: Image Game Tournament 2018 - DISCUSSION THREAD - DO NOT POST GUESSES HERE

Post by bowfinger »

I like the idea a lot, and I'm up for it. But how will the scoring work for the images we submit, cos I'm pretty sure I'll guess the movie I submitted on the first image. On the other hand, if submitting images for a movie means we forfeit the points on that round by default, won't that give an advantage to players who don't submit any images because they will have a chance to score on one more movie than the other 15 players who did?

philamental
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Re: Image Game Tournament 2018 - DISCUSSION THREAD - DO NOT POST GUESSES HERE

Post by philamental »

I did think of that but hadn't finalized a thought process because I didn't know if people would be interested or not. I do have some ideas on that though.

Based on experience of the last couple of tournaments, if this summer version is going to work then the majority of players will have to have submitted a round. All those players will be on an equal footing as each will 'sit out' their own round, but for the other players I think a scaled penalty deduction based on how good a player they were might be sufficient.

e.g. If a fleeting interest player scores a total of 1-8 points they would not have points deducted.
A casual interest player scores a total of 9-16 points, they would be deducted 1 point
A keen interest player scores 17-24 points, they would be deducted 2 pts
A competitive player scores 25-32 points, they would be deducted 3 pts
A championship contender player scores 33+ points, they would be deducted a full 4 points bringing them back in line with everybody else.

Another possibility would be to award the 'round player' the average of the points that were scored for their round. e.g. lets say you play a movie and it's very easy and so the scoring is high and there is an average of 2.86 points scored by those playing the round. You get awarded 3 points to keep you in line with other players. If you played a tough round and the scoring is low with an average of 1.21, you get one point. So there is no great advantage to pick a tough or easy round for other players.

I also have a thought process related to the presentation theme which I'm not prepared to discuss here yet but it would definitely address your concern, however I'm not convinced it would be as fair as the systems mentioned above. It might be partially included in tandem with something like the above though.

EDIT: Current tally of interested players = 1 (Bowfinger)

CosmicMonkey
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Re: Image Game Tournament 2018 - DISCUSSION THREAD - DO NOT POST GUESSES HERE

Post by CosmicMonkey »

I'm definitely in for the mid-year tournament, and would totally be willing to provide images for one or more rounds. (I sent phil a DM going in to more detail.)

I like the idea of awarding players the average score from a round, it's probably the simplest solution and it theoretically shouldn't give a player any advantage for submitting/not submitting images or for submitting easier or harder images.

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