OMG SIGN ME UP NOOOOWWWWWWWWWW 

I only read that far because this seemed to turn into a lame flamewar after a while. But, counterstrike is a fantastic game. I haven't played the version for HL2, but the original was a phenomanally fun game to play, with friends or strangers. I don't see how anyone here can say it was not a good game.

But the crowd that gave it 'popularity' is not something to brag about. That's a different issue! 

It all sounds a bit silly to me.

Yeah, well, like Lun, I haven't heard anything authoritative from anyone re: free-time mapping (and I certainly didn't sign anything to that effect), but I would be pretty surprised (and pretty cranky) if someone decided to tell me what I could do on my own free time.

My best guess (until someone tells me otherwise... /me looks over shoulder...) is that I can damn well do whatever I please on my own time with my own tools as long as that activity doesn't damage the company in some way, or detract from my ability to do my job. And, obviously, I shouldn't be representing anything I do on my own time as having anything to do with Raven. It seems like common sense to me, and is easily summed-up by "don't be a dumbass". *shrug*

As far as having the time, that's a different matter...I haven't really felt like working on something as involved as, say, a Q3 map for quite a while now (plus, Q3 just wasn't as attractive anymore), but I simply love making cool stuff, and I'm certainly not going to get tired of that just because I get paid for it.

For instance, I've been regularly making new tracks for a racing game that has me badly addicted, and it's fairly likely that I'll play around with something Q4-ish when it comes out.

We'll need a Q4 icon here soon... 

more spam...

guess i need to make myself a "delete post" button. 

we haven't needed a new one since serious sam -- every fps since then has been a sequel. 

We could do with losing the Sam and DKT icons, for the obvious reasons that they have almost no use.

In their place, I'd suggest a "Fantasy" icon and a "Strategy" icon (not sure what these would look like :), as those would be useful to cover other general genres of games, e.g. Tronyn's Rune maps or Lun's DOW map.

Maybe a general "Sci-fi" icon too. The Green Target already covers realism games, I reckon.

Q4 could be covered by the Q2 icon. 

for amps that go to 11. 

speaking of dow, why can't I play your map in skirmish? 

 

I see it as standing for "crap game" 

...so tired 

That's what I use this one for. 

...even more tired 

Because, either your an idiot, or because you haven't upgraded to the necessary patch. It does work in Skirmish. 

You don't by any chance think it might be both? 

LOL 

I hope this isn't stating the obvious, but the reason those two students' comments are so subjective is because they're not commenting on whether or not the teacher is good or bad, but they're commenting on whether or not the teacher is good or bad for them individually. If they wanted to be objective, they should have looked around them at how most of the class was doing, and maybe a few other classes, too.

How to measure quality objectively? Determine the properties that are most important to the largest number of people, and then see if those properties are positively or negatively affecting them.

As for art, as you mentioned you can measure the build quality. But the whole point of art is that it is dependant on individual interpretation, so obviously you can't objectively measure artistic value because it is entirely subjective. So artistic value can be "good" or "bad" for you individually, but it cannot be measured universally.

However, there truly can be a problem in weighing the positive and negative properties because there might be slight variations in our perception of those properties. Sometimes they will be obviously good and sometimes they will be obviously bad. I would argue, however, that because we're dealing with properties affecting most people and not properties affecting very few people, that our disagreement about the overall positive/negative judgement would differ only to a very small degree. For example, you might say it's great and I might say it's good, but it's probably somewhere in that range. Or, I might say it's slightly good and you might say it's slightly bad, but it's probably closer to mediocre. 

If you're talking about goodness, and you don't mean moral goodness, then you probably mean how effective something is at fufilling its purpose. A math teacher is good so far as he effectively teaches math to his students, so the average quality of each student's educations is what we care about.

A game's purpose is up for debate probably, which is why you'll get debate on which games were good. If the purpose is "make money" then the most profitable games are the best. If the purpose is "be entertaining" then surely popularity DOES matter, becuase a game that 1 in 10,000 people liked, and the other 9999 people didn't like, can't be good even if those 9999 people are "idiots."

Note: there are other candidate answers for "what is the point of games?" I just gave two. 

RPG, thanks for making my poing =). Because here, you are clearly contradicting yourself. From your original post:

""Good" is not a measure of popularity. "Popularity" is a measure of popularity, and "good" is a measure of quality."

vs.

"How to measure quality objectively? Determine the properties that are most important to the largest number of people, and then see if those properties are positively or negatively affecting them."

Now please explain to me the difference.

Disclaimer: I know how hard this subject is. I have had hours and hours of discussions with Aardappel, headshot and Borsato on this topic, and the bottom line for me personally was that there hardly is something "objective" because there is no higher instance that defines this term. Eventually, there is only you vs. the majority. Some people might argue that the majority doesn't get to dictate what quality is because the majority of people is dumb - and I would agree. But who does, then? Your favorite columnist? Your dad? Your art teacher?

I for one don't know. 

Really. 

That's something else that bothers me about R.P.G.s definition of quality - the selection of properties is completely arbitrary. I mean, "make money" and "be entertaining" are almost at opposite ends of the spectrum, because games that "make money" are probably those which are entertaining to the masses, but not to us. We seem to have different standards, but does that make our standards better than those of the masses? 

I think we mostly believe that there is some common property that all good games have, and that there's consensus among people about which games are good. In other words, we believe we could be objective about the matter, even if we aren't always.

If those beliefs were false, there would be no point in discussing games with other people, because we would have no common ground, no unchanging reality that both of us experience and can identify and reason about. 

I think games and other pop culture/mass pruducts (music for example) shouldnt not be judged by the popularity, cause marketing and advertisment plays a huge role. Very often a crap game gets rather popular just because its based on a popular franchize and has a massive ad compaign, but a good game might pass almost unnoticed if it is lacking the hype/advertisment 

now we need to be more specific about what popularity means. There are two concepts:

* how many people total have played this game?
* what percentage of people like the game?

This is the difference between well-known and well-liked. 

Ok, perhaps a subtle distinction, but something can be popular and still come out as a negative in the general weight of positives/negatives of its qualities.