On Wed, 20 Feb 2008, Jorge Arroyo wrote:
It's also possible to vote strategically instead of sincerely and be able to affect the results heavily. As an example, if I change my ranking and instead of having Martian12s as first, I put it as last (what I would call voting strategically given that I already knew M12 was the one game that could win), I could force a tie between M12 and WreckTangle. Just one person can do that!
Someone famouse once said "Democracy is the worst form of government... except for all the alternatives."
It's a mathematical truth that all (non-dictatorial non-random) voting methods are susceptible to strategic voting; the best that can be done is to try decide which sorts of strategies are the most destructive (a purely subjective call) and to limit their effect.
Game "goodness" isn't a linear scale; different people look for different things, and attach different weights to those things. Looking at the numbers, it looks like Virus Fight is a very well-liked game among a certain subset... and very un-liked among another. That doesn't mean it's a bad game (and I must say I absolutely love the premis), but that it'll be something of a cult classic. Martian 12s, on the other hand, has a very broad appeal; which doesn't mean it's everyone's favorite game, just that on average, most people like it better than most alternatives. And Condorcet methods are geared to chose an option with such broad appeal over cult classics. (Or to put it in political terms, Condorcet methods tend to pick moderate candidates over extremists.)
The truth is, this was a very, very close vote among the top 7 entrants. Which I sure is of little consolation.
-- Dale Sheldon dales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx