GameLapse

Well, looking into my crystal ball here I predict you shall ask the following questions. Needless to say, here come the answers. :)

What exactly is this site?

It's what you get when you combine digg, reddit and imdb, add a magic spice of our own and apply it to machinima, sort of. :)

It's a place where you can discover or share machinima. You have a say on what passes as "popular" or as "good" (and we do try to make that distinction here!) by voting or posting reviews.

For more, check out the about page or read on, or both. ;)

What is machinima?

In a nutshell, it's movies made in computer games. Wikipedia article on machinima can tell you more. You could also check out the Machinima FAQ on Machinima.org and watch this cool machinima video explaining what is machinima.

Is this like digg? What's the difference?

Not quiet. As mentioned it's got elements of digg, reddit and imdb. You get to vote movies to the homepage digg-style, but you can also vote both positively and negatively like on reddit. And you can also post reviews of movies, something that imdb allows. Add the karma system to the mix and you get something fairly unique in itself, especially considering GameLapse is the first site of its kind on the machinima scene.

Having both positive and negative voting gives you more power. If you believe something doesn't deserve the position it currently has, vote it down, otherwise vote it up. On digg, the only option if you don't like it is to abstain or go to the extreme and try to bury it.

Posting reviews is what adds a bit of quality moderation to the mix, which allows for such scenarios as having a very popular movie on top of the popularity chart still carrying a bad rating of say 2 of 5 dots clearly sending a message: this movie may be popular, but it's still not best thing around.

Karma system is what adds a little extra push to users to encourage them to contribute. Since reviews are such a valuable thing on GameLapse, this is where most karma can be earned. You get only 1 point per positive vote on your movie submission, but you get 3 points per each positive vote on your review posting. Same goes for negative votes, except then you lose the same amount of points (which discourages low quality posts).

Wont power elites abuse the system?

They can try, but they wont get too far. While no system is perfect an attempt has been made to discourage abusive behavior and deal with abusers when detected.

Every movie can be flagged as offensive and every user can be flagged as abusive. Enough flags triggers an automatic action, whether it is unpublishing of a movie submission or blocking of a user. There are also such measures as the limit on how many times a user can vote in a given amount of time.

It is also worth mentioning that GameLapse.com supports a formation of what could seem like an anti-abuse "power elite". Users which accumulate a certain number of karma points and are approved by the administrator (to make sure these points are fairly earned) become "machinima masters" and get extra voting powers (3 up/down points on a movie per single vote). They can then steer the "most popular" to reflect more what's "best quality". There wont be many such users though.

Can I subscribe to... ?

Yes, you can subscribe to every movie so you receive notifications of reviews, to a whole category of movies so you are notified when new ones are published or to specific users whose reviews you might like so you're notified when he posts more stuff. Cool, isn't it? :)

Slightly related, you can also bookmark movies too so they're accessible from "my bookmarks" in the sitewide user menu above.

Which sites does GameLapse support submissions from?

Any site on the web, or more precisely, any page which contains the movie or a direct download link of the movie is welcome. Some sites, like youtube, will even display an embedded video on GameLapse.com itself. In the future this feature may be added for videos coming from Machinima.com as well.

Are there any charts?

Yes, the right sidebar will prominently display "top reviewed" and "top machinima" charts. "Top reviewed" displays top five movies by quality determined from reviews (1 to 5 ratings) and "top machinima" displays top five movies by popularity (up/down rating). There is also a "top upcoming" chart displaying most popular among newly submitted movies.

Periodically, special picks may also be featured in special feature entries on the GameLapse Blog.

If you have any further questions please feel free to ask here. Frequently asked questions will be answered here as well.