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EnTerr's avatar
EnTerr
Roku Guru
10 years ago

Can we trigger a sort of the Games section?

I seem to notice that the rankings in the "Games" section of "Streaming Channels" (Channel Store on the player) have not been updated for... well, at least for 3 weeks now.

Mid-last year RokuJoel said something to the extent that due to algorithm malfunction^, the ordering of the games category (on Roku players) is being done manu-matically. Over the last 21 days (at least. that's how long i have been checking it) there has been no change in the sort order, so i am inclined to conclude that nobody has run the popularity report and updated the rankings since before Christmas.

@Roku* - can we shake this tree and see that "Games" gets resorted by recent data? Preferably accounting all three or whatever number of weeks were missed.

(^) one can only presume that "there was an accident with a time-machine and a prophylactic." :mrgreen:
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  • EnTerr's avatar
    EnTerr
    Roku Guru
    10 years ago
    :shock:
    "Romans_I_XVI" wrote:
    Also on the Roku 3 it seems to be that it's putting all of the non-BrightScript (NDK or Marmalade) games towards the top.

    Oh hello! - nice to see you around. Your guess of non-BrightScript games benefitting would be incorrect - see the screenshot above, out of 7 games at the end, 5 are non-B/S (the other 2 i don't know). If any trend, i rather seem to notice the old games seem to top the chart - but then "Chess" and "Backgammon" (which are new) are listed high without being crazy popular.

    "adamkaz" wrote:
    There was an offhand mention in an article I read recently that Roku sorts the channel sections by the number of hours of content streamed on the channel - can't seem to find it now. This would explain some of the difficulty with sorting the games and apps sections - since streaming video isn't really what they do.
    I wonder if someone at Roku implemented a random sorting for tie breaking (channels that play no streams), to prevent channels from becoming popular simply because of publish date or title chosen.

    It makes sense to measure user engagement to determine popularity - like say number of times app was started or total time spent using it. Heck, Amazon Underground actually pays game developers for the time users spend in their game! - the more time spend, more $. No ads involved :shock:<gasp>. Measuring video play was probably a shortcut, an easy hack to exclude time spent in screensaver or channel abandoned for days in list-of-videos menu, doing nothing. But such metric makes no sense for non-streaming apps, none whatso<censored>ever.

    Re the random sorting, Hanlon's razor likely applies - i.e. no malevolent or benevolent intent but rather their sort routine is unstable (e.g. quicksort/shellsort are unstable). But that's trivial to fix by enhancing the key, taking into account say user rating (some additional variable). The instability of the chart is a bit of "canary in the coal mine" - while not a big deal by itself it indicates bigger problems behind.
    • rondleo's avatar
      rondleo
      Newbie
      6 years ago

      I'm having a tough time figuring out why my "Chess Live" program is no longer functioning. I've been unable to get any support from Roku. Anyway the program comes up on my screen but there's no menu . I've tried the uninstall/install of the program but to no avail. Do you have any knowledge of this issue or what I might do to remedy the problem ? Thanks, Ron Leonard

  • Romans_I_XVI's avatar
    Romans_I_XVI
    Roku Guru
    10 years ago
    "EnTerr" wrote:
    Oh hello! - nice to see you around.


    Yeah, I've been chasing down the rabbit-hole into wonderland for the last few months. Almost got my game done now though. 😄