Roku Developer Program

[EnTerr]

This is weird. Kind of hard to notice at first but seems the "Sort By' functionality of the web channel store is broken. Bear with me and follow the steps:

1. Go to https://www.roku.com/channels#!browse/games/by-ratings (I am choosing sort by "highest rated" because is easier to spot the problem)


2. What you see will look something like this (GandK Reversi is on top for me) [spoiler=sort working:hq8b7efd][/spoiler:hq8b7efd]


3. It only makes sense that the order in which they are sorted now will be monotonically decreasing (i.e. non-increasing) re the stars rating, yes? So we start at 4.5, then eventually go to the apps with 4 stars, then 3.5 and so on. Let's gingerly scroll down and make sure that is the case...


4. Wait! What is this? Suddenly there is a jump in the stars, the sort is broken! (currently i see this at first between "Dance Party"=3.5, followed by "Monkey Pole Climb"=5) [spoiler=sort broken:hq8b7efd][/spoiler:hq8b7efd]


5. Then the order continues for a while in decreasing order and - BAM! - it happens again, this time from "Casino Slots" 2.5* it jumps to "Robreed - Flippin' Awesome"=5*, then starts going down.


6. Next hiccup is from "Marble Puzzle"=3.5 jumping up to "Gem Girl"=4.5


7. And one more, when from "GlobalTrade"=3.5 it goes up to "Treasures"=5

I think this (or that) picture visualizes how the channel rating goes down- it is more of a "saw-tooth"-shaped (dis)order rather than a single downward slope:


PS. i notice the pattern 6666 in this - the sort reversal/singularity happens every 6 rows. Or maybe it's in batches of 24 channels (6 rows x 4 per row), though that doesn't sound as ominous. The point is that sort only works within small portions of the list and there is no way to see which is the best-rated item overall. I suspect the same is true for sorting by "most popular" but have no handy example to illustrate the dis-order there.

[EnTerr]

Roku guys -
would you kindly comment on this issue?

Am i getting something wrong - or do you recognize this as a bug?
Not only as a user - but as a developer whose app standing is affected by defects in your sort - i "have a horse in this race".

[BradC]

the channel store is a mess.

last time I brought this up, my top selling channels got suddenly moved to the very bottom of the list, even though 2 were on the top selling paid list at the time.


good luck. 😉

[RokuJoel]

As requested, chiming in here: yeah, we know it is kinda borked. Bugs have been filed on things like @BradC's loss of channel ranking. On the device, Game section ranking is now done manually based on a report run once per week, someday when the Game section ranking algorithm is repaired it will go back to automatic rolling 7 day popularity ranking.

- Joel

[EnTerr]

"BradC" wrote:
the channel store is a mess.
last time I brought this up, my top selling channels got suddenly moved to the very bottom of the list, even though 2 were on the top selling paid list at the time.

I agree it's a mess and RokuCo's web-dev team does not compare favorably to the core developers. I am looking for an English phrase and so far found the somewhat crass " ass can't cash". And what i mean by that is they re-designed the web site for "responsive design" in irresponsible manner. Someone is learning-on-the-job there and we the internet users of the world are their guinea pigs. Oh wait - here is another one "their eyes are bigger than they can stomach".

I remember you questioning the different order of channels in the web vs the player stores, as well as the variation between different player models - and i thought the explanation someone Roku* gave made sense, that each line of players uses their own stats, based on how downloads go for that model - where the web store uses aggregate stats.

But i doubt the Co would have maliciously downgraded your channels, it seems out of character. HOWEVER, this is why it is important the rating/sorting to be fair and transparent - so that good, prolific developers like you @BradC do not get alienated!

Back from the general to the specific: so yeah, when i see that sort-by-rating does not work, that's depressing. Even if i were to get 5-out-of-5 rating, i'd still be at the end of the list.

[EnTerr]

"RokuJoel" wrote:
As requested, chiming in here: yeah, we know it is kinda borked. Bugs have been filed on things like @BradC's loss of channel ranking. On the device, Game section ranking is now done manually based on a report run once per week, someday when the Game section ranking algorithm is repaired it will go back to automatic rolling 7 day popularity ranking.

Thank you RokuJoel - i think this is quite helpful lessening anxiety!
So the popularity ranking is done by a recent performance (be it rolling or fixed weekly term) and not since the Big Bang. That may explain what BradC observed.

Is it the #new-installs or the #times-the-game-was-started in that period, the one that counts?

[BradC]

"EnTerr" wrote:
i doubt the Co would have maliciously downgraded your channels

nah, I certainly don't think that's what happened. I can be annoying but not THAT bad. 🙂 My intended point was just that bringing it up didn't help anything, and it's been a pretty big frustration for me.

[RokuJoel]

I don't think ratings is just the number of stars, but also the number of people who have the channel installed who selected those stars, and may also include the number of active users of those channels vs inactive i.e. has the channel been launched in the past 7 days.

Also, the web store uses a different algorithm from the Device Channel Store, and my comment about BradC's channels was specifically about the device store. The web store, well... there is a new release of the Web Channel Store going out some time tomorrow, so let us know if it improves this situation or not. I'll also point the web team to this thread.


- Joel

[RokuJoel]

"EnTerr" wrote:
So the popularity ranking is done by a recent performance (be it rolling or fixed weekly term) and not since the Big Bang. That may explain what BradC observed.

Yes, the ranking has always been on a 7 day rolling schedule. What happened to BradC and a few other game developers is why we moved this category from automatic to manual control. As it didn't appear the problem would be fixed in a short period of time, the business team decided to take over managing this until the issue gets fixed. The current positions of channels in the Games section are now manually adjusted on a non-rolling 1 week schedule.

- Joel

[BradC]

thanks Joel.