The reason why I decided that way during the 8th Annual vote was that I was actually trying to simplify things. I think whoever is running the poll can not reasonably be expected to know in detail about all the nuances of two versions of a given game. Looking at each pair of games and deciding individually whether they're close enough to be lumped together or different enough to call for seperate entries sounds good in theory, but it can actually become quite difficult to decide where to draw the line. Different forum members have different opinions on this, as is evident in the discussion at hand. While, personally, I'd be fine with merging all games who share the same enemy placement and level structure, I vividly recall a discussion with a forum member who demanded to seperate Raiden III's double mode from its normal mode, because he was adamant that it was a completely different game if played that way.incognoscente wrote:While I rewrote almost every rule this year, I didn't necessarily spend enough time thinking all of them through. In the 7th Annual voting, I merged the various Futari releases together. The 8th Annual vote was Herr Schatten's baby (yes, I am so totally blaming you) and he requested they be split. I can see logic in either solution: merge all or split all, so I didn't really question it.
Basing the decision of merge vs. split not on closeness of gameplay but on the existence of standalone releases seems like an elegant solution to the problem. After all, if a developer deems his own game different enough to give it a seperate standalone release, who am I to argue?
