Are major game reviewers morally bankrupt at this point? (Wall of Text Warning) (Updated)

[Phrozenflame500]

For starters, user reviews are a horrible measure since people give one's for silly, inane reasons such as to "counter all the tens".

But I don't think reviewers are corrupt, just that they use a horrible reviewing method. This "-out of 10" or "-out of 100" method just doesn't work because people tend towards a grade-school "80 percent is average, 70 is poor, 90 is great" system that leads to games being horrendously misrepresented. With only four points of the scale ever actually in use, you get cases where the different between a terrible game and a decent one is as small as one point, or the different between a "meh" and a GOTY only 10%. You rarely see a 6/10 on triple-A games since big name reviewers don't want to generate any controversy despite the face that 6/10 should be considered above-average, and this leads to game review scores getting inflated to the point they no longer matter.

 

[Smooth Operator]

It is highly dependent what the reviewer is motivated by and what his work environment entails, large review houses do have a set of rules that might not be strictly enforced but reviews will get edited to suit their needs, and their needs are primarily profit so an article that goes against that might get it's wings clipped.
This is about the same as with any sort of tabloid paper, they are doing these articles to rake in the viewers and if anything of value is learned is a secondary concern.

In the case of Rome 2 we hit upon the standard problem of bug omission, most early reviewer guides state that bugs in review copies should not be mentioned because that will all be fixed by launch and you will be spreading false information (some even have that part under NDA), which might be true in some cases but generally means all the games problems are kept secret, as in critical information for the buyer is lied about...
So if you ignore all the game breaking bugs of Rome 2 you really just have a better game, and if you are the actual user you just bought yourself a $60 pile of broken.

And even in independent waters you always have to consider motivations, some just want to spread their enthusiasm, others want to shit on everything, there will be those who legitimately want to inform people, but even amongst them there are few that know how to do this.
That is why schools for journalism exist and why actual professionals are held to ethical/moral standards, there are right ways to spread information while distancing yourself from the picture, but there are even more ways to do it completely wrong.

 

[MetalDooley]

Now that the air is clear, here is my scenario/question. I just watched Angry Joe lamb-blast Rome: Total War II. I do mean Lamb-blast

Going to be pedantic for a second.I believe the word you're looking for is "Lambast" although the idea of someone blasting lambs at something is quite amusing

Back on topic as others have pointed out your mistake is giving any weight to user scores on Metacritic.They cannot be trusted at all as many users will give really low scores just because they don't like a particular series.Just look at how many 0/10 scores Call of Duty games get and most of them are just for being Call of Duty not because they're actually bad games

 

[Zhukov]

Basically, Metacritic user reviews are full of shit.

They are frequently used by angry people to vent in such a way as to feel that they are making a difference.

If nothing else, there is a huge sample bias at work.
Someone is annoyed by a game, for whatever reason, so they go to Metacritic and give it a zero or a one in order to lower the average as much as they can.
Someone is content with or happy with a game, so they play and enjoy their game. They probably don't bother going to Metacritic to give it a eight or a ten, unless they're one of the more frothy kind of fans out on a mission or they're trying to counterbalance the ones and zeroes.

That said, I don't know how the professional reviewers missed the bugs in Rome 2. Some of the things that have been mentioned here by other posters may explain it.

 

[veloper]

When Angry Joe shreds a game it's time to pay attention. Usually Joe's too generous and easily excited, but he does seem to know his genres, so subtract one point and you get a fair score.

IGN and the like: lazy at the very least, if not bought. Big titles by big companies will get good scores from them.

On metacritic user scores: the current method may be flawed, but sofar the results are still more often in line with my own verdict than the big review mags. Could be a very lucky coincidence, but I believe in the utility of the aggregate.

 

[Pink Gregory]

Much as IGN et al have kind of a...gap in their credibility; the thing about professional reviews is that the reviewers are actually obligated to write a review. In this review you can seek out their salient points and agree or disagree. User reviews tend to be vague and reactionary (of course there are many exceptions)

 

[Griffolion]

Are we dealing with a case of users having knee jerk "i don't like this therefore everything about it sucks" reactions?

Yes.

There's nothing else to say on that. Just, yes.

I read a variety of reviews so I'm not tied down to one opinion. But if all these reviewers, assumably without collusion, are saying roughly the same things about a game, I can trust that to be, by en large, true.

Some "user reviews" may be nicely done and have meritorious opinion in it, but most are vitriolic, incoherent, and often riddled with hypocrisy.

I agree that [a href="http://images.eurogamer.net/2012/articles//a/1/5/2/2/9/2/6/lh18_1.png/EG11/resize/600x-1/quality/91"]some games media folk have sold out[/a], but most have a [a href="http://psoneclassics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Jim-Sterling-Photo.jpg"]decent amount of integrity and do their job well[/a].

 

[Canadish]

I'll post this seeing as it's somewhat relevant to the discussion. I doubt another opinion means much, but this might.

Sorry about the size, might be a little hard to read. The link to the post itself is actually in the image though if you wanna just use that.

Edit: Link to the actual article. http://opa-ages.com/forums/topic/59463-full-thing-unedited-uncleaned/

 

[Yopaz]

You can't trust review scores, but user scores are worse than "professional" scores.

I remember reading a review of a Wii game. He said it was so bad it made him consider selling his PS3. Basically he had copied his review, posted it numerous times on both the PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and PC version of the game. Review bombing happens a lot on Metacritic so the scores on popular games can rarely be trusted.

Disregarding the review bombing we also have this tendency to use more or less binary scores. I liked this game, 8-10. I did not like this game, 0-3. We often rate mediocre games 0 because we feel we got ripped off. We often rate mediocre games 10 because we actually enjoyed them. We don't look for things to be score specific, we judge if we like the game or not which means we review the games in a different way than professionals should do (they don't always do that however).

It should be said that I do not consider IGN trustworthy though. That's one of those sites I would assume gets the review scores written out before they receive the game they are reviewing. I remember someone getting fired for not writing a positive review of Kane and Lynch 2...

Edit: That was GameSpot, not IGN, my bad.

 

[InvaderTim]

About a week ago I envisioned a system where big reviewers (lets say the ones metacritic would use to work out its review average) could be voted on by the community in a number of fields and these votes would then determine the weight of a review score. although a system like this would probably be flawed and exploitable. It would just be nice to see some context to reviews and reviewers

Sure Reviewer X gave game Y a 9/10 but 50 percent of Reviewer X's scores are 9's compared to Reviewer Z who gives 10 percent of it's reviews 9's and has been voted as more honest an trustworthy.

Again. Just a passing idea.

 

[PatrickXD]

Lamb Blast made me giggle. I think you mean lambast.
I don't know if you've played Rome 2 but the single player campaign is awesome. The issues come with unbalanced multiplayer and weird AI glithces when playing cooperatively. Naturally reviewers did not get a chance to play the game multiplayer, so they didn't review it based on it's multiplayer component. All they got was single player, and they enjoyed it so they posted a good review on the internet.
Game reviewers are not morally bankrupt. They write reviews based on what they think of a game and that's totally fine. Why would a game reviewer even benefit from writing a good review? I would imagine that they are paid a set amount for writing an x-words long review, and if they were to be paid based on clicks they'd probably make more money from writing a bad review. The poeple that benfit from good reviews are the publishers of the game, they're the ones who need to shift copies. And how do they get those good reviews? By getting a good game made. Publishers and reviewers are not all having secret meetings where they decide on what game to rate highly and pass money under the table. The is no 'inherent' bias, just the bias of every reviewer being a reviewer and reviewing a game based on what they think about the game.

 

[Pink Gregory]

About a week ago I envisioned a system where big reviewers (lets say the ones metacritic would use to work out its review average) could be voted on by the community in a number of fields and these votes would then determine the weight of a review score. although a system like this would probably be flawed and exploitable. It would just be nice to see some context to reviews and reviewers

Sure Reviewer X gave game Y a 9/10 but 50 percent of Reviewer X's scores are 9's compared to Reviewer Z who gives 10 percent of it's reviews 9's and has been voted as more honest an trustworthy.

Again. Just a passing idea.

Already I can see the public review-bomb certain reviewers essentially for disagreeing with them.

 

[InvaderTim]

About a week ago I envisioned a system where big reviewers (lets say the ones metacritic would use to work out its review average) could be voted on by the community in a number of fields and these votes would then determine the weight of a review score. although a system like this would probably be flawed and exploitable. It would just be nice to see some context to reviews and reviewers

Sure Reviewer X gave game Y a 9/10 but 50 percent of Reviewer X's scores are 9's compared to Reviewer Z who gives 10 percent of it's reviews 9's and has been voted as more honest an trustworthy.

Again. Just a passing idea.

Already I can see the public review-bomb certain reviewers essentially for disagreeing with them.

Ahhh. but what if the public were to review each others reviews on reviewers, and that would determine the weight of those reviews. We need a metacritic for metacritic, and a metacritic for that metacritic /sarcasm

 

[Mersadeon]

Now don't get me wrong, gaming journalism has extreme problems, but in this particular case? It's a case of very different rating scales. Major outlets rate everything that even works and looks like it belongs in this generation at least as a 6. Rome: Total War 2 has quite some flaws, but it is still a functioning, relatively fun game - especially if you don't compare it to other games. Thus, the high scores. The extremely low user scores are because people overreact and give games 1 star whenever something irks them. (EDIT: And also, of course, because if they like the game they immediately give it 5 stars. Because whatever they like is THE CITIZEN KANE OF VIDEOGAMES)

Also, metacritic as a whole is a terrible concept. The way they put the scores together and limit scoring is absolutely deplorable. So, don't get angry. Don't give a flying frakk about metacritic - or major gaming journalism sites. They aren't any more corrupt than their movie counterparts.

I mean, for heavens sake, Computer Bild Spiele gave Ride to Hell what, an 8? Those numbers don't mean anything.

 

[veloper]

Metacritic user reviews are sooooo reliable. Remember how shitty Portal 2 was, a game that got reviewbombed by those people?

You think scoring an average of 8.7 is unreasonably low for Portal 2?

 

[StriderShinryu]

Are we dealing with a case of users having knee jerk "i don't like this therefore everything about it sucks" reactions?

It's probably this. I don't really follow most "professional" game reviews, so my opinion probably isn't valid, but I do know that users have a tendency to overreact to the silliest bullshit. Remember that whole controversy about the new Dante design for DmC: Devil May Cry? The average Metacritic user score for it is 4.7 (looking at the PS3 version) even though the game is quite playable and basically alright.

This is pretty much my experience as well. I won't argue that most professional revviews due tend to skew a little high, but user/community reviews are almost always low. If you're looking for agendas in reviewing, you'll find it in equal measure on both sides of the coin.

 

[redmoretrout]

It's probably this. I don't really follow most "professional" game reviews, so my opinion probably isn't valid, but I do know that users have a tendency to overreact to the silliest bullshit. Remember that whole controversy about the new Dante design for DmC: Devil May Cry? The average Metacritic user score for it is 4.7 (looking at the PS3 version) even though the game is quite playable and basically alright.

A 4.7 is actually an appropriate score for a game thats "playable and pretty much alright." A game that is just passable and mediocre should be about a five. Thats the problem with pretty much every video game review, they dont use the lower three-quarters of the scale so all of their reviews become meaningless. When every single game falls between 7 - 10 out of 10 you know something has gone wrong.

 

[Noswad]

Yeah i just checked out the meta critic review, i looked got as far as one that was blaming EA for milking the total war series and then went back to ignoring meta critic users because they are crazy people. Morally bankrupt no, 8/10 sounds about right if you used purely numbers, is there a large section of the video game community that cannot react with more grace than a five year old who's just dropped his ice cream, yes.

Honestly i don't know why Rome II is getting review bombed, it's quite good, it probably marks the biggest change in the total war formula for quite a while and i can see why some people wouldn't like but still 1/10 is a bit much. Lets face it dodgy AI has been a staple of the series since Shogun 1, the battle are different now but i'd reject the claim they're less tactical.

 

[Saxnot]

So how would you judge a game like Rome 2?

It's buggy, and worse in many ways than Shogun 2. But underneath it's still a good game. The fundamental game play is unchanged, and still fun. Besides that there have been improvements in some areas. So it's not obviously a bad game, but not a good game either.

Besides that you're dealing with score creep. Lets say we take AJ's score and say this game is worth about a 6, 6.5. because IGN has been around so long, their range of valid scores has decreased. The games that score a 6 are much worse than Rome 2. we're talking X-blades and Golden Axe 2 here. You can't give it that score. So they scored it higher. I agree it doesn't deserve an 8.8, but they can't give it much lower without inviting a lot of critisism.