BioWare Employee Busted in Dragon Age 2 Review Scandal - UPDATED

[zelda2fanboy]

I actually agree with those greedy bastards at EA. Metacritic is an open forum by its very nature. Random people even "review" games on amazon before they ever come out. If the game is getting amazon bombed right now, everyone who worked on the game should write their own reviews defending it. They probably know the product better than anybody. It would be more accurate than some self righteous asshole who never played it once. If the review got taken down on metacritic, it was metacritic's decision, not EA's or Bioware's.

 

[nemyhlovecraft]

Personally I felt really icky whenever I was asked to post a positive review for a game at one of my old employers, but at worst I'd say its an ethical grey area. In fact in this case I've been following the Metacritic user scores and I totally commiserate with any staff at Bioware. People are being out and out reactionary on there, and they were bashing the game a couple of weeks before it even came out. Maybe Metacritic needs to wait until release date to allow people to post user reviews?

 

[John Funk]

Funny, almost as strange as giving DA2 it's only perfect score on metacritic. [http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/dragon-age-ii/critic-reviews]

edit: ahh someone beat me to it.

Metacritic interprets our 5* rating as 100%. We didn't give it 100%, we didn't give it 10/10, we gave it 5*. There's a difference.

 

[Popido]

I'm a judo coach, and I will always support the ones I train. In a match, they will always be in the right, and the judge will be in the wrong. If he judges against us.'

Point is, of course they are defending themself. Why shouldn't they be allowed to? If an author gave his book a good review would we care about it then?

What if a chef told you that he runs a 5 stars restaurant, when in fact its just hes own opinion?

...god damm, I miss honest reviews.

And that BioWare guy gave us his opinion. A chef would say "My resturant is the greatest! Come and eat here." I fail to see what your point is? That his review isn't honest? Does it really matter? Is it more dishonest than actors visting Jay Leno marketing their movie?

You see, some people have good taste. And some people have talent. When you homogeneousity everything, the niche parties die and you get this nice, moist, mass of bland.

 

[Stevepinto3]

Facepalm.

Seriously, this stuff is never a good idea, and will just be touted by people that don't like the game as a sign of it's lousiness.

Coincidentally, I'm enjoying the game quite a bit. Combat's way better, the art style is nice, and the story is a good break from the typical "kill the big bad demon", although it kind of meanders a bit and gets unclear in act 2.

Characters a little meh. Varric is cool and Merril is actually a very interesting character, though kind of jarring. I mean here we have a timid, innocent, naive little elf that is also a blood mage and doesn't seem phased at all by jumping into lethal combat. Fenris and Anders just get annoying at times. They don't ever learn or grow in any way, they just stick to their ideals like glue. You would think that after spending 10 years around Anders, Merril, and possibly Hawke that Fenris might learn to lighten up on mages, but no. There seems to be no character development possible with him. If the game spans such a long time you would think it would make sense for the characters to change, but they don't much. After each jump in time its like only a day passed.

 

[Shycte]

I'm a judo coach, and I will always support the ones I train. In a match, they will always be in the right, and the judge will be in the wrong. If he judges against us.'

Point is, of course they are defending themself. Why shouldn't they be allowed to? If an author gave his book a good review would we care about it then?

What if a chef told you that he runs a 5 stars restaurant, when in fact its just hes own opinion?

...god damm, I miss honest reviews.

And that BioWare guy gave us his opinion. A chef would say "My resturant is the greatest! Come and eat here." I fail to see what your point is? That his review isn't honest? Does it really matter? Is it more dishonest than actors visting Jay Leno marketing their movie?

You see, some people have good taste. And some people have talent. When you homogeneousity everything, the niche parties die and you get this nice, moist, mass of bland.

Your point is?

 

[Popido]

I'm a judo coach, and I will always support the ones I train. In a match, they will always be in the right, and the judge will be in the wrong. If he judges against us.'

Point is, of course they are defending themself. Why shouldn't they be allowed to? If an author gave his book a good review would we care about it then?

What if a chef told you that he runs a 5 stars restaurant, when in fact its just hes own opinion?

...god damm, I miss honest reviews.

And that BioWare guy gave us his opinion. A chef would say "My resturant is the greatest! Come and eat here." I fail to see what your point is? That his review isn't honest? Does it really matter? Is it more dishonest than actors visting Jay Leno marketing their movie?

You see, some people have good taste. And some people have talent. When you homogeneousity everything, the niche parties die and you get this nice, moist, mass of bland.

Your point is?

Gaming is moist and now people have to reinvent it.

 

[Knight Templar]

I'm a judo coach, and I will always support the ones I train. In a match, they will always be in the right, and the judge will be in the wrong. If he judges against us.'

Point is, of course they are defending themself. Why shouldn't they be allowed to? If an author gave his book a good review would we care about it then?

What if a chef told you that he runs a 5 stars restaurant, when in fact its just hes own opinion?

...god damm, I miss honest reviews.

Are you suggesting that a review doesn't contain opinions?

 

[Shycte]

I'm a judo coach, and I will always support the ones I train. In a match, they will always be in the right, and the judge will be in the wrong. If he judges against us.'

Point is, of course they are defending themself. Why shouldn't they be allowed to? If an author gave his book a good review would we care about it then?

What if a chef told you that he runs a 5 stars restaurant, when in fact its just hes own opinion?

...god damm, I miss honest reviews.

And that BioWare guy gave us his opinion. A chef would say "My resturant is the greatest! Come and eat here." I fail to see what your point is? That his review isn't honest? Does it really matter? Is it more dishonest than actors visting Jay Leno marketing their movie?

You see, some people have good taste. And some people have talent. When you homogeneousity everything, the niche parties die and you get this nice, moist, mass of bland.

Your point is?

Gaming is moist and now people have to reinvent it.

Acording to who? You?

 

[Popido]

I'm a judo coach, and I will always support the ones I train. In a match, they will always be in the right, and the judge will be in the wrong. If he judges against us.'

Point is, of course they are defending themself. Why shouldn't they be allowed to? If an author gave his book a good review would we care about it then?

What if a chef told you that he runs a 5 stars restaurant, when in fact its just hes own opinion?

...god damm, I miss honest reviews.

Are you suggesting that a review doesn't contain opinions?

Are you implying that Im wrong on this?

I'm a judo coach, and I will always support the ones I train. In a match, they will always be in the right, and the judge will be in the wrong. If he judges against us.'

Point is, of course they are defending themself. Why shouldn't they be allowed to? If an author gave his book a good review would we care about it then?

What if a chef told you that he runs a 5 stars restaurant, when in fact its just hes own opinion?

...god damm, I miss honest reviews.

And that BioWare guy gave us his opinion. A chef would say "My resturant is the greatest! Come and eat here." I fail to see what your point is? That his review isn't honest? Does it really matter? Is it more dishonest than actors visting Jay Leno marketing their movie?

You see, some people have good taste. And some people have talent. When you homogeneousity everything, the niche parties die and you get this nice, moist, mass of bland.

Your point is?

Gaming is moist and now people have to reinvent it.

Acording to who? You?

Niches. Are you following anything that I say?

 

[faspxina]

One Metacritic user review more or less isn't going to have any impact on the game's fortunes. But one BioWare employee busted while secretly shilling for his company and trying to artificially inflate a review score? That's the sort of PR disaster that people don't quickly forget.

I fail to see why this should be a disaster.

What did he do wrong? He gave an inflated opinion about a game? Who hasn't, everyone's free to say whatever they want about the anything Metacritic.

He didn't mention that he made the game? Why should he? Does that mean his prohibited to talk about his own product without being an official promotion? What about all those people who get paid for casually drinking some soda in TV?

Do I have to mention how I was James Cameron's nanny, everytime I talk about one of his movies? Sure, mentioning it would help the us know if the reviewer is biased or not, but then you would have to take down half of the internet people for not being professionally accurate about their opinions and being biased.

He hack the site and changed the scores. He did "One Metacritic user review more or less isn't going to have any impact on the game's fortunes".

 

[Zinaxos]

I would do that for my game. (If i made one)
I would also vote for myself as president if I was running for president.

 

[Knight Templar]

I'm a judo coach, and I will always support the ones I train. In a match, they will always be in the right, and the judge will be in the wrong. If he judges against us.'

Point is, of course they are defending themself. Why shouldn't they be allowed to? If an author gave his book a good review would we care about it then?

What if a chef told you that he runs a 5 stars restaurant, when in fact its just hes own opinion?

...god damm, I miss honest reviews.

Are you suggesting that a review doesn't contain opinions?

Are you implying that Im wrong on this?

That depends.
Are you suggesting that a review does not have the authors opinions within it?

 

[Popido]

I'm a judo coach, and I will always support the ones I train. In a match, they will always be in the right, and the judge will be in the wrong. If he judges against us.'

Point is, of course they are defending themself. Why shouldn't they be allowed to? If an author gave his book a good review would we care about it then?

What if a chef told you that he runs a 5 stars restaurant, when in fact its just hes own opinion?

...god damm, I miss honest reviews.

Are you suggesting that a review doesn't contain opinions?

Are you implying that Im wrong on this?

That depends.
Are you suggesting that a review does not have the authors opinions within it?

In that case.
Are you implying that the authors opinion is not biased when judging hes own work?

 

[Stewie Plisken]

And to think this would all have been avoided if the guy started his review with "I work for Bioware and I think we made one heck of a job!" Maybe his e-mail would be filled with whiney correspondants, but at least nobody could blame him for anything.

Whether he was asked by the company to mislead the customers or he did it own his own accord and regardless of whether or not neglecting to mention the conflict of interest was done on purpose or just because he's thick, this does not reflect well on EA or Bioware -- especially not after the recent account block debacle and the controversy surrounded DAII.

 

[Lancer873]

I'd be more inclined to believe that this was just the developers praising their own work if it wasn't for EA's history of advertising...

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

This is getting to be stupid. You've got dozens of people defending Bioware and DA2 to the death in this thread when it should be glaringly obvious by now that DA2 did not meet expectations and Bioware is badly screwing the pooch with regard to PR. Seriously, do you people have blinders on? You like the game? Happy for you. TONS OF PEOPLE DON'T, and they're just as entitled to express their opinions as anyone else.

Apparently the game's only failure is that it didn't appeal to some particular subset of RPG players. And those mouth-breathers apparently have enough free time to slam sites with bad reviews.

By subset of RPG players, do you mean RPG players? Because DA2 only seems to appeal to Bioware RPG players - or as a lot of people see them, fans of extremely linear action games with a small handful of RPG elements masquerading as full-fledged RPGs.

And the reason so many of these "mouth-breathers" have enough free time to slame sites with bad reviews? There aren't a lot of fucking games for them to play anymore. That's probably why they're so up in arms about all of the changes in DA2. What would you do if your preferred genre/style of gaming was rapidly vanishing on account of larger market forces seemingly beyond your control? You'd probably make a bit of a stink in the hopes that maybe devs would realize you are part of a passionate and increasingly untapped market.

Empathy. It helps.

Oh, and all the meta-convos about what defines an opinion and whether or not the guy even did anything wrong? Sorry, that stuff has been decided already. If you were part of a production, authoring a publicly-available assessment of your own work without disclosing your relationship to the product is completely unethical. Period. There's no debating this point, and anyone trying to do so has no grasp of the situation whatsoever.

 

[Knight Templar]

I'm a judo coach, and I will always support the ones I train. In a match, they will always be in the right, and the judge will be in the wrong. If he judges against us.'

Point is, of course they are defending themself. Why shouldn't they be allowed to? If an author gave his book a good review would we care about it then?

What if a chef told you that he runs a 5 stars restaurant, when in fact its just hes own opinion?

...god damm, I miss honest reviews.

Are you suggesting that a review doesn't contain opinions?

Are you implying that Im wrong on this?

That depends.
Are you suggesting that a review does not have the authors opinions within it?

In that case.
Are you implying that the authors opinion is not biased when judging hes own work?

Are you going to answer my bloody question or just play games? If you're going to keep dodging a simple question I don't see the point in talking with you.

His opinion may or may not be biased, but it doesn't really matter in this context.