BioWare Employee Busted in Dragon Age 2 Review Scandal - UPDATED

[Nouw]

1 user review.

Big deal, someone wanted their game to look better on Metacritic so just let them be! Kinda immature and unethical to an extent but it's not as if it'll convince gamers to buy the game.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

UPDATE: "Of course the people who make the game vote for their own game," a senior PR manager said. "That's how it works in the Oscars, that's how it works in the Grammy's and why I'm betting that Barack Obama voted for himself in the last election."[/B]

Actors and musicians don't disguise themselves and use their talents to deceive judges. Politicians are liars, but that's why no one likes them. Because they lie, not because they vote on themselves.

No one is upset because a Bioware employee is pulling for their success. It's the act of deception that people are objecting to. A Bioware employee who checks a mark to vote for DA2 for Game of the Year is just voting on himself. A Bioware employee who poses as a user of a commercial product rather than the developer and posts a review in order to deceive others into buying the product is being deceptive.

He didn't just vote on himself. He voted on himself and also deceived meta-critic readers.

I'd rather get user based reviews from a collection of blog sites and independent forums than a single user review site. Of course, if I'm feeling like I want my brain to melt, I could just go ask the /b/tards.

Sounds good. Not sure why you quoted me though.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

You can't remove bias, and you can't deny someone the chance to submit a USER review just because of their biases.

He is not a 'user'. You really can't see the distinction between my evaluation of the iPhone 4 and that of Steve Jobs?

EDIT: Oh shit, sorry about the double post.

 

[Pots]

I think this pretty much sums up DA2.

[http://s40.photobucket.com/albums/e221/pots2k1/?action=view&current=da2ot-04.gif]

 

[Velimirius]

game is just meh... im happy that i didnt paid for it. gonna spent my money on The Witcher 2

 

[HyenaThePirate]

Flat out... anyone who thinks this is an issue or gave it more than 2 minutes (I'm at a minute and 23 seconds so I better type fast) of concern is without question a moron.

An employee wrote a user review about a game he worked on being perfect? Oh no! Curse him for having pride in his product.

What about all of the users that wrote reviews that were negative because they simply dislike Bioware, Dragon age, RPG's, or "Anything that is popular with the mainstream?"

I dismiss most Metacritic scores because I've learned over the years that most other people's opinions are unreliable at best, insanely biased at worst, and wholly stupid. I've played tons of games or seen tons of movies that others panned as the worst unholy creation of all time that were absolutely awesome to me that I loved.

And since for some reason people have now decided that "slightly above average" = shitty failure (i.e. Homefront) there's few reasons to take ANYONE's advice anymore on anything. Prey is getting a sequel and I thought that game was horrible and I don't know anyone who played it. People hated Tales of Vesperia but I loved it.

Bottomline, rent or borrow a game, try it out and decide for yourself. Don't be a sheep.

As for this guy... I give him props. I voted for myself when I ran for student council president once. No controversy ensued. I thought I was the best candidate. I still lost. Oh well.
The media is too sensationalistic. Not everything is a "story."

I'm out of time.

[Edit]

DA2 has a lot of problems, non of which involve a Bioware employee giving his game a 10/10


The only people who will give a shit about this *ehem* "SCANDAL"(lol?) are the people who are just looking for more things to bash Bioware with

This.

 

[Lokithrsourcerer]

lol what an amusing story I don't see the big deal though I'm sure most reviewers, not escapist ones thought that's why I come here, are on the developers payroll in one way or another that's why I stopped buying game magz they sooo sycophantic its rubbish

 

[Stewie Plisken]

Flat out... anyone who thinks this is an issue or gave it more than 2 minutes (I'm at a minute and 23 seconds so I better type fast) of concern is without question a moron.

Hell of an ironic statement, considering you -as well as many others- have missed the point entirely. The problem isn't if and what kind of review he gave the game. It's the fact that he conviniently neglected to disclose the obvious conflict of interest, knowingly or unknowingly misleading the audience that read his review.

 

[jono793]

I don't understand why this is a big deal. Publishing a user review is pretty small beer compared to some of the stunts publishers pull; pulling ad revenue for negative reviews and waiving review embargos in return for positive scores. User reviews don?t even feed into the metacritic score. They have a completely separate feed

 

[drunken_munki]

You can't remove bias, and you can't deny someone the chance to submit a USER review just because of their biases.

He is not a 'user'. You really can't see the distinction between my evaluation of the iPhone 4 and that of Steve Jobs?

EDIT: Oh shit, sorry about the double post.

Exactly. Can people please wake up and stop accepting this shit from large companies. I think we owe it to ourselves as a community.


Captha: editop criticism

 

[drunken_munki]

I think this pretty much sums up DA2.

[http://s40.photobucket.com/albums/e221/pots2k1/?action=view&current=da2ot-04.gif]

Lol that made my afternoon

 

[Labcoat Samurai]

The immersion and combat of this game are unmatched! A truly moving and fun epic. Anything negative you'll see about this game is an overreaction of personal preference. For what it is, it is flawlessly executed and endlessly entertaining

This is neither reasonable, nor in the very least accurate. The game is far from flawless, and given the fact it can be beaten in 13 hours with all the sidequests,

Can it? I'm taking about as long to get through it as I do for any Bioware game. I do tend to take my time on these games, but it doesn't seem significantly shorter than others I've played.

the endlessly entertaining part comes into question aswell.

That's a silly nitpick. It is trivially untrue that this will entertain you forever, but it's not implausible that it will entertain you for a very long time. I can personally attest to that.

Furthermore, the guy's not only saying it's an overreaction, he's saying

, and then continues to give it a perfect score with literally no valid reason for it.

No. He's not *just* saying it's their opinion. He's saying that they were apparently looking for the game to be something other than what it was intended to be, and, in *his* opinion, therefore weren't grading it appropriately.

"Flawless" is an exaggeration, I suppose, but exaggerations like that are pretty typical in user reviews, so I didn't think a thing of it.

This is straight out of Blatantly Fake Reviews 101.

Not at all. You're passing wild speculation off as logical deduction. Furthermore, you're presupposing your opinion as the only valid one. i.e. you don't think the game is good, therefore anyone who claims to love the game must be lying.

Well, I love the game. So I must be lying, eh?

 

[Danpascooch]

This just makes me, a genuine fan of the game, look like a Bioware employee.

I can't say I blame the guy though, you would want to try and do something positive to balance out the negativity towards something you worked on. The best intentions, right?

You don't blame the guy for committing fraud? Yeah I would want to do it, but there are plenty of people I want to punch in the face too, but I know I shouldn't do it

This isn't fraud, it is a man who likes the product he made. He never identified himself as someone other than a Bioware Employee in the review he left.

Part of the definition of fraud is gaining an unfair disadvantage by dishonesty, deceit, or trickery.

Deceit by omission is fair game legally if the information omitted is important enough.

Omitting his job does not change his opinion on the game. One person's opinion is just as valid as another's.

Yes but it could easily fall under the blanket of "deceit in order to gain an unfair advantage"

He omitted vital information

 

[Danpascooch]

Why the hell do people all of a sudden care about Metacritic? Before this, all anyone did is dismiss it as stupid. Why now is everyone pointing to it as proof for DA2's shortcomings?

Because it's strong evidence of DA2's shortcomings.

People can yell that Metacritic is flawed all they want, but that doesn't change the fact that every other Bioware game on Metacritic had to deal with the exact same set of flaws, and don't have a score like this one.

One could argue that it's stronger evidence of Metacritic's flaws.

This doesn't seem like the kind of thing everyone should get uppity about. It's so easy it has almost definitely been done before. Just stupid to get caught.

Didn't I just say that's not valid because all of these games are on Metacritic? They all deal with the same set of flaws so the playing field is level, the only difference is the game being reviewed.

It is valid though, and this is because of said flaw with Metacritic. You cannot possibly account for the sample of people that will get off their asses to score a game. It seems to me that this is more likely to be people who are angry that they've spent money on a game they don't like. Maybe that's a dim view of people, but I don't know.
The point I'm making is that low scores like 1 and 2 can be attributed to a game that is, for most intents and purposes, pretty damned good. The visuals are very nice, the gameplay is at the very least engaging, and the writing is not terrible.
Standards vary from person to person, and a person who feels angry at a company for being betrayed by them is likely to think more in hyperbole than a rational scoring system.

Anyway, I don't see these flaws that everyone is pointing out, I'm just saying you cannot possibly state that metacritic is a wide, fair sample.

You are absolutely right that people who are angry are more likely to get off their asses and review it, which begs the question, why are there more people angry with this game than other Bioware RPGs?

The playing field as far as Metacritic is concerned is equal, the game being reviewed is the only major change, if you want to get really technical even the weather outside on release day could have influenced the score, but we're not talking about a 0.5 point drop here, we're talking about a 9/10 for ME2 vs. a 4.2 for DA2

You see, I don't think the playing field is equal. I think that there are more factors than before.
If you consider, for example, this having happened before (to a lesser degree) with Mass Effect 2. Some people who didn't complain before might be more inclined to do so now.
Also, this game is a sequel to a game that was for all intents and purposes, quite like Baldur's Gate. That game is old. Lots of great childhood memories. So if you change that, you upset people. Not me, but some people. The Mass Effect/Mass Effect 2 rift didn't suffer from this problem.
So, I put it to you that, even though all of BioWare's games are subject to MetaCritic, they do not all reach the same fanbase, and this one in particular has a variety of reasons people might feel unhappy or betrayed at the changes, see?

I doubt the unfounded rage is 6x greater than Mass Effect, 50% greater maybe, not 600%.

Anyway, the critic review scores were pretty low too, not low low maybe, but certainly low for a Bioware RPG

Exactly right, demonstrating my presented flaw with MetaCritic. It cannot be known. Metacritic implies that by averaging everyone's opinions, you get something resembling fact. I think there are far too many variables for it to be reliable.

Regardless, it does appear that public opinion of this game is lower than usual, so I suppose I tend towards the upper quartile of opinion on this game.

I'm not saying it can be proven (though I do believe the evidence is pretty strong) that the general public liked ME2 or DA:O better, I'm just saying that anyone who instantly rejects the possibility with a statement like "stupid trolls" and aren't even willing to consider that possibility are obviously indulging in self delusion

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

Flat out... anyone who thinks this is an issue or gave it more than 2 minutes (I'm at a minute and 23 seconds so I better type fast) of concern is without question a moron.

And yet, here you are. Why waste your time if this is so beneath you?

An employee wrote a user review about a game he worked on being perfect? Oh no! Curse him for having pride in his product.

You actually omitted the act this guy is taking flak for completely. I'm not sure you have a complete grasp of what is going on exactly.

What about all of the users that wrote reviews that were negative because they simply dislike Bioware, Dragon age, RPG's, or "Anything that is popular with the mainstream?"

As far as I know, none have attempted to subvert or deceive me. Again, we're not on the same page here.

I dismiss most Metacritic scores because I've learned over the years that most other people's opinions are unreliable at best, insanely biased at worst, and wholly stupid. I've played tons of games or seen tons of movies that others panned as the worst unholy creation of all time that were absolutely awesome to me that I loved.

And since for some reason people have now decided that "slightly above average" = shitty failure (i.e. Homefront) there's few reasons to take ANYONE's advice anymore on anything. Prey is getting a sequel and I thought that game was horrible and I don't know anyone who played it. People hated Tales of Vesperia but I loved it.

Bottomline, rent or borrow a game, try it out and decide for yourself. Don't be a sheep.

Inspiring, but what's your point? Are you saying it is OK to knowingly mislead people in a review of a commercial product for personal gain? Why bother when you are so far above the sheeple who rely on these reviews that it is has no impact on you at all?

As for this guy... I give him props. I voted for myself when I ran for student council president once.

Did you also knowingly deceive your voters? Disguise your identity to fool your voters into electing you? Did you disseminate information valuable to your campaign under false pretenses? I'm sure you did not. Or you did, and your constituents found out, and you're still bitter about it. That would explain this post nicely, now that I think about it.

EDIT: This came out harsher than I intended. All I was trying to say was, I still don't know why you're reading and responding to this thread. I know you're not dishonest yourself, so why bother?

[Edit]

DA2 has a lot of problems, non of which involve a Bioware employee giving his game a 10/10


The only people who will give a shit about this *ehem* "SCANDAL"(lol?) are the people who are just looking for more things to bash Bioware with

This.

When you defend the guy without even mentioning what he is being accused of, it makes me think neither of you understand what is going on.

 

[Awexsome]

Either you die with your fanboys... or they live long enough to become the enemy.

You can't please your super-devoted base forever and still be judged well by anyone who isn't already a fan. Bioware chose a bit of change to appeal to a lot of those who wanted the game to feel more action than/along with issuing commands. And those fans who wanted the same hardcore RPG style are lashing out in force. Bound to happen when a big developer changes something about one of their series.

 

[Sephychu]

Why the hell do people all of a sudden care about Metacritic? Before this, all anyone did is dismiss it as stupid. Why now is everyone pointing to it as proof for DA2's shortcomings?

Because it's strong evidence of DA2's shortcomings.

People can yell that Metacritic is flawed all they want, but that doesn't change the fact that every other Bioware game on Metacritic had to deal with the exact same set of flaws, and don't have a score like this one.

One could argue that it's stronger evidence of Metacritic's flaws.

This doesn't seem like the kind of thing everyone should get uppity about. It's so easy it has almost definitely been done before. Just stupid to get caught.

Didn't I just say that's not valid because all of these games are on Metacritic? They all deal with the same set of flaws so the playing field is level, the only difference is the game being reviewed.

It is valid though, and this is because of said flaw with Metacritic. You cannot possibly account for the sample of people that will get off their asses to score a game. It seems to me that this is more likely to be people who are angry that they've spent money on a game they don't like. Maybe that's a dim view of people, but I don't know.
The point I'm making is that low scores like 1 and 2 can be attributed to a game that is, for most intents and purposes, pretty damned good. The visuals are very nice, the gameplay is at the very least engaging, and the writing is not terrible.
Standards vary from person to person, and a person who feels angry at a company for being betrayed by them is likely to think more in hyperbole than a rational scoring system.

Anyway, I don't see these flaws that everyone is pointing out, I'm just saying you cannot possibly state that metacritic is a wide, fair sample.

You are absolutely right that people who are angry are more likely to get off their asses and review it, which begs the question, why are there more people angry with this game than other Bioware RPGs?

The playing field as far as Metacritic is concerned is equal, the game being reviewed is the only major change, if you want to get really technical even the weather outside on release day could have influenced the score, but we're not talking about a 0.5 point drop here, we're talking about a 9/10 for ME2 vs. a 4.2 for DA2

You see, I don't think the playing field is equal. I think that there are more factors than before.
If you consider, for example, this having happened before (to a lesser degree) with Mass Effect 2. Some people who didn't complain before might be more inclined to do so now.
Also, this game is a sequel to a game that was for all intents and purposes, quite like Baldur's Gate. That game is old. Lots of great childhood memories. So if you change that, you upset people. Not me, but some people. The Mass Effect/Mass Effect 2 rift didn't suffer from this problem.
So, I put it to you that, even though all of BioWare's games are subject to MetaCritic, they do not all reach the same fanbase, and this one in particular has a variety of reasons people might feel unhappy or betrayed at the changes, see?

I doubt the unfounded rage is 6x greater than Mass Effect, 50% greater maybe, not 600%.

Anyway, the critic review scores were pretty low too, not low low maybe, but certainly low for a Bioware RPG

Exactly right, demonstrating my presented flaw with MetaCritic. It cannot be known. Metacritic implies that by averaging everyone's opinions, you get something resembling fact. I think there are far too many variables for it to be reliable.

Regardless, it does appear that public opinion of this game is lower than usual, so I suppose I tend towards the upper quartile of opinion on this game.

I'm not saying it can be proven (though I do believe the evidence is pretty strong) that the general public liked ME2 or DA:O better, I'm just saying that anyone who instantly rejects the possibility with a statement like "stupid trolls" and aren't even willing to consider that possibility are obviously indulging in self delusion

Well yes. Stupid Trolls will be a factor, however, just not as large of a factor as some people would like to believe.