BioWare Employee Busted in Dragon Age 2 Review Scandal - UPDATED

[SNIPERFOX ft. Harry P.Ness]

guys, its meta critic, they'll rate a game 0% for the SMALLEST of flaws.

 

[maantren]

I'm curious as to why this continues to be news? I was always under the impression that this happened anyway, it's this guy was dumb enough to be a little to outgoing with his praise and got caught.

I agree it's pretty minor in the big scheme of things, but I think the accompanying bad PR for Bioware is literally the only thing stopping astroturfing from becoming ubiquitous. I'm sure The Escapist mods already have to deal with identifying a fair amount of paid shills, organized PR teams with huge budgets and no fear of consequences would swamp the place if allowed.

Cheers

Colin

 

[kael013]

So let me get this straight: Average Joes write up 0-score reviews because they don't like how it's been "consolized" or whatever, that's fine. BioWare employees writing up reviews to counter the mud-slinging, however, is bad?

 

[Sixcess]

Metacritic user reviews are of very questionable value, especially when they're of big titles. The scoring system just attracts too many people with axes to grind.

I'd read them out of curiosity, maybe, but I'd never take them seriously.

 

[Undead Dragon King]

Geez, you'd expect that people thought that BioWare murdered their mothers at the same time that they wrote this self-praising review. What's the big deal? Do you think that the good doctors were in cahoots with this? Seriously, people no longer consider BioWare a company with integrity because one of their fanboy employees wrote an anonymous review on a crappy review site?

Conspiracy theorists never cease to amaze and embarrass me.

 

[rsvp42]

As for your stab on rsvp42, a developer who makes regular AAA games doesn't deserve this kind of idiotic backlash just because the made a game that is worse than usual. If anything, that is to be expected. Outliers happen, quality rises, quality sinks, etc. Seriously, it seems to be that people give this game a 3-4/10 only because they expected to be 9-10/10, like the only things that exist in their world is dog shit and ambrosia. Why can't this game simply be a filling steak and potatoes if you catch my drift? Hell, i think Bioware is fucking awesome if DragonAge II is actually the worst of their games to come out in a long while.

NOTE: I'm not actually pissed or anything...I'm just having fun ^_^

So true. That's all I'm saying. No, DA2 is not perfect, but if someone thinks that these bad reviews are all unbiased, balanced, fair reviews based on the quality of the game, they're deluding themselves. The backlash is clearly greater than the game deserves.

 

[Danpascooch]

If you want my personal opinion the game is pretty broken, at the very front I could barely handle it on hard, but two hours later with a few more abilities I'm on Nightmare because hard is unbearably easy, what kind of difficulty curve is that? Also when I tell my companions to hold position because I want them positioned a certain way, when combat starts about 50% of the time the current action (under their portrait) flickers rapidly between two abilities (indicating an infinite loop) which is really an unforgivable glitch, what did they expect nobody would use that feature? These two major problems combined with the lack of auto-attack on consoles (which Bioware officially stated was a mistake, that option was supposed to be there) and the shamelessly recycled environments, really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

That glitch only happens for me when my characters aren't positioned well. Usually just moving them into range or giving a better line of sight has helped me. Also, I agree that difficulty jumps in crazy ways. There was one boss in the deep roads that required me to jump down to Normal, even though Hard has been just fine so far. It could have been an issue with my party makeup, but who knows.

I won't tell you this game is perfect. I realize it's not. But I skimmed Metacritic and saw a lot of 0 and 1 reviews, which is crazy. As I said, the game is at worst a 5, realistically, but more like a 7 from me because I actually like a lot of the changes, even if they don't all come together perfectly.

Your point about the 0 and 1 reviews bring me back to what I said before, I don't believe the score is valid as anything other than a basic comparison to it and other games, For example, I think this score makes it valid to say "This game is worse than ME2" but not "This game deserves a 4/10".

 

[uppitycracker]

what a coincidence. i swear, not 20 minutes ago, my buddy was linking me the metacritic site, talking about how it seemed like EA employees were throwing 10 reviews out there... man, what a crap game. so glad i didn't pay for it.

Except this sort of behaviour (while crap), doesn't mean the game is crap. The game is fine. This kind of stuff isn't. Make sure you are distributing your hate correctly.

i'm distributing it just fine. the behavior is right on par with the game itself IMO. i'm clearly not the only one that feels this way. but hey, if you enjoyed it, more power to you. i certainly didn't.

 

[D_987]

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.

It's also amusing that in second place is XboxAchievments.org; the head editor on the site is a gigantic Bioware fanboy, to the point he had / has(?) a Mass Effect 2 forum logo...yeah, guess which game won or was nominated for "Game of the Year" in pretty much every category [including, somehow, best soundtrack] on that site...

 

[Hiken no Ace]

Ok, maybe I'm missing something here, but I fail to see the problem. Sure he worked on producing the game, and his review is probably SUPER biased. Heck, he may not even think the game was that amazing, and just inserted a shameless plug for his and his companys creation. But...so what? Why is it a big deal that he wrote a review and did not state that he was on the team that made said game? I dunno about you other gamers, but I never buy/don't buy a game based solely on web site reviews. I'm honestly more surprised someone took the time to actually identify this guy's true identity.

 

[maantren]

(I said all this back here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.270688.10413272)

Goodness, are we ever touchy these days. The ability to assume that someone can act independently on two different fronts has died, somewhere. Should we now have to declare everything about ourselves when me make a relation, or statement? Will we have to pronounce our affiliations, and state whether we are individuals, or members of a company? Are we now to mention whether we're biased by former knowledge of all of their products or starting anew, with no experience with the matter at all?

We are allowed our opinions, still, are we not? And the idea that we must be fair in our dealings is one of simpleness--not everything requires us to take the stand that all things are level. We are encouraged to consider many positions, but of those options, we only choose one. As there are many, not everyone would see eye to eye. To assume that each choice is on a level field is insipid, at best. Some will be equal. Others will not.

What this leads to, in it's verbose and circumspectral way, is this: it's a fluff review. Everything had fluff reviews. Billy Mays made his fame on fluff reviews. If you, as the buyer or observer, are swayed by a fluff review, then you have not understood how a review works. A perfect score, without a thorough analysis or critique, is not a review. It's fluff.

With respect, you sound fairly young and intellectual. Adult professionals should declare conflicts of interest when operating in their field - this is a basic ethical requirement across business, journalism, and even game development. People who don't understand this IMO are lacking real world experience, education, or both.

Cheers

Colin

 

[mireko]

If he submitted a user review, I don't see what the issue is.

It's embarrassing, sure, and fairly pathetic. However, there's no demand for objectivity or accuracy in Metacritic user reviews. That's why they're 'user reviews' and not 'critic reviews'. Hypothetically speaking, everyone on a dev team could send user reviews for their game and it would still be acceptable.

[sub]"Scandal"? Really?[/sub]

 

[Zing]

By the way more than one BW employee put up user reviews. At least one moderator who's name matched his metacritic user name exactly, as well as a female leader writer who wrote on their forums that meril was "so cute she wanted to nom on her head"(something along those lines), a 10/10 review on metacritic had the exact same line word for word.

Pretty sad, these people need to learn how to take constructive criticism and make a better game instead of these pathetic tactics.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

So let me get this straight: Average Joes write up 0-score reviews because they don't like how it's been "consolized" or whatever, that's fine. BioWare employees writing up reviews to counter the mud-slinging, however, is bad?

Agreed.

Besides, he is still allowed to write reviews anyways, anybody can sign up and do so.

 

[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?

 

[rsvp42]

With respect, you sound fairly young and intellectual. Adult professionals should declare conflicts of interest when operating in their field - this is a basic ethical requirement across business, journalism, and even game development. People who don't understand this IMO are lacking real world experience, education, or both.

Cheers

Colin

With respect, your patronizing tone likely wont endear you to the folks at which it's directed.

 

[Irridium]

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.

So then why hasn't anyone used Metacritic to show a game's good points?

Mass Effect 2 has a 9.0 user score on Metacritic, that score highlights all of its good points, and the reviews there are largely positive.

Are you saying the media doesn't freak when games get good scores, only when they get bad? Because that's not a problem with Metacritic, or with the scoring system, that's a problem with the reporters.

The media is giving Dragon Age 2 fantastic scores. Its the community thats freaking out and pointing to metacritic. What I'm saying is that I haven't seen anyone point to metacritic to point out that a game got great review scores, but bad user scores. Or at least done so in a way thats as big as them doing it to Dragon Age 2.

How is that really relevant to anything? That may be true (though I'm not sure if I agree) but how does the fact that people don't point to it make DA2's score somehow invalid?

The critics gave DA2 substantially lower scores than basically every other major Bioware RPG.

I'm not saying its invalid. I'm just wondering why everyone is pointing to Metacritic to prove DA2 is worse when they've just dismissed everything else about the site before all this.

 

[maantren]

With respect, you sound fairly young and intellectual. Adult professionals should declare conflicts of interest when operating in their field - this is a basic ethical requirement across business, journalism, and even game development. People who don't understand this IMO are lacking real world experience, education, or both.

Cheers

Colin

With respect, your patronizing tone likely wont endear you to the folks at which it's directed.

Not trying to be endearing. And these kids should get off my lawn...

 

[Oro44]

This is shaping up to be the most contentious game of the year, and appropriately I'm conflicted on this. As a Bioware employee, its the guy's job to advertise and put positive spin on the game. However, I think he did it in the wrong place. If you want to get your product out there, put it on a Bioware blog, or give an interview or something. Don't call it a user review.

 

[Canid117]

Maybe if he had actually written that review like someone who hangs out on the internet he wouldn't have been caught.