Metacritic Brings Down The Hammer On "Review Bombers"

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

If they do it for 0s with little to no content they should do the same for 10s. Most users scores are more accurate than the reviewer scores are anyway as the fan boys tend to cancel each other out and you can read reviews by other players that are closer to your own opinion.

You'd imagine that if people who were planning to rate a game 0 are put off by having to actually write something, then those planning to give games a 10 would be as well.

I think this is quite a good idea, especially if one of the requirements is that people actually write something. This is especially true if there is a minmum amount that has to be written. I hate it when someone has reviewed something without giving any indication of why they've given it that score. Even a cursory argument is better than nothing.

Well that is people for you they are quite lazy on the internet.

 

[Davidm4]

When Metacritic asked me to fill in a survey for improvements, I asked for this.

 

[adamtm]

"The way to fix Metacritic user reviews is to simply require a written review and verify user accounts," he said. "If it was just some random blog I'd say whatever. But this is a major news review aggregator that should have better oversight and some standards."
(forgot how to quote)

this is what needs to be done, seriously as much as you may hate cod, halo or gears of war. do they really deserve 0's or is it just because you think they are more popular than game's you really like? whenever I review a game I try to be open minded and look at it as a single product not a franchise with a fanbase I hate

The point is it doesn't matter. You can give Halo a 0 score, its "warranted" whenever -you- the person giving the score feels it is warranted. If its out of spite, malice or a completely -genuine- feeling that the game is bad does not matter.

User-scores on websites are NOT -reviews- they are -opinions-

To treat them as reviews and try to "equalize" them in quality is asinine.

Also believe it or not but there are games that deserve the zero score: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_of_the_Lost

 

[GeorgW]

How could it possibly have taken them this long to get to work on this?? Their entire job is managing a site about reviews, how hard is it to understand that review bombings may not be that good to have on there?

 

[KaiusCormere]

The problem is, you KNOW your score doesn't matter as an individual score. Instead, you look at the average, and think, do i want to pull that up (10) or push that down (0). Voting what you think it should be, (perhaps an 8, instead of it's current user average rating of 6) just gives your vote that much less "power".

 

[Therumancer]

It should be noted that even during a bombing, people need to actually care enough to be following the source discussing the target, and agree with it enough to go through the trouble of acting to lower it's rating. That right there makes it fairly legitimate on something like Metacritic. Especially when you look at the opposite side, with fanboys who will do the same thing to lavish praise on a product that doesn't deserve it. You don't hear game producers complaining about users lavishing unqualified praise on a product. You also don't see Metacritic removing perfect 10 scores that don't include any justification... largely because no companies are going to complain about things that work towards making them money. ...
Overall I think Metacritic is pretty fair (or is when they aren't singling out reviews for removal) because "bombers" and "fanboys" tend to balance each other, especially when it comes to big titles.

I'll vaguely agree with you in principle, but this part isn't quite right. And I'll show you what I mean. Compare and contrast the following two statements:

"Hey! I really hate that guy! Let's go egg his house!" (break stuff, whatever)

"Hey! I really like that guy! Let's go wash his car for him!"

Both statements propose reasonable actions based on attitude (though probably hinging on the empathy with the immediate audience i.e. co-conspirators). Both statements suggest approximately equal amounts of work being done. However, one of those statements stands out as being a little out of place in our modern culture. Why is that?

I'm not going to wring out why this equals anything. Mostly because I'd end up bad-mouthing Anonymous again. Then people would accuse me of social meta-bombing - which I might as well use as another example. If you had to compare the number of times you heard people being criticized in their absence, with the number of times you heard people being praised in their absence, what would the ratio be?

Metacritic STILL is not the problem.

The point is that getting someone to actually go and do something is more than just bellyaching. Sure, you might talk smack behind someone's back, but how often do you even go to the point of sending a rude, anonymous E-mail, or even putting a dislike on their Facebook page? Not very often.

If Metacritic decides to police negative reviews, but not positive ones, it loses neutrality, no matter what the justification. It becomes just another paid review/rating source.

I'll also go so far as to say that Metacritic has only recently become an issue, usually it DOES balance out pretty well. It's become an issue because of a few high-budget turds that game companies tried to pass them off, but wound up getting user response that was directly contridictory to what they paid for. When it comes to "Dragon Age 2" as the big example, understand that there are TONS of "I love Bioware" fanboys that normally balance out the people who take the time to "bomb" something they decide they hate. It didn't work this time because the game was garbage, not just compared to it's predecessor, but in general. It was a mess of recycled game enviroments, spawning waves of enemies, and broken combat mechanics (as seen in suggestions that you use fighters to block for mages in choke points, which doesn't work given how the enemies work). I could go on and on about this, and have in the past. I rate "Dragon Age 2" like a "3" on a 10 point scale. In this same thread another guy rated it a 9. If we both wound up at metacritic we'd generate a score of like a 6 due to our disagreement about it. In this case to wind up at like a 4.7 it simply means far more people agreed with me than with him, including extemists on both ends... and that's the whole point of Metacritic.

I'll also say that even if militant haters outnumber fans, that's part of what Metacritic is about. A game company should not be trying to present games as being universally praised when they aren't. Games that actually DO manage to land a high score should stand out for that reason.

See you might complain about the haters, but at the same time, look at how top heavy the scale is. I mean do you REALLY think all these games deserve a 7+ rating? That defies the existance of there even being an "average" to compare them to (an Average being 5).

To be fair Metacritic wound up calling "Dragon Age 2" a slightly below average game, it's just that a 4.7 rating is "ZOMG horrible" in an enviroment where people are trained to see 7 out of 10 as being mediocre given the way pro-reviewers are paid off. Ultimatly Metacritic neither agreed with me, or the guy who rated the game a 9 in this thread, it was just a bit more in my direction.

This is pretty much a blanket response not only to you, but to all the responses I received in this thread since most of them covered the same ground.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Both Supergiant Games and Signal Studios saw the Metacritic scores of their latest games, Bastion and Toy Soldiers: Cold War respectively, drop sharply overnight, without a clear reason why.

WHAT?! WHY?! They don't deserve that at all!

 

[alinos]

A good way to do it would be force the person to write something in order to give a score.

Just make it that in the same vein as the actual reviews any user reviews have to be tied to a blog format of some kind. At least that way people can't just bang together a new email. And have another go at bombing it.

If you follow the user review to a 1 post blog not painting it in a positive light, well then you can tell it's crap.

While I agree that DA2 was a piece of shit.

The fact that so many reviews are Score(0-5): Disrespectful to Origin's. End Review. is pathetic.

At least put some more detailed views into why this is so and why it has recieved your magical score

 

[BGH122]

This is especially true if there is a minimum amount that has to be written.

Precisely. This could be fixed in a matter of hours by updating the review system so that it only accepts reviews which contain at least 100 characters of text.

4.7 rating is "ZOMG horrible" in an enviroment where people are trained to see 7 out of 10 as being mediocre given the way pro-reviewers are paid off

Whilst I'm hesitant to say that reviews are paid off in the absence of any direct proof of that fact (although I assume it to be true given the generally high scores awarded to most AAA games), I fully agree that the games industry reviewers have foolishly pushed the bar for mediocrity up to 7/10. Bar the occasional 'zany' review of an obvious turd they've dug up just to show that they occasionally give below a 5/10, almost all games receive 6/10 or higher.

I think a lot of this might actually come from the fact that games reviewers have typically been playing games for decades and, compared to the games of two console generations ago, most modern games are looking pretty decent. But the industry shouldn't be comparing games of today to the standards of ten years ago. 7/10 might be valid when comparing Modern AAA Game X to N64 AAA Game Y, but that doesn't mean it's better than average (where 5 should be average) by today's standards.

 

[antipunt]

This is why you ignore user reviews that don't require writing/explanation/standards. Honestly, I don't even know of that many (reputable) sites that let users get away with one sentence 'reviews'. It's common sense to ignore such garbage.

 

[antipunt]

But Dragon Age 2 deserves A 4.2
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii

Yeah, that's the most honest, reasonable score for that turd I've seen in any review.

5/5 my aching ass. You still fail for that, Escapist.

Did you notice that the Escapist review score is no longer on metacritic?

OT: I agree with people with the 0's and 10 scores, delete those.

Gah, dun remind me of that Witcher 2 VS DA2 fiasco (post traumatic stress order FTW...) D:

 

[Kakashi on crack]

Ok, I'm not saying reviewbombers are right, but they have every right to rate something however the fuck they want to. Deleting those from people who make a million accounts to review bomb, yeah, but if someone wants to give a game a 0/10, they have every right to without having to justify it.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Are they going to go after the game publishers/developers that have been caught giving themselves perfect reviews as well? Will punishment going both ways become a live act on metacritic? Nope. Chuck Testa.

But seriously I know that a Bioware employee was caught "anti-bombing" the game, which is kind of pathetic.

 

[The Lunatic]

I wonder if this means they'll review Max-score reviews that also don't have comments.


Just saying, it's all opinions at the end of the day, surely, there's purpose of that section anyway.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

Dragon Age 2 was a huge mess, and I think brought a lot of this to a head because it showed a HUGE differance between paid-off reviewers, and actual fan reception. It was a case where the people who hated the game outnumbered the fanboys by a substantial number. I think this shocked "big money gaming" which is why you have it working through sources like "Giant Bomb" to pressure the independant rating systems to become biased in the favor of the industry.

What paid off reviewers? Because I was so appalled at the horrible user reviews for such a wonderful game like DA2, I read every single user review as well as the professional ones.

The majority of the professional reviewers were on par with it and it averaged out to a fine score between 79 and 82 across the platforms. There were a few "professionals" that let nostalgia from the first game cloud their reviews and scores, giving quite biased reviews.

On the user review side, scores from 0 to even 2's were invalid, at least 99% of them. They rated the game only in comparison to DA:Origins. They didn't like dialogue, fresh party characters, graphics(don't see where that comes from), different style of storytelling, and slightly changed combat, so oh no it gets a bomb type of score. They didn't grade it how it stands on its own.

When I review a game, if it is playable from start to finish it gets at least a three, because those first few points fall in the range of playability based on will the game run to completion. The next 4 points are based on how the game plays on its own if I'm not considering it a part of some franchise. If the game is part of a franchise, that is where the final 3 points play.

I gave DA2 a 9/10, one point lost because of the small amount of dungeons, I felt everything else was perfect. It gained all the points for the comparison section, because I felt it vastly improved upon the things I saw as errors in DA:O(Dialogue, leveling, combat, and bland/cliche party characters).

And why wouldn't I use the first game as a baseline when considering the sequel? I put DAO at around an 7.5 out of ten so to me that would be the target for DA2 to make.

Problem is, DA2 misses that target on all fronts.
It has 1 dungeon and 1 warehouse.

Enemies spawning from thin air.

Bugs all over the place (still can't play Merrills quest). So I guess that would mean it loses 3 points in your system of reviewing, no?

Bad pacing and silly things like that dude who stands outside the viceroys office for 5 years or so.

A boring and tiny city (why can't they just do a city like in the AssCreed games? That would be a great city to roleplay in. Instead we get what seems to be the set from a sword and sandals movie, complete with fake alleys and painted backdrops.)

Unimpressive graphics with system requirements that makes no sense.

People who come back from the dead even though I killed them in the first game (fuck you David Gaider for just flipping the bird that turd).

A completely nonsensical and railroaded storyline complete with the patented Bioware Fake Moral Choice-O-Tron tech, that powers every damn quest. Oh, he's a blood mage? Like the last 25? Why, I never! The surprise! Also, why don't the knight guys arrest me and my mages? We are throwing magic left and right in the city? If you're going to make it a major plot device, that the knights templar, is gunning for rogue mages, then don't have them ignore 3 mages in front of them for 10 years.

So, based on all that, I think a 4.2 to DA2 is a bit generous. People keep using the line that it's not a bad game, just a bad Bioware game. No. It's also a bad game.

Now, I've not reviewed in on Metacritic, as that is a terrible site, but if I were I'd give it a 3, I guess. But I'd also argue why. So would that be removed? Am I out of line with the group think?

The only honest review I saw of the game was the one John Walker did on RPS. The Escapist one (5 stars?!) was seriously wrong. It talked about a living breathing city. It led me to buy the game. What I got was a silly card board cut-out of a city wrapped in a bad story and bugs. Not a word on the fact that there is precisely 1 dungeon and 1 warehouse. Not a word on the spawning enemies.

Shame on you, Escapist for recommending such abysmal games.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

the ongoing war between the console fanbases,

After all these years, it's amazing that this utter stupidity still goes on.

'My plastic box of wires is better than yours!!'

 

[geizr]

Reading through, I see a few people saying that Metacritic is bad. In my opinion, Metacritic is only bad if you really believe that a singular, scientifically objective measure of game's quality that is universal to all gamers(that is, independent of their own personal preferences, biases, and tastes) to the precision presented(Metacritic has a 1 in 100 precision; I have seen some sites go as far as 1 in 1000 precision) is possible and valid. However, if you believe that it is possible to have a singular, convenient place in which to read multiple different opinions regarding a game, then Metacritic succeeds beyond a shadow of a doubt as an aggregator.

In dealing with game reviews, one really has to have their Bullshit-Meter(TM) well calibrated to filter out reviews that are overly biased in favor or against a game for reasons of vested interest, agendas, or just plain ignorance. This means the gamer has to carefully read through the reviews and make judgements regarding the quality of the review and its credibility. In part of making this judgement, he may have to mentally adjust the review's score up or down based on text of the review; this is especially true with these attempts at such high precision in the score. He may then have to make further guesses whether the game is something that would appeal to his own personal tastes because that is critical information that often gets left out in reviews, especially user reviews; the reader generally has to read-in-between-the-lines to make this determination.

While I'm on it, the current high precision(1 in 10 and higher) of most individual review scores is, in my opinion, a false level of precision. Any individual human can really only distinguish at most 6 levels(a 1 in 6 precision) of quality: excellent/perfect, good, okay/passable, mediocre, bad, and shitty/unacceptable. These levels are not objective and universal, nor do they necessarily exist on a linear scale. The may change from person to person and circumstance to circumstance, depending on the tastes of the individual and the criteria, constraints, and restrictions applied to the game. It is necessary to full qualify each judgement of quality to avoid ambiguity and miscommunication. While it is true that averages can have a much higher precision than the individual values that went into the average(the more values, the higher the precision of the average), an average losses a lot of information and cannot be used by any given individual as a litmus test for whether the game will be something they enjoy and find worthy of purchase.

Basically, the entire game industry and game community have, in my opinion, fallaciously assigned more meaning and precision to review scores than is reasonable. It is little wonder that the system is not working so well. We wanted something quick and dirty, but that simply may not be possible; certainly, our current implementation of such an ideal is proving horribly flawed and invalid. Honestly, in my opinion, the entire game review process and methodology needs significant revision.

But, returning to the point of Metacritic. In my opinion, Metacritic is fantastic if used properly and within the context for which it is valid, and that is as a single, convenient place to find many different opinions and reviews of a game, both professional and non-professional. If Metacritic is used to obtain a singular, objective, universal metric by which to measure a game's quality, then it will fail, miserably.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Snip

And why wouldn't I use the first game as a baseline when considering the sequel? I put DAO at around an 7.5 out of ten so to me that would be the target for DA2 to make.

Problem is, DA2 misses that target on all fronts.
It has 1 dungeon and 1 warehouse.

Enemies spawning from thin air.

I didn't say you couldn't use compare it to the first game, I said that reviews would be invalid if that is the only thing the reviewers base their reviews on.

You miss counted though, there are 3 dungeons, 2 warehouses, 2 houses. I will also add The Deep Roads to that as a large main story dungeon, also The Hawk Estate main quest.

Other than that, I didn't find any problems with the things you talked about, and didn't encounter your glithes.

Enemies dropping down from the air didn't bother me, it just made me think some of them were hiding on the roof tops. Who cares, they are enemies, I fight them. People said it causes strategic problems, but I didn't have any trouble with it.

I wouldn't have even noticed the small amount of dungeons if somebody hadn't pointed it out. I was already over halfway through the game when that happened. I was having so much fun, that a flaw like the dungeons came very close to not mattering, it really doesn't. If I did a professional review for a site, I would have given it a 4.5 starts or a 9 out of 10. On notch off for the dungeons, though reluctantly.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

It's still censorship, even if I disagree with it. As long as you openly allow users to review a product you will get people who will give a game that didn't meet their expectations a 0, as well as a chance for people to minlessly throw away 10s.

Look at some of the perfect 10's for the likes of GTA IV or Halo 3 and a lot don't provide anything more than a 'This game is awesome! I love it because it's awesome!". But they clearly enjoyed the game and believed it deserved a perfect score, even if the game was riddled with flaws. Likewise 0 bombers obviously felt strongly enough about Dragon Age II to want to make it's score appear that way. It might not provide a fair opinion on Dragon Age II's score, but it makes a statement.

And some of those 0's are genuine. Let's face it, if Metacritic are going to doctor the score because it's inconvenient to their public image then that's just crap.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

But Dragon Age 2 deserves A 4.2
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii

Excuse me, I'll go off to the side for a second to gouge my eyes out with a sharpened spoon. Thank you.

I'm just so sick and tired of hearing stuff like this, honestly. Dragon Age 2 takes the RPG formula from the olden days - the same one that made Baldur's Gate a roaring success, and applies it to a modern 3D gameworld. How is that deserving of a 4.2?

If you're saying you didn't enjoy DA2 because it felt too confined or too restrictive, then yeah. I'll accept that. Just - don't diss on a game without anything to back that up other than the fact that other people went "HUURR, DIS GAME SUCKZORS, DURR" all over Metacritic.

I'm listening; what arguments can you bring up? Just how, exactly, is DA2 deserving of a 4.2?