Metacritic Brings Down The Hammer On "Review Bombers"

[Iron Mal]

Considering how Metacritic is supposed to be there to help consumers make better choices based on having as many sources of information and opinion on a given title in a single place (and not a place for fanboys and haters to stroke their egos and wave their metaphorical dicks around) this is something I'd call a change for the better.

The person who Metacritic is intended for is people like my Mum, someone who doesn't know the slightest thing about games and probably won't even read the reviews that are posted up there but just wants a quick glance indicator as to whether a game (that she's probably buying for someone else) will be fun to play or not (orwhether it'll make a good gift on someone else's birthday/Christmas).

Somehow I doubt that raging fanboys trying to preserve their game's reputation and 'slay those infidels on the rival console' are really doing much to help the people who are likely to get the most use out of Metacritic.

 

[Major_Tom]

Scores are useless. Read the review and draw your own conclusions. Metacritic is especially useless, just a collection of random numbers with no meaning.

 

[bootz]

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).

http://n4g.com/news/705260/pc-gamer-dragon-age-2-review-rpg-of-the-decade
The paid off reviews said it was rpg of the decade. Do you believe that? I played it and gave it a 6.5/10. The combat was the same dude over and over no tactics. The caves were tha same. The city was a loading screen every 10 feet(ie look at rome in AC series it can be done way better). The city had very bad texture problems. The story wasn't there. The romancing was super silly I was with merryl, at the end it said I was with Jezzible wtf. My mage was so op what I has to turn the difficulty up and it so things die in two hits instead of one.

 

[Atmos Duality]

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.

Given who is putting pressure on Metacritic to change this system (the publishers), I'd say they aren't interested in fair-review. Anything that artificially inflates that score is just free marketing for them.

Ultimately, it's Metacritic's decision, but I'm not holding my breath here.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Snip

http://n4g.com/news/705260/pc-gamer-dragon-age-2-review-rpg-of-the-decade
The paid off reviews said it was rpg of the decade. Do you believe that? I played it and gave it a 6.5/10. The combat was the same dude over and over no tactics. The caves were tha same. The city was a loading screen every 10 feet(ie look at rome in AC series it can be done way better). The city had very bad texture problems. The story wasn't there. The romancing was super silly I was with merryl, at the end it said I was with Jezzible wtf. My mage was so op what I has to turn the difficulty up and it so things die in two hits instead of one.

Well the big RPGs that I played from last decade are both KoTORs, both Mass Effects, and DA:Origins.

And since DA2 was mostly developed in 2010, from how I felt playing the game, I can call it the RPG of the decade. Origins had way too many problems for me, still haven't been able to finish it, and they fixed those problems in DA2(Combat, leveling and ability system, dialogue, and the characters were much more interesting(not all fantasy cliche characters that all are closed off and then have epiphanies and then change for the better because of the protagonist). To me, less dungeons was a small price to pay for such integral fixes. And I don't care what "flaws" people say the story had, it was amazing and I didn't notice any of the gripes other people had, it was epic.

 

[Mortuorum]

Scores are useless. Read the review and draw your own conclusions. Metacritic is especially useless, just a collection of random numbers with no meaning.

I disagree regarding MetaCritic, with the caveat that I have no interest in their user reviews statistics (which are essentially meaningless noise). What I do find useful on MetaCritic is looking at the critic reviews (which are sorted by score, high to low) and then reading reviews at the high and low ends of the scale. I find that that methodology (in conjunction with reviews from sites I trust) helps me get the truest possible idea of the actual strengths and weaknesses of a game.

 

[adamtm]

Snip

http://n4g.com/news/705260/pc-gamer-dragon-age-2-review-rpg-of-the-decade
The paid off reviews said it was rpg of the decade. Do you believe that? I played it and gave it a 6.5/10. The combat was the same dude over and over no tactics. The caves were tha same. The city was a loading screen every 10 feet(ie look at rome in AC series it can be done way better). The city had very bad texture problems. The story wasn't there. The romancing was super silly I was with merryl, at the end it said I was with Jezzible wtf. My mage was so op what I has to turn the difficulty up and it so things die in two hits instead of one.

Well the big RPGs that I played from last decade are both KoTORs, both Mass Effects, and DA:Origins.

And since DA2 was mostly developed in 2010, from how I felt playing the game, I can call it the RPG of the decade. Origins had way too many problems for me, still haven't been able to finish it, and they fixed those problems in DA2(Combat, leveling and ability system, dialogue, and the characters were much more interesting(not all fantasy cliche characters that all are closed off and then have epiphanies and then change for the better because of the protagonist). To me, less dungeons was a small price to pay for such integral fixes. And I don't care what "flaws" people say the story had, it was amazing and I didn't notice any of the gripes other people had, it was epic.

Witcher 2 was developed during 2008-2010 so is it also an RPG of the decade? How about Skyrim? Its been developed since 2007, I'm sure when it comes out it will also be a RPG of the decade.

Seriously, grasping at straws much?

 

[veloper]

Up until now aggregate user scores used to be a pretty good warning system against bad games. Not a garantee for good games but still a quick filter for too many subpar games to look into.

Bombers and selllers generally cancel eachother out.


This policy will adjust the scale. 70% will now be the new 50%, or something like that. Let's wait and see how this turns out. Doesn't have to be all bad.

 

[TheIronRuler]

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

Honestly, they should just remove every 0 or 1 rating on there. 99% of them are probably totally worthless

When a game insults you by punching you in the nuts and then proceeding to burn your porn collection, you give it a zero. That's the scale, but some people don't get that 5 is average, 0 is trying to kill you in your sleep and 10 is the third coming of christ (Second being Deus Ex 1).

 

[Joseph Harrison]

Too lazy too quote but I can see how this is helpful because alot of people will give 0s to franchises they dislike or because they believe this game in particular "ruined" a franchise they like. For example I really enjoyed Dragon Age 2 but at the same time I can see the reason in many arguments that it was bad. The problem arises that many people, in my opinion, overeacted to the flaws and declared the game "the worst game ever" solely because it wasn't as good as Dragon Age: Origins or did not live up to the hype they had for it. So there was probably many people who had a legitimate proble with Dragon Age 2, there are probably alot more who fell into the other category and that is what metacritic is trying to get rid of, people who bring their emotions too much into reviews.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

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

It deserves indeed. I'd give it 4,5 myself.

The deal was about 0 reviews with no text, which is another deal. It's possible that people hate the game you love. I myself would rate Braid 0 out of 10 for example, but it's my personal opinion and I would definitely give a detailed review as to why I believe this score is appropriate.
When actual bombing is going on it's not that hard to recognize.

 

[Blindrooster]

My thinking is, if you like a game, you merrily go about your day when you're finished playing it. people who hate a gam feel the need to vent and give it a stupid score online. Therefore all scores are off

 

[Zeraki]

Why would people bomb Bastion? I've only played the demo, but from what I got it left me wanting more. It seems like a fantastic game.

I don't trust Metacritic anyway. If I'm going to enjoy a game it'll be because I like it, not because of what other people think about it.

 

[Amaror]

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

Well actually, yeah 4,2 seems about right to me.
Making an opinion on the game was very difficult for me.
The first half i thought the game was great, well, the first one was great, and i desperately wanted DA 2 to be great too.
Then in the second half it changed completely because i was just so damn dissappointed.
I waited a while and played the game again for some time.
I don't want to list all flaws of the game again, there are just too many, and i don't deny that the game has some good aspects, but it's just not really good.
It's below average and thats what a 4,2 represents.
The "0" haters ratings are shitty but the "10" fanboy, i really hate this word but i have to use it now, ratings suck both, but in the end they even each other out and what you get is an, in my opinion, True score.

 

[rainbowunicorns]

Removing parts of the scale is silly: If 0 and 1 reviews are unreasonably low, then 9 and 10 reviews are unreasonably high. Of course, 2 is now the new 0 so we should remove that, and we keep going until we have but 4, 5, and 6 to represent bad, neutral, and good respectively. Now, such a rating system is not a bad thing, but maybe a 10-point scale wouldn't be appropriate.


0s don't matter: If a large number of people vote 0 for "no reason", it is conceivable that a large number of people might also vote 10 for "no reason".


This change adds basic arithmetic that will be done automatically by viewers:
Without publishing the metric for determining a "fair" review, the user scores become just like professional reviews. All you end up with is viewers subtracting 20% from the score they see to get an idea of what a book/film reviewer might have given the title (i.e.: a legitimate score). Right now, a reviewer's score of less than 70 generally means "total shit". A user's score in the 50-60 range is probably worth a look at the 40-60 range of comments to see their concerns. Of the two scores Metacritic publishes, the user's is often more reminiscent of reviews in other media, whereas the professional's reminds me of a report card with a cutoff of 60 instead of 50.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Now they're just going to bomb titles with 1 point scores

 

[scott91575]

Mean (aka average) is a horrible way to represent scores, and is easily manipulated.

I'm not sure if anyone else has this idea, but to fix it would be pretty easy. The simplest way is a median score. So while 0's would have an effect, especially tons of them, they wouldn't skew it as much (same thing with 10's). Although with median they would need to give users the ability to score something to the tenth decimal place or games would all be bunched together around as 7's or 8's.

Then there are even more complicated statistical measurements that would eliminate anomalies at the extreme. It would still take into account a small percentage, but if there is a clear spike on either end it would be eliminated. It's not really that hard. Metacritic simply needs a decent statistician.