Are reviews of any use?

Jericho · Post by **Jericho** » Wed, 3. May 17, 16:13

Are reviews of any use?
Reviews by members of the public I mean.
(Although, I often find reviews by professionals to be pointless).

An example for No Man's Sky
[ external image ]

These were side by side, ordered by date.

So... Did the publisher pay for a 10 review? Or did they refuse to pay some guy so he left a 0 review? Or could it be, that some people just like different things than other people?

I'm sure I'd give Fifa2017 (and all the previous years) 0 out of 10, because I have no interest in the sport or the gameplay.

CoD gets worse each year, the official reviews get worse, while the player reviews seem to get even more split between 0 and 10.

Quite frankly, anyone giving a modern game 0 is probably a moron. 1 or 2 I can accept, but 0? Really? Surely 0 is when the game fails to even install or start?

I had to buy a new printer a couple of years ago, and I was paralyzed by review anxiety. All the printers that I saw had glowing 5 star reviews, and crappy 1 star reviews. Every printer seems to be equally reliable and unreliable. Efficient and inefficient. No paper jams, and endless paper jams. So which is it? Schrodinger's Printer?

So are reviews even worth reading?

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Wed, 3. May 17, 16:48

Individual reviews are not useful, no. What you look at is the ratio of good to bad reviews. If a product has received 20 glowing 10/10 reviews, but 2000 2/10 ones, it's pretty likely it's a bad product. And no, it's not necessary for publishers to pay for reviews like that--there will always be people who are so hyped for something that they will insist on defending it even when world + dog declare it to be tripe.

philip_hughes · Post by **philip_hughes** » Wed, 3. May 17, 16:55

https://archive.org/details/E.T._The_Ex ... Atari_NTSC

That links to arguably the worst game ever.

Post by **korio** » Wed, 3. May 17, 16:56

For me NoMans is a good game, i really enjoy wandering from planet to planet discovering what they have and walking around for a bit.

If you expect more than that, its totally bull****.

That's the point of reviews, everyone has their own opinion and this is biased by their preferences and what they like and what they dont, so you need to read a lot of them, filter the top bad and good ones and them think by yourself about what you just read and if it fits your interests.

As pjknibbs said, its not about a really bad one or a really good one, its about the average of them all and what you think about that average.

Post by **X2-Illuminatus** » Wed, 3. May 17, 18:56

Personally, when I'm reading reviews for games, hardware or any other product, I start with the bad ones and try to find out, whether there are any characteristics everyone dislikes. Often enough negative reviews disqualify themselves for me by

a) criticising something I'm fine with,
b) not mentioning any specifics about the product in question (see fykins' "review" as a perfect example above),
c) showing an arbitrary rating system (I feel people have a hard time differentiating between all the levels of a 10 point scale. Often enough it seems to me everything below 6 is considered bad, while the 4 numbers above are considered to be mediocre to perfect.),
d) people not having properly informed themselves before buying the game.

On the other hand, if there are legit concerns or severe problems, then you can be sure that those are mentioned in several negative and sometimes even in the positive reviews.

So, all in all I do think that reviews are helpful.

Edit: typo.

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Wed, 3. May 17, 19:14

Reviews on websites full of adverts paid for by the compny that make the game being revewed are generally worthless.

I view reviews as entertainment (often on youtube) and will still buy something if it looks interesting to me even if the reviewer doesn't like it.

But pre orders and day one DLC are just rip offs.

Chips · Post by **Chips** » Wed, 3. May 17, 19:55

People leaving massively negative reviews have likely just rage quit (or had it crash for the 4th time) 30s before - hence the 0 or 1 and emotive language as if it's the worst thing in the world and ruined their life.

These days reviews are pointless anyway - you can watch game play on Youtube of it to help you decide...

Stars_InTheirEyes · Post by **Stars_InTheirEyes** » Wed, 3. May 17, 21:09

Yeah, reviews are pretty worthless.

Rapier · Post by **Rapier** » Thu, 4. May 17, 08:13

It may sound rather meta, but I do find the reviews of reviews helpful. Both the examples in the image say '0 of 0 users found this review helpful', so I probably wouldn't bother reading them. A well thought out review will generally get up-voted and I do find these more useful. I would thus encourage anyone reading a review to up- or down- vote it as they find it, to help those that follow.

BigBANGtheory · Post by **BigBANGtheory** » Thu, 4. May 17, 10:27

Individual reviews are biased towards the source but a collective string of reviews are far more valid imho, taken in the context of your own thoughts on the topic.

When people give a game review of zero it is usually because they feel aggreaved and want to punish the publisher by lowerin the overall score. Their feedback isn't invalid but their score does squew things.

Generally speaking though good games do get good scores it just means you have to be very tight on quality control along with the core game itself.

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Thu, 4. May 17, 12:42

Thinking on it further, I haven't really taken notice of written reviews since the days when I used to buy Games magazines, which I haven't since the nineties.
I do look at them on the shelves occasionally, but they look far too much look far too much like advertisements, and boy are they expensive.

Youtube has rendered review by article almost obsolete I think. And these days video based reviewers, or good ones at least, have to be more than just reviewers.

Think Jim Sterling, SidAlpha (new but pretty good) TotalBiscuit (amazing, but sadly very ill), all reviewers, but none are only reviewers.

matthewfarmery · Post by **matthewfarmery** » Thu, 4. May 17, 14:09

TotalBiscuit isn't really a reviewer, but someone who does first impressions, while sometimes he does have the impression of giving a review, they aren't.

But yeah, he is sadly very ill. I found him OK, but as for reviews in general, reviews from say gamespot, and the like, I wouldn't trust. Then on top of that, there been some cases where the reviewer has been fired due to giving a game a bad review. In that regard, reviews from such sites can't be trusted.

Post by **CBJ** » Thu, 4. May 17, 16:42

I'm probably going to take this discussion a little deeper than Jericho intended, but here goes! I see this as part of some broader trends involving the nature of social media and online interaction in general.

First, there is the fact that anyone can comment on anything online, and do so essentially anonymously. In the case of game reviews, whether they put their name on their comment or not, you as a reader have no way of knowing whether they are a real player or a paid reviewer, troll or sock-puppet, and even if they are a real player, whether they are posting a carefully thought-out review, rage-quit reaction or drunken rant. Sometimes the contents of the review gives away the answers to some of the above, but sometimes it doesn't.

Second, there is the idea that because anyone can post a "review" of a game, they must all be qualified to do so. Now before you jump on this, please consider the difference between an opinion and a review. Everyone, as the saying goes, has an opinion, and the internet gives them the means to express that opinion for all to see, but that is not the same as a review. Reviewing is a skill; it's one of the skills of journalism (a profession which has problems of its own, but which nevertheless does require skills to do well). Now that anyone can start a blog, review site or a YouTube channel and call themselves a "reviewer", lots of people do exactly that regardless of whether they actually have any of the necessary skills. On top of these you get people who have do have skills, but those skills are in entertainment rather than journalism. Their "reviews" are great fun to read or watch, and hence get a lot of traction, but don't actually tell you much about the thing they are reviewing because that's not their real focus.

Individually these two situations wouldn't be too bad. We're used to dealing with journalistic bias and sifting through a few obvious rants and heavily-biased reviews to find the more balanced material, but the sheer volume of material, much of it of poor quality in review terms, now makes it much harder to find the worthwhile material among the dross. The result is that we tend to fall more and more into the trap of confirmation bias, reading and believing reviews that confirm our existing suspicions (which may themselves be based on rumours we've seen circulating online). And this is made even worse by search engine algorithms' tendency to feed us results that reinforce our opinions rather than challenging them.

Then, to really mess things up, you get a feedback loop. People read various bits of this mass of material then post their own opinions online, adding to the noise. Slight positive or negative tendencies get amplified into binary choices, where a product is either the best thing since sliced bread or the worst ever (it's a SCAM! the developers LIED!). This feedback loop makes it difficult to to get a decent overview even by trying to look at as many reviews as possible. Once the bandwagon starts rolling, very little will stop it, and there's no guarantee that the direction it takes will have much relation to any kind of objective reality.

Jericho · Post by **Jericho** » Thu, 4. May 17, 17:24

CBJ wrote:I'm probably going to take this discussion a little deeper than Jericho intended,

----

First, there is the fact that anyone can comment on anything online, and do so essentially anonymously.

----

Second, there is the idea that because anyone can post a "review" of a game, they must all be qualified to do so.

Nope, that was pretty much what I was going to follow up with.
The internet has given every moron a voice, whether they deserve it or not. I of course, am exempt, of course my voice is important

I'm still masochistic enough to read comments on youtube videos or the comments on IGN/GameSpot etc. The comments are always the same. It is like a freak show, or the early stages of Britain's Got Talent with all the crap acts.

Game gets reviewed with a 9/10 score.
Comment 1: OMG!!!!111!!! How much did EA pay you?!??!?!??!?!? This game is crap!!!! I'm not buying it!!!!!!

Comment 2: Well of course Bob gave the game 9/10, he loves RPGs. Any other reviewer would have given this rubbish 5/10. I'm not buying it.

Comment 3: Yes!!! I knew this game was going to be good!!! You COD fanboys should play a real game like this!!!!!!

Game gets reviewed with a 7/10 score.
Comment 1: OMG!!!!111!!! How much did EA pay you?!??!?!??!?!? This game is crap!!!! I'm not buying it!!!!!!

Comment 2: IF EA had paid for the review, don't you think the score would be higher?

Comment 3: OMG!!! Your so stupid looooser!!!!! Of course EA paid for the review you looser!!!! If they had paid for a 9/10 score, everyone would be suspicious that this crap game got high score!!!!11!!!!! Fake moon landings conspiracy chem trails sheeple!!!!!!!

etc etc etc.

I only ever leave products bad reviews. My reason being, the bare minimum I expect of a product is that it bloody does what it is supposed to do.

With games/music/film/books, there is always going to be the subjective opinion of the content as well as the actual qualities of it. I dislike games like Doom with the pointless shooting, so I would naturally give it a low score, which is ultimately pointless as a review mechanism. The important stuff is how the UI is, bugs, length, girth, er sorry, AI, sound design, a myriad of other stuff.

Hmmmm, not sure I had a point really.

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Thu, 4. May 17, 20:41

Any review that awards scores is a pointless review, because there is no universal measure against which the scores can have meaning.

The only thing you can do (I think) is find a reviewer who's opinion/presentation style you like and go with them.
For me the list of such reviewers is very small. I like personalities, I have to enjoy anything they do.

Incidentally I didn't know that TotalBiscuit wasn't considered a reviewer, I always thought he was.

Maybe what I think of as a review is different from what most people do.

I never consider any reviewers opinion of how much they actually enjoy a game while playing it all that relevent. I only want to know opinions about the structure/design of the game. How enjoyable it is is a decision that I want to make. TotalBiscuit is good in that regard, with his first playthrough aproach.

apogee · Post by **apogee** » Thu, 4. May 17, 23:54

i usually look at the negative reveiws first as more than often they give a reason. the number of times product a gets 5 stars and the reviewer says "great product" tells you nothing other than they have chosen to add the review after being sent an email asking for a review. if (as someone has already mentioned) there seems to be a trend where a product has a particular problem then avoid.

Though I've seen some nonsense reviews, one person moaned about a game, gave a single star then admitted that the specs of their pc were below the minimum requirements!

i often look for reviews where the reviewer gives enough detail for you to establish that they have similar views to what the product/game is in relation to your own expectations. i.e if they don't like it i probably won't and vice versa.

Stars_InTheirEyes · Post by **Stars_InTheirEyes** » Fri, 5. May 17, 01:11

Its worth remembering that people will always be more vocal if something bad happens, rather than something good, so I'd avoid looking at negative reviews first...

I think aggregate review scoring can work as a decent indicator but I would, say, give it +/- 20% for your own tastes.

I wouldn't look at a metacritic score of, for example, 75 and think "75 implies good but not great, I'll avoid it for now", because to me that 75 could be a 95/100 game, it could also be a 55/100 but that's a risk you take when purchasing any media, at that point I would probably look up some details, screenshots, trailers and then make a decision.

If on Steam, make use of its lax returns policy too, if its not what you like.

Post by **Ketraar** » Fri, 5. May 17, 12:02

Reviews in the traditional sense of people telling others if a thing is good or not are worthless. As X2 pointed out they may address the things I find irrelevant and/or ignore the ones I feel strong about it. Then they slap a number on it to pander to what CBJ wrote about confirmation bias and the notion that anyone cares what random people shout as result of their frustration.

This does not though say there are no valid or useful "reviews". If a person writes about a product, explaining what it is, what it does and what it doesnt, in a sensible way so I can identify FOR MYSELF what the important bits are and if they warrant my interest and money. Which is why I like TB's format, where he goes into lengthy essays on what the game's mechanics and how functional they are so everyone can make up their own damn mind.

But this too is tangled with this thing of modernity where people need to be in camps and that if you are not for us, you are against us mentality, "defending" their camp as if it would define their lives and the future of humanity is at stake. Ironically the same culture has a deep disconnect with all things politics, which actually affects peoples lives in a meaningful way.

MFG

Ketraar

Mightysword · Post by **Mightysword** » Sat, 6. May 17, 02:54

- Most of the game I do played and hate have crap (steam) reviews.

- Most of the game I do play and enjoy ... also have crap reviews.

- Most of the game I do not care to play tend to have positive reviews ...

One of the main issue I have with user's review is that they often not about the game merit, but rather how a players want it to be.

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Sat, 6. May 17, 10:11

I rarely buy games until they have been out for a long time, unless they are new iterations of games series I trust.

In fact Egosoft are the only company who have burned me on this policy with Rebirth....

But I will still buy their next one, albeit not on the first day I can this time, that level of trust needs to be earned back.

Generally by the time I buy a game it's flaws or good points are common knowledge online, so there is no guesswork.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Are reviews of any use?

Are reviews of any use?