Are major game reviewers morally bankrupt at this point? (Wall of Text Warning) (Updated)

[Kaendris]

**UPDATE***

At this point I feel the question has been sufficiently answered. It would seem that the average individual carries any mix of the following feelings.

1. Major game reviewers operate in a different reality than the subjects reading their work. It is expected to have both major and minor difference in quality and opinion due to a myriad of reasons: Limited review time, more critical analysis, less emotional response, less fandom.

2. User Aggregate Scores are worthless. Knee Jerk reactions rule, and the majority opinion does not matter as the majority over reacts.

3. Major game reviewers are not worth paying attention to, unless it happens to be one you personally like.

4. All reviews scores are suspect, and it is the content of the review that matters.

5. Everyone knows IGN is big budget bias, but this is not a sign of the principal point that major review outlets are morally suspect, as not everyone is IGN.

6. The community knows how to spell lambaste .

Feel free to continue the conversation, just know that I received the critical discussion I was searching for.

I do wonder one thing additionally though. People do realize that this was to get a conversation going, not to prove my side or attempt to change another person's mind? It was merely to see what thoughts were regarding the process itself.

Thanks for the input and enjoy your Sunday!!

****Original Post Below*****

So, bias warning, I dislike game reviews in general. I feel they are done for the cash, and include some chap that puts an hour or two into a game and makes what he feels are educated and safe opinions. I generally take them with a large grain of salt, and just wait for the time tested "community" to let the truth be known. That being said, I do not refuse to watch them. Matter of fact, I usually spend a piece of my Sundays browsing them. So understand I already believe that prime time game reviewers ARE morally bankrupt.

Now that the air is clear, here is my scenario/question. I just watched Angry Joe lambaste Rome: Total War II. I do mean lambaste (bwhahaha, thank you for everyone that corrected that for me ) , he shredded it over 43 minutes. Now anyone that watches him can tell you he gets a bit carried away. So I hop over to meta-critic, see this [http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/total-war-rome-ii] and almost spit my coffee in shock. So I check IGN, and low and behold, they have given it an 8.8...

So - Metacritic Professional Reviews - 80%
IGN - 8.8
User - 3.8

How does that happen? How can the community and users playing the game end up with SUCH a different experience than the people that are paid to do this professionally? Are we dealing with a case of users having knee jerk "i don't like this therefore everything about it sucks" reactions? Is this a case of professionals using critical thought to it's mightiest extent, allowing the bad to be forgiven outright in favor of patches and initial intention?

Lastly, as game developers and advert spots only report on professional reviews, is it fair that such an imbalance is allowed to exist? Could this be considered inherent bias and intentional attempts to mislead and sell a false product to the public?

I personally feel reviews are seldom worth the paper they are printed on, as they are only printed for paper. Yet, I am disappointed that they still have the power to drive sales and generate hype in the manner they do.

Your thoughts?

(Captcha = "high horse", touche Escapist, touche...)

 

[deleted139124]

DELETED

 

[TheIceQueen]

You have to really look for the context in such a disparity between the professional reviewers and normal gamers. Let's forget IGN for this and just take note that the professional reviews are hovering at about 80%.

Now, this issue could come from several different places and I doubt any of them involves being morally bankrupt. One problem I see being an issue is that with games like Total War, if you're a professional reviewer, you might not have enough time to really hunker down and dig into the meat of the game, get down and dirty, see it for all of its faults. Maybe it's like with MovieBob and Man of Steel. He liked it at first, but thought it just a little disappointing. Then, after he had time to digest it, he began to hate it more. Except with most reviewers, you've got to keep moving on and going to the next game. Normal gamers will have more time to digest it than reviewers.

Or perhaps it's a situation like with Mass Effect 3, where it got bombed by a lot of gamers with low scores for it's bad ending. There are more cases of games getting bombed on MetaCritic as well, but for the life of me, I can't recall them at the moment.

Still, I doubt this has anything to do with people being paid off or being morally bankrupt or anything like that.

 

[Kaendris]

Still, I doubt this has anything to do with people being paid off or being morally bankrupt or anything like that.

Understand that by morally bankrupt, I do not mean bought and paid for by a developer company, as I would lack any evidence to prove that.

However, it is a well known practice [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/06/duke-nukems-pr-threatens-to-punish-sites-that-run-negative-reviews/] that a reviewer can be blacklisted by production companies for negative reviews. I doubt IGN has to deal with this problem as they are too large to ignore, but I also doubt everyone is as fortunate.

So please understand, when I say morally bankrupt, I mean not invested in the truth. Which is morally bankrupt.

 

[TheIceQueen]

Still, I doubt this has anything to do with people being paid off or being morally bankrupt or anything like that.

Understand that by morally bankrupt, I do not mean bought and paid for by a developer company, as I would lack any evidence to prove that.

However, it is a well known practice [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/06/duke-nukems-pr-threatens-to-punish-sites-that-run-negative-reviews/] that a reviewer can be blacklisted by production companies for negative reviews. I doubt IGN has to deal with this problem as they are too large to ignore, but I also doubt everyone is as fortunate.

So please understand, when I say morally bankrupt, I mean not invested in the truth. Which is morally bankrupt.

You should probably edit your OP, then, to make that more clear. One man's trash is another man's treasure, and the same can be true for morals.

Really, though, if I were you, I'd just avoid using such phrases otherwise you'll find your threads devolving into arguments about the poorly-used phrase rather than the actual point of what you were getting at.

 

[Kaendris]

Really, though, if I were you, I'd just avoid using such phrases otherwise you'll find your threads devolving into arguments about the poorly-used phrase rather than the actual point of what you were getting at.

Heh, nah, I was not arguing with you, just clarifying what I meant by morally bankrupt. I feel you were focused on monetary payoff, which led me to believe you were unaware of the blacklist practice.

No need to change the title though, as to me, being the one that wrote the post, it is morally bankrupt.

Thanks for the response and a chance to clarify though .

 

[shrekfan246]

How does that happen? How can the community and users playing the game end up with SUCH a different experience than the people that are paid to do this professionally? Are we dealing with a case of users having knee jerk "i don't like this therefore everything about it sucks" reactions? Is this a case of professionals using critical thought to it's mightiest extent, allowing the bad to be forgiven outright in favor of patches and initial intention?

Take a gander at DmC, Mass Effect 3, Company of Heroes 2, Diablo III, Gone Home, Fez, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, and many, many more older ones that I can't really be bothered remembering at the moment.

Metacritic user reviews are only reliable at showing how easily denizens of the internet let their butthurt get the better of them. Rome II in particular is currently being review-bombed because it released in an incredibly buggy state; Or at least, that's what I'm led to believe. I don't really care enough to check it out myself, as I've seen more than my fair share of angry Metacritic users over the past year and a half.

Getting that out of the way, any reviewer who would alter or misrepresent their opinion out of a fear of being blacklisted is a reviewer I wouldn't care to follow in the first place. As a person who isn't directly involved with video game reviewers, I have no evidence for how often it happens, but I doubt it's any sort of majority. IGN is a particularly bad benchmark to use, as well, given their penchant for fellating pretty much everything that functions on a technical level and isn't anime-esque.

At the end of the day, it really comes down (or at least should) to personal opinions and experience. Video game reviewers likely play a drastically higher amount of absolute tripe compared to normal gamers; As such, they might be more forgiving toward a mechanically sound game that's rough around the edges. At the same time, many might not have the same long-standing experience with a given franchise, and thus don't have any context for why 'fans' think Changes A and B totally ruined the new game. Or, they might think Changes A and B were positive changes. There's a whole host of reasons why reactionary gamers might respond far more negatively to perceived slights when compared to aggregated reviewers.

 

[skywolfblue]

How does that happen? How can the community and users playing the game end up with SUCH a different experience than the people that are paid to do this professionally? Are we dealing with a case of users having knee jerk "i don't like this therefore everything about it sucks" reactions? Is this a case of professionals using critical thought to it's mightiest extent, allowing the bad to be forgiven outright in favor of patches and initial intention?

I haven't played the game in question, but my guess is "Yes".

This wouldn't be the first time Users have bombed Metacritic scores way out of proportion.

Major reviewers tend to be a bit more... stable?... about their reviews. There is more detail and description that goes into a professional review, a listing of the games strengths and weaknesses, that isn't present in the average "Dumb game 0/10" metacritic user comment.

As to major reviewers being morally bankrupt, some probably are, but not all.
More often then not, most of the reviews I've seen have a decent level of truth if you consider their likes/dislikes/biases.
Only the rare few are completely dishonest.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

On one side you have users that will get angry over the smallest of things and on the other you have professional reviewers that will give a game singing praises and a large score because talks about social justice issues. You're going to have knee jerk reactions on both sides, they just express themselves differently.

Then there's the middle ground where both the users and the reviewers will agree on something. Sonic 2006 was pretty much panned by most critics and the community.

 

[TehCookie]

I can't remember who said this, but reviewers review for the masses, not just for gamers. If a major reviewer gives the game a good score, it's because they think joe blow off the street will like it. They don't actually judge the content of the game as being good or not, but rather if they think people will like it.

While as a niche gamer, I find reviews like that to be terrible. I want to know if this niche game is good for someone who likes niche games. I hate it when good niche games get a bad score for niche appeal, and then you can't tell the good ones from the bad ones. Same reasons fans feel a game will ruin a series but someone who doesn't know about it is fine with it, so the scorer rates it high but the community rates it low.

 

[Kaendris]

I'm a writer for a website. I don't feel obligated to boost a score, I don't get emails requesting to take it easy.

Send me a pm with the website you work for, I would like to read some of your articles.

edit* nvm found it

 

[Windcaler]

One of the main problems with your example is your using metacritic. A site where anyone can (and has) blasted a game. If I went on metacritic how many user scores would be 0.0 indicating a game that literally doesn't work? How many of these users played the game for 10 minutes, half and hour, an hour, or two hours before they put it down to never pick it up again? How many wrote anything about the actual game? I hope you see where Im going with this.

On the professional side of metacritic its been proven that metacritic makes certain scores from certain reviewers count more (or less) when averaging the professional reviewed score. They have never revealed the totals but awhile back a college team collected data over a 12 or 18 month period and came out with the totals. This is outright score manipulation and frankly I find it disgusting that they would do that when you consider how much power that site has (for reasons beyond my understanding)

On the other hand I think youre right to question how such vast differences of opinion can come out from professional reviewers vs regular players. However look at your source for professional reviewers. You've selected a company that routinely gives high scores to big buget titles that post advertising all over their website. While simultaneously calling cult classics like godhand garbage. Rather then going to IGN I suggest you 1. Find at least 1 reviwer that has your same tastes and 2. Read multiple reviews of said individuals.

That all said, at the end of the day people can dislike games for different reasons. Reviews are subjective opinions afterall. If someone says they don't like dark souls because its too hard for them that's a legitimate reason for them to mark the game down in their own subjective review. At the same time I love every aspect of that game so I have just as legitimate a reason to mark the game up in my own review. To be fair, reviews based solely on the reviewers tastes are quite horrible though. If you want a good example of a review that was well done and hoped to inform all kinds of players I suggest you look up EpicNameBro on youtube and check out his Dragon's crown review its the best one I can think of in recent memory that Ive seen. He set out to inform players and he did the best thing at the end by not giving any kind of score (which I wish more reviwers would do since a subjective opinion cant be represented by a numerical formula)

 

[Best of the 3]

Firstly I never trust user reviews by mass loads of people as a large amount of them tend to be the 10/1 extremists. As for professional reviewers, there's the chance that they may have been bribed to give it a higher score. There's also the chance that they haven't played it enough to actually give it the score it deserves. Joe for example played Rome 2 for 40+ hours, staying up nearly all day (on one day I think) simply to play that game. Other professional reviewers may not have that time, with other games to play or other things that need their attention, and therefore have to base their reviews on their kneejerk reactions to the game in a certain sense. I myself haven't played Rome 2 so I have no idea how obvious these problems are.

 

[88chaz88]

Morally bankrupt? How much more over-dramatic can you get?

 

[The_Echo]

Now that the air is clear, here is my scenario/question. I just watched Angry Joe lamb-blast Rome: Total War II. I do mean Lamb-blast, he shredded it over 43 minutes. Now anyone that watches him can tell you he gets a bit carried away. So I hop over to meta-critic, see this [http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/total-war-rome-ii] and almost spit my coffee in shock. So I check IGN

Why are you checking IGN? Their review reputation precedes them tenfold.

I tend to look at Joystiq and Escapist reviews exclusively. I trust those sites and their ratings tend to be fair. I also tend to trust Famitsu scores, though I never actually read the reviews.

Going to the mainstream/big-name outlets will net you scores deemed worthy for the mainstream market and its interests.

So - Metacritic Professional Reviews - 80%
IGN - 8.8
User - 3.8

Don't trust a user review aggregate.

This is the Internet. A user review can say "game didn't work on my PC" (and then not even verify whether or not their PC could ever run said game) and give the game a 0/10.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I don't really think that there exists sufficient evidence to make a claim of moral bankruptcy. In the case of Rome Total War for example, it is entirely possible that reviewers did, in general, enjoy the game thus explaining it's high score. Given that this particular game is a niche product from Sega, to assume that the wheels were greased is silly; no matter what the score the audience for the game is limited. The user score on the other hand is trivially easy to explain: users do not, in general, assign a score based upon the relative quality of the game in question but rather upon how closely the game matches their expectations. Beyond that, you'll get negative reviews from users who, for one reason or another, could not make the product run acceptably on their computer.

By and large, all you demonstrate here is that there is fundamentally little use in the entire system of reviews on all sides. A game that is highly rated by professionals is, at best, a game that runs well, has interesting systems, functional mechanics, and may (or may not) have an interesting tale to tell. User reviews on the other hand are similarly useless as the aggregate score is altered by factors well outside the game's control - everything from reviews based on nothing more than perceived reputation of the company responsible to basic technical issues. Neither score is particularly useful when it comes to making a purchase decision. That leads right back to the most important thing to remember about reviews: a review from an unknown source simply isn't useful. You have to find a source who has a demonstrated history of expressing similar tastes to your own for actual useful data.

 

[TreuloseTomate]

User ratings can offer some useful information, not just in video game reviews. I'm not familiar with Total War, but I'm sure it doesn't deserve a 3.8 rating. But that's not the point. A low user rating shows that there is some kind of issue with this game. Mass Effect 3 comes to mind. Professional reviews didn't mention how exorbitantly bad the ending was, and even though it was arguably a good game, user reviews gave it lots of 1.0s mainly because of the ending (maybe also for the day1 dlc). While user scores are definitely unfairly low in cases like this, they often contain valid criticisms and allow you to make a better informed decision.
The same applies to something like youtube videos. Whenever a video has a low rating you can be sure there is some problem with the content of the video or its creator, or some controversial topic is discussed and you can read the criticisms in the comments - if they aren't disabled, which would make the video immediately suspicous.