Should game reviews be updated after patches?

[Bob_McMillan]

For example, AssCreed Unity. It's scores mainly suffered due to the horrible state the game was in. Frame rate, glitches, and that hilarious yet scary face bug.

But if they managed to fix all these bugs (I don't know if they already did, even if it was fixed I wouldn't be buying the game) then should reviewers change the score of their original review,or at least update it a bit? The only problem I can see with this is that some people might feel that a game deserves a bad score forever despite patches or updates, to teach the developers a lesson. So how about two scores? One for the launch version, another for the current version.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I don't like the idea of a game review being "updated", but I don't have a problem with a new review being uploaded if significant changes were made.

Doesn't really make sense, I know.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Doesn't really make sense, I know.

Pretty much. Care to elaborate?

 

[The Madman]

Depends on the game itself, the issues it faced, and the changes those patches have made.

-If there were an online game that received a massive patch that drastically altered the game for either better or worse in such a way as to be impossible to ignore, then it could warrant a revision.

-A game that's simply buggy and is later patched to fix said bugs however, well, any consumer smart enough to be looking up reviews in the first place is probably also smart enough to look up what issues have since been fixed or not.

The difference being in my first example the game itself is changed from it's original version that was reviewed. It's a different product, maybe not in the sense of a full sequel or anything but different nonetheless. In the second example all the patches are trying to do is fix problems that shouldn't really have been there to begin with, I don't really think that warrants a re-review so much as maybe a footnote saying 'this and this and this have since been fixed' if the writer is really dedicated.

That's my take anyway.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Pretty much. Care to elaborate?

Hmm... how to put it.

If handled poorly, "updating" a review could effectively "scrub" a company's poor release record clean. If a developer has a track record of AC:U type release screw-ups, I don't want to risk not knowing about it because of "revised" reviews.

Similarly, a "retraction" review (something like the "two scores" option) is better, it still incentivises a rushed launch followed by patches instead of trying for a quality product at launch. It's not about punishing devs so much as not giving them more of an incentive to rush things.

That said, if someone comes along and simply reviews a game later, whether they did before or not, that's fine. It's still valuable knowledge. I just don't want a dev or producer to bank on "fixing" their reviews later.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Pretty much. Care to elaborate?

Hmm... how to put it.

If handled poorly, "updating" a review could effectively "scrub" a company's poor release record clean. If a developer has a track record of AC:U type release screw-ups, I don't want to risk not knowing about it because of "revised" reviews.

Similarly, a "retraction" review (something like the "two scores" option) is better, it still incentivises a rushed launch followed by patches instead of trying for a quality product at launch. It's not about punishing devs so much as not giving them more of an incentive to rush things.

That said, if someone comes along and simply reviews a game later, whether they did before or not, that's fine. It's still valuable knowledge. I just don't want a dev or producer to bank on "fixing" their reviews later.

Hmmm, thanks. I think I see what you are saying.

 

[NPC009]

A review, to me, is a look at the game at a specific moment in time. For games without any noteworthy updates those reviews will be relevant for years, in other cases it'll just be a few months. That's fine.

Updating the reviews later would just be validating shitty practices like releasing bugridden games and patch 'em up after a month or two. I'd rather see critics come back to games that had major updates with new reviews. For instance, GOTY-editions or MMOs after they've been around for a year.

 

[LaoJim]

No dice - In order to thoroughly review a game, a reviewer needs to put in between 20-40 hours of work. Practically every game gets at least a few patches, so reviewers can hardly be expected to review a game every time it gets patched - even if its only a case of playing it for an additional hour to see if the patches work. Thus you have a situation where the reviewers have to prioritize which games should get the additional review time and which ones shouldn't. Typically the higher profile and the bigger a screw up it was the more likely it would be to get a second bite of the cherry - hardly fair to those smaller developers and the ones that got the game out the door in a working condition.

Frankly we have a situation where companies are a) increasing pushing you to buy the game early and b) increasingly unable to ship a working product by release day, I don't see a whole lot of reason for reviewers to do the companies any favours here. Think about theatre productions - if a critic goes to an opening night and its dreadful, its not their job to go back a week later and see if the cast have got any better (even though they frequently do...)

Incidentally, what kind of state is AC Unity these days? Working?

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

This is something I've thought to be a problem with game reviews for several years. Patches can fundamentally change how well, or even how a game works, look at Diablo III. I don't think the solution is updating reviews, but removing some of the scoring of the game based on how the game works technically, since that only reflects how well the game works at launch. Focus more on the gameplay, story and design instead of technical prowess. Give the publishers, let's say, 2 weeks to patch the game to sufficiently playable condition. After that everyone is free to shit on the game as much as they like, provided there is enough good in the game to not warrant that at launch.

 

[Mutant1988]

No.

If they sell you the product "as is" then it should be reviewed "as is".

If developers and publishers don't like it they are free to ship games without game breaking bugs.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

The only update they should include is a disclaimer either at the beginning or end of the review stating that certain issues have been fixed and include the date of the patch (obviously the review itself will be dated too). Even then I don't think it reviewers should feel obliged to do that.

The actual review itself should remain untouched.

 

[C_sector]

Games shouldnt be released in such a broken state to begin with. But hey, thats just me.

 

[J Tyran]

No but adding a clear "update" saying "the performance, stability and bugs have been fixed as of xx/xx/xxxx" is fine and useful for the consumer. Clearing away the history of a publisher with poor releases though denies the consumer valuable information, if they have a history of broken titles people may want to avoid them near or at launch.

 

[MajorTomServo]

Nope. If you're not ready for showtime, don't go out on stage.

Plus all those poor reviewers would never get to sleep with all the review updates they would have to write.

 

[OneCatch]

For example, AssCreed Unity. It's scores mainly suffered due to the horrible state the game was in. Frame rate, glitches, and that hilarious yet scary face bug.

But if they managed to fix all these bugs (I don't know if they already did, even if it was fixed I wouldn't be buying the game) then should reviewers change the score of their original review,or at least update it a bit? The only problem I can see with this is that some people might feel that a game deserves a bad score forever despite patches or updates, to teach the developers a lesson. So how about two scores? One for the launch version, another for the current version.

I think that if a reviewer wanted to do such a thing then fine, but I don't think that developers should be in a position to expect it. And I'm not sure that it would benefit viewers in the long term.
If you release a broken-as-fuck game then it's kind of your own fault if you get crap reviews. For any product first impressions are important, games are no different. Don't see why reviewers should be encouraged to double their workload to offset developer laziness.

One other point - games depreciate in value extremely quickly. I don't think it's completely unreasonable that reviewers cater more to those which pay the most for a game on day 1, and encourage developers to focus on that audience.

 

[BeerTent]

Remember when games were sold "as is" and not a colossal buggy fuck-mess because you couldn't patch out bugs with regression testing by using your customers as testers?

Yeah. No. Keep reviews the same.

 

[Flammablezeus]

It's up to the reviewer as far as I'm concerned. The original review should always be there though. Don't forget that many people can't afford or don't have access to internet.

 

[DEAD34345]

As long as the reviewer is clear on what has or has not been changed, I wouldn't really care either way. If I were creating reviews personally, I'd probably just add an extra paragraph at the end of the review detailing what had changed if it was actually major enough to require a second look.

 

[suitepee7]

The only update they should include is a disclaimer either at the beginning or end of the review stating that certain issues have been fixed and include the date of the patch (obviously the review itself will be dated too). Even then I don't think it reviewers should feel obliged to do that.

The actual review itself should remain untouched.

Yeah I think this system pretty much nails it. The Devs have released a product, and if they weren't happy with it, it shouldn't of been released so soon. The old version should be preserved, as testament to the standard that the devs/publishers deemed to be acceptable, and while reviewers are welcome to make additions, any disclaimers added should be seen as a courtesy, not a requirement.

 

[shrekfan246]

For singleplayer games, I don't think it matters too much. Very few actually get updates which are significant enough to warrant returning to a review at a later point, and when enough has been changed it typically gets a relaunch anyway ("Definitive" and "Remastered" editions, etc.) so new reviews do tend to come up.

But for MMOs? Hell yes, I do think they should be revisited. Most of them have really terrible or at best mediocre launches, and then they're in a state of being constantly updated from then on. In pretty short order all of the information given by every review for the game becomes entirely useless because it reflects a bare minimum of things still remaining in the game. They'll occasionally get new reviews when expansions come out, but even that is typically just kept to the behemoths like World of Warcraft. I bet the only reason Marvel Heroes 2015 got any sort of reception at all was because it rebranded and relaunched. Honestly, that seems to be the only way to play the market right now. Warframe is a completely different game than it was when it launched; the only thing that's still similar is the core mechanic of combat itself. All of the reviews for the game contain useless, outdated information, because they were all written over a year ago (most were two years ago).