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[StrategyFan]

"professional" reviews are only suited for interactive movies. they're already archaic when you look at the most popular games, and amending scores won't change that
they generally need to figure out how to deal with games that don't release in a finished state

what score does league of legends have? hearthstone? world of warcraft? whatever iphone casino crap has 200 million players?
nobody knows

 

[mas8705]

Hate to say it, but reviews are indeed based on the status of said game when it comes out. If a patch comes out later to fix some of the issues, then great, but usually that isn't how things work out.

Honestly to not make this a sudden "DC Films" argument, but it could be seen just like it in the sense of how "The issues with the film are resolved in the 'Extended Edition'! Some people don't want to wait for the extended edition for the issues with the film to be resolved, they were expecting the complete story at the time when they go see the movie the first time around.

It can suck that a score does take a hit if it does get fixed in the future, but that in some people's eyes, something that can be "patched" later meant that it was rushed to meet a deadline, and it shows.

 

[Icyflamez96]

I'm not a fan of giving companies leeway for releasing an incomplete product. Anything that might pressure them into waiting until their product is actually finished before releasing it is a good thing IMO.

People are always so caught up with spiting the company. Reviews are supposed to be consumer friendly. If there is a patch that changes something to an important degree, updating the content of a review and its score would be the consumer friendly thing to do.

 

[AndyD]

Yeah....that's true too, changing scores can give developers the idea they can release incomplete products, but I do wonder how many game sales were missed because people were stuck on those Metacritic/Open Critic scores not being good enough.

I think we need to think of reviews as whether they benefit the consumer as that's who they are primarily for.

From that perspective I think we should actually encourage reviews to be as accurate as possible for the product at the given time, and make any shortcomings clear. Then we should also encourage them to be amended as things largely improve or get patched and make that explicitly clear in the writeup. No more high reviews based on "game shows promise" "servers will improve" "these are day one difficulties" "a couple of major bugs which will clearly get patched". At the same time, if I buy a game 6 months after release, a review of 6/10 because servers were dead day one is not terribly useful to me or anyone else looking at the game.

So this should also be an incentive for developers to put out a good game to begin with, rather than be subjected to early negative reviews.

 

[Gotdatmoney]

If the review doesnt adress the current product what vakue does it serve. Reviewers dont have time to rereview games so moot point but like, if the game ran like shit and 6 months later it runs smooth then why should I read a review today stating it runs like shit?

 

[Deleted member 465307]

If reviews are a critique of a piece of art as it was upon release, I don't think reviews should be updated. However, I don't think too many of the larger sites see reviews in this way.

If reviews are a buying guide for consumers, I think all digital-only games should have review scores be updated since you can guarantee that someone will get the final patched version when they download it if they're doing so immediately after reading a review. I like the idea of physical games getting footnotes. Eventually, it might be reasonable to assume that everyone has internet and treat all games the same.

I do hear the concerns about this encouraging developers to release broken games and patch them later, but I wonder if a reviewer should be thinking about those consequences if they're writing for consumers. I don't have an answer to that.

I also wonder how it would work if reviewers gave games two scores: one for offline players and one for players with online. This is just am idea I haven't put much thought into, so it could be terrible. It would likely change the way online mutliplayer and campaigns are considered in reviews, not just patches.

 

[yanipheonu]

The answer is it's getting harder to tell what a "complete game" is.

There are games like Persona 5 or Zelda; BOTW where they are full games on a disc, but there are plenty of game that necessarily change all the time.

How do you fully review an Mmo, or an online game that changes every other week? Do you have to change a review if DLC comes out?

It's such a unique problem to games too. They don't patch movies (though there are clearly alternate/extended cuts)

It honestly just seems like something that comes down to how a publication or reviewers chooses to handle it. There doesn't seem to be right answer.

 

[Afrodium]

I think this really comes down to what you consider the purpose of a review to be. Is it a critique of a product meant to score the developers on their product on the day of release versus other products at their time of release, or is a review a tool to help a consumer make an informed purchase? In the latter, updated reviews are preferred and consumer friendly.

Most game outlets don't have the bandwidth to update all of their reviews as patches come out though so this will never happen.

 

[Patrick S.]

German sites go back and revisit games that changed a lot since release, like the Anno, Civilization or "X" space games after there have been some significant expansions, for example. Going back to first person shooter xyz after a year because they fixed some bugs isn't really worth it on the other hand, IMO.

 

[InsaneFandom]

Ideally I think there should be an added section to a review (prominently at the top) when this happens, but the review & score itself should stay the same.
I get that this isn't really practical though, at least not for every game with notable post-launch changes

I was thinking of buying Lair a few years after release & iirc all of the reviews I read focused on the unwieldy six axis controls being pretty awful. But a traditional control scheme option was patched in sometime after release so those reviews weren't really helpful in judging the game any more.

 

[The Baron Count]

Reviews are supposed to exist as a tool for consumers to use to make an informed purchase. And plenty of people read reviews for games a few years old when they are in the market for something they may not have played at launch. What the OP is describing is the exact purpose that they are supposed to serve.

It is not the reviewer's job to punish developers just because angry people on the internet like to have an us versus them mentality. If you take the release of a mediocre game personally, then that is an issue with you. So yes, updating a review to be more accurate for a person that may be reading it currently is something that I think should be done.

However I am of the opinion and always have been that review scores should be done away with altogether. They serve no real purpose in my mind other than to give people something to argue about. If you really care about what a reviewer thinks then read the review. Metacritic even has short little excerpts that sum up the reviewer's thoughts if you really can't be bothered.

I also feel that the idiotic importance that publishers have started placing on metacritic would almost instantly disappear if review scores were taken out of the equation.

 

[jroc74]

I used to say no, but then I thought about how Consumer Reports changed dont recommend to recommend for some products.

Just make sure the orig review is left intact and put UPDATE: Like how articles get updates to them.

Review scores? Same thing. If they want to give it a different score, leave the orig intact and put it with the update.

 

[CamHostage]

I do hear the concerns about this encouraging developers to release broken games and patch them later, but I wonder if a reviewer should be thinking about those consequences if they're writing for consumers. I don't have an answer to that.

And also, the damage of releasing a broken game is damage done. The idea that the internet's etch-a-sketch would be totally shaken if ever a reviewer changed a score isn't realistic; there'll still be tons of scores that don't change (be it policy or viability) and there'll even be hard-liners commenting on those changed scores arguing about how they got burnt by the launch and don't feel a game should get a second shot.

A huge quantity of a game's success depends on its launch performance. It's just not realistic to believe that developers are looking at potentially amendable review scores as a tactical method for releasing a game in a shitty state. If a developer is able to make a comeback after a bad launch and they get the credit for the effort via updated opinion writing, then swell, but it's a huge hole that they'd have to dig themselves out of and no guarantee that there's solid ground above to reach.

I also wonder how it would work if reviewers gave games two scores: one for offline players and one for players with online.

It'd be a nice reader service, but the "business" of reviews is so entrenched in old methodology that it'd take something radical to change it. Advertisers and retailers want the simplest method of getting the message to already-fickle customers, MetaCritic wants one big number to splash on the page (I'm not sure why we still care about MC, but it still has some cache,) Google won't be adjusting its scorebox methods to accommodate game sites going off the beaten path, and even readers balk at taking seriously any complex method of scoring (we used to have places like GamePro and IGN/GameSpot doing different value scores, or EGM - still Famitsu - doing multiple reviews in the same magazine; nowadays, readers get mad if one review site's score is wildly different from the consensus ... egads, the Tomatometer is ruined!)

Any site could do split reviews (are there not sites that do?), but chances are the results won't won't be utilized well by sub-services or readers.

 

[prag16]

Nobody gives a shit what released on launch day except launch day buyers.

Reviews that don't update are failing the reader, period. If the game isn't the same as it was 6 months ago and the review is stale it's not useful. The reason reviewers don't do it is because it's a ton of work and they have a million other reviews to write, but that's a business problem. Stop trying to peddle this as some sort of integrity thing.

This. The "integrity" angle is irrelevant. And the contention that updating reviews months later is going to incentivize companies to release more broken/unfinished products is ridiculous. It doesn't reverse bad word of mouth or bad sales around launch. And around launch is where most AAA games make most of their money.

 

[Radnom]

Ideally, I would love if the reviews were updated to show the current state of the game - but I can't really expect reviewers to keep going back and updating all their reviews. I often pick up games much later and the current state of the game is far more important to know than the original state. Sometimes updates can drastically change a game.

For those saying it'd encourage developers to released broken games and update them later, early reviews are so important for sales that still don't think that'd be an ideal situation. On top of that, wouldn't it more encourage reviewers to be harsher because "the developer could always go and fix all the issues"?

 

[matrixman92]

I remember way back when drive club was given new scores I said I disagreed with it and got bashed over and over by people here

 

[EmCeeGramr]

I've been bummed that the move toward amended/updated reviews for popular or evolving games kind of sputtered out. I understand that view that it's somehow "rewarding developers for releasing incomplete games" (regardless of whether the game was in any way "incomplete" or not; patches don't mean that at all), but I'm definitely in the camp that sees reviews as losing value except of historical interest if they don't reflect the game as it currently exists.

I get that the deck was stacked against this stuff to begin with; Metacritic doesn't accept changed scores (for a mostly outdated reason), and unless the game is super popular there's probably not much incentive for a writer to clear time on their schedule to revisit a title they've already covered.