Broder Salsa
Banned
Everyone who rated heavy rain less than 9 are now banned.
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Metacritic Bans Group of Users for Unfair Scores
- Thread starter LiK
- Start date
Zero-Crescent
Member
According to Klepek's article, two of the games that were hit were Bastion and Toy Soldiers: Cold War. Unless these were just general trolls who randomly hit other titles, it should be pretty easy to tell which DF they're with.CadetMahoney said:Something* Defence Force activity confirmed. Could be any group of fanboys until we know what games they hit.
Hmm? Yelp has people that actually screen reviews and only those reviewers who have been consistent (negative or positive towards an aspect of a location) have their reviews counted towards the "rating". You can't just go on there and say "THIS PLACE SUCKS, WOW SO DISAPPOINTED". You have to review many places in a detailed manner and back up your claims.Davidion said:
Still, if you do write a one-time review, it is still displayed but does not go into the final score. Sounds good to me.
sk3tch said:
It's better than making it based on sales revenue alone. Good advertising or popular properties can result in good sales even when the game itself is crap. At least tying bonuses to higher review scores from critics is an effort, however shaky, at providing incentive to produce a better product.
Chuckpebble
Member
Dave Long said:
The bottom of that slippery slope is everything is a 5.
Zero-Crescent
Member
Indeed. As the article said, no publisher looks at user reviews when considering bonuses, but small independent developers can be affected when they're finding a publisher for their next game. If a prospective publisher sees that critics loved the developer's previous game and users hated it, they might deny the dev's request. Plus, since it's a small game, they don't have enough of a fanbase to balance out the trolls, so they're stuck.LiK said:
CadetMahoney
Member
CadetMahoney said:Something* Defence Force activity confirmed. Could be any group of fanboys until we know what games they hit.
Zero-Crescent said:
Elementary my dear Watson...
Pretty much open and shut case then. Nice little bookmark for future reference. Can't believe they'd be so butthurt, but then again it shouldn't be surprising to anyone this gen.
The fanboy situation in this industry is beyond ridiculous. Exclusives get a 10 or a 0, and now it extends to dev preferences. They should just eliminate user scores.
Pro reviews definately have flaws, but at least there's some that can give a reasonable description of the game. The immaturity of fans have made user scores a complete waste of time.
Pro reviews definately have flaws, but at least there's some that can give a reasonable description of the game. The immaturity of fans have made user scores a complete waste of time.
Agent X
Member
I rarely ever read the user reviews on Metacritic, just because there are so many crazed fanatics that skew the reviews for/against games or developers that they like/dislike, or happen to be exclusive for a system they like/dislike.
Perhaps what is needed is for a way for other readers to "rate the reviewers". Anyone who wants to write a user review needs to register for an account. Then, their peers can vote these reviews up or down. If certain reviewers tend to tilt too heavily in one direction or another, or have a blatant bias (for example, frequently rating exclusive games on one system very high, while rating exclusive games on a competing system very low), then they could be flagged.
Another idea that I just thought of is that they could make it a requirement for anyone posting a user review to vote up or down a previous user review on the same game. I remember seeing something like this on some review site somewhere--you were not permitted to post your review unless you voted on someone else's review as well (and I think they limited your voting choices to the 5 or 6 most recently posted reviews). Obviously, the very first user review for a game would be immune to that requirement, but everyone else would have to contribute to the peer rating system in order to make it work.
Perhaps what is needed is for a way for other readers to "rate the reviewers". Anyone who wants to write a user review needs to register for an account. Then, their peers can vote these reviews up or down. If certain reviewers tend to tilt too heavily in one direction or another, or have a blatant bias (for example, frequently rating exclusive games on one system very high, while rating exclusive games on a competing system very low), then they could be flagged.
Another idea that I just thought of is that they could make it a requirement for anyone posting a user review to vote up or down a previous user review on the same game. I remember seeing something like this on some review site somewhere--you were not permitted to post your review unless you voted on someone else's review as well (and I think they limited your voting choices to the 5 or 6 most recently posted reviews). Obviously, the very first user review for a game would be immune to that requirement, but everyone else would have to contribute to the peer rating system in order to make it work.
Neuromancer
Member
How about you can't give a game a score without writing a short review? And if your review says something dumb like "this game is on the Xbox and the XBox sucks" they delete your review?Agent X said:
semiconscious
Gold Member
the gaming industry relying on metacritic is actually worse than the financial industry relying on the rating agencies 
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...specialguy
Banned
I imagine they're talking about the Sony fanboys that target 360 exclusives on metacritic.
Lol I just wandered over to MC to randomly look at Gears 3 and see if theyre still at it. First thing I notice is Gears has a 91 critic average but a suspiciously low 7.8 user score. Normal for 360 exclusives on MC far as i Know. Then I scroll down a bit and the third review (Jordan23) confirms...
Lol I just wandered over to MC to randomly look at Gears 3 and see if theyre still at it. First thing I notice is Gears has a 91 critic average but a suspiciously low 7.8 user score. Normal for 360 exclusives on MC far as i Know. Then I scroll down a bit and the third review (Jordan23) confirms...
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
CrunchyFrog said:
To play devil's advocate, if the paychecks depend the quality of work being put out, what besides reviews should people reference to assess quality? Metacritic has faults but it's far from arbitrary.
Anyway, my opinion is that even if Metacritic started out as a buyer's guide or a fun stats experiment, it's now treated seriously by the industry and determines real outcomes for real people. Therefore Metacritic needs to get their shit together and do what they can to ensure the quality of their data, just like any other researcher or research organization.
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
Gez said:
So they have this information about Edge, do we know if they use it to weight how their scores go into the average? One of the popular complaints about the system is that it converts all kinds of different scales to a single scale. This of course is entirely possible if done carefully and doesn't invalidate the results, but some people think it does.
It's not arbitrary, but it's inaccurate and useless data. If XSEED ports a niche JRPG that their fans adore, but IGN and GameInformer give it 5/10s, does that mean that game is a 50% game? No, ask the people the game was made for and they'd tell you it's a 9 or a 10. At that point it doesn't serve its original purpose at all and is completely meaningless.hey_it's_that_dog said:
You are correct, which tells you all you need to know about the actual value of reviews when it comes to paying bonuses to developers.Chuckpebble said:
Video game reviews were never intended to be an aggregated metric, arbitrarily weighted by a site who will not explain their weighting methods, used to determine the livelihood of the people who make videogames. Only stupid executives would turn it into that, and I feel really bad for the people who get paid (or don't) based on this particular valueless aggregation site.
I wrote an editorial some years ago about how games are perceived to have certain value based on "quality" because they are computer constructs and therefore there is this perception of mechanical perfection that can be achieved. This is why some reviewers break games down into minute bits and categorize everything as if there's some standard each piece should be held to.
That's entirely the wrong way to evaluate video games.
Good reviewers will look at the product the same as they would a film or book and understand the game as a whole, not as a bunch of parts. Unfortunately, that's way beyond the ability of most people writing videogame reviews today and those who can do it get pushed out of the journalism side because they actually want to be paid to give their opinion.