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Wow TouchArcade removed their review for my game..... really?

Long story short, we made a mistake. It's E3 week, Jared and I are in cellular purgatory at the LA convention center and we had a miscommunication with Brad who is manning the command center from home as we feed him information from the show floor. Brad should've sent you an email explaining the situation and starting a conversation with you about it.
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What the fuck. Obvious damage control is obvious.
Source
 
Wow, how ridiculous.

I like to read threads like this after threads like the one where the guy dances with his copy of Skyrim. A lot of people say stuff like "I don't see what the problem is, it's just videogames, calm down, etc." but when you don't have some level of professionalism, this is what you get. Sites that exist for the sole purpose of reaffirming the readers' opinions/ entertaining them.
 
Has there been a single article or review on TouchArcade that has been less than absolute fluff? I don't think I've ever seen a negative word said on that site.
 
Indie Dev: Post the email, or all conversations. You can expose a bullshit site for being bullshit. Seriously...Any site that ever bows to outside pressure shouldn't be read or given credence. The words he wrote were what he thought, as a reviewer. That's all that should matter. Start shit over this. Post everything you have. You'll get publicity, and more people will read the real review and buy your game.

EDIT: Ohh, they're just bullshit. Well then that should be exposed too. What does the reviewer think of his review getting yanked because he gave it the wrong score? Surely someone has his twitter...
 
Ihateyouchris said:
So TouchArcade just completely removed their review for my game Love Me Not.

Because they gave it 5 stars.

WTF, really?

Some people complain in the comments and your response is to just pull the review? Are you kidding me?

Here's the original review:


And here's where it used to be:
http://toucharcade.com/2012/06/05/love-me-not-review/

This really sucks because I'm pretty much an unknown indie dev, working to get my name out there. I was ecstatic when the review was posted, and this has just left me gutted....
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Wow, man, I'm sorry to hear that. I guess I was a little premature in congratulating you for the review in the iOS thread last night.

Talk about a bum deal. Why are they posting reviews at all if they don't have the spine to back up their ratings. Think about this. If Touch Arcade bends so easily for a handful of visitor comments, how far will they bend in the other direction for a big name iOS developer such as EA or Gameloft? This really pulls all of their scores into suspicion in my eyes.
 
1. That review deserved to be pulled for the shitty writing

2. We're going to need a screencap because there's no way the email read "Dear sir, we removed our review of your game because we gave it 5 stars"

Either give us the whole story - not your interpretation - or dont bother posting.
 
Good grief. What kind of human being sets out to fight the tyranny and oppressive black hole that is the indie development scene, everyone knows Indies slide money under the table for a favorable light to be shed on their title.

Also if you couldn't tell I was being sarcastic, let me just say I was. Good job internet and humanity, bring out the pitch forks for an indie game, and just let the entire Mass Effect series of blatantly bloated reviews from 1 to 3 slide.....
 
They made a 'mistake' in the scoring? Funny since the review, as badly written as it was, was gushing about the game. And if it was a simple scoring mistake, why isn't the review back up with a new score?
 
Full story here:

It's an odd move, that's for sure. For the sake of transparency, here's the email Brad sent David-
Quote:
Hi, David

This is Brad from TouchArcade. We have decided to pull our Love Me Not review. While it's definitely a great game that embraces the purity of iPhone or iPod Touch, it's not five-star material.

Any game given a five-star review from TouchArcade goes through layers of checks. The Love Me Not review didn't because a large portion of our staff is focused on E3. This is, obviously, an unfortunate mistake during the most intense week of the year and I apologize that this happened.

Thanks for understanding,

Brad
Since the internet lynch mob seems to be eager to form up over this, here's a bit longer version of what happened: As mentioned, Jared and I have spent this week on and around the E3 show floor where I can barely place a phone call or send text messages, and forget about any kind of data access. WiFi is totally ruined. We basically need to drive back to our rental in Hollywood in order to get any kind of meaningful internet connectivity, which is anywhere between a 30-60 minute trip depending on traffic.

There was a lull in the day, so I called Brad and asked him to post some of the reviews in queue, unaware of how many more reviews had been submitted by our array of freelancers since the last time I was able to load the TouchArcade back-end. I made an incorrect assumption in that he was just going to post a couple of the reviews that I was able to look at, and not delve too deep into the back log of reviews that hadn't gone through a full editorial pass yet.

What does that pass entail? Well, I read over everything and make sure the tone fits in with the site, play the games and make sure everything sounds right, and then I make sure the score lines up with the review text as well as our historical ratings. If anything doesn't add up, I talk to the review author and we come to an agreement on edits, scoring, and things like that.

I didn't get a chance to do this with Love Me Not, Brad assumed I did, and I assumed he knew which reviews I was referring to when I asked him to publish them. The solution we came up with was to pull the review, email the developer to start a conversation and explain the situation, do the edit pass that got skipped, then re-publish it.

...But, instead of the whole "starting a conversation" step we've got yet another NeoGAF drama explosion.

The conspiracy theories surrounding this are a little weird though. Look at the rest of our five star games and ask yourself if Love Me Not really fits in with those. We just made a mistake, and for what it's worth I'm very sorry about this and it won't happen again.
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you should read their NOVA 3 review

You’ll be saving humanity via gameplay that should be largely familiar for genre veterans. Like its predecessor, N.O.V.A. 3 has you exploring a wide variety of locales while battling enemy archetypes and hitting objective-marker based goals that shouldn’t offer much in terms of surprise. Also, you can expect the occasional break from the on-foot battle heroics by piloting Mechs, manning the weaponry on top of AI driven trucks and serving as sniper support for other NPCs. By now, it should be apparent that Gameloft has uncovered the formula for a successful FPS, and while N.O.V.A. 3 doesn’t offer much in terms of revolutionary gameplay, it certainly succeeds in what it does implement.

One interesting inclusion is an in-game store that offers unique weapons and upgrades that takes currency you earn by completing single player levels. It’s nice to see a system that actually provides rewards proportionally to how well you complete a level run. Unfortunately, the inclusion of IAP to bypass said currency collection lessens experience somewhat.

A well-done FPS is in some ways far more reliant on its controls than other genres. Thankfully, N.O.V.A. 3 works within its limitations to provide a competent scheme for a touch screen. The standard dual-stick controls are available, as well as generous use of a swipe gestures for swapping weapons and powers. I was particularly a fan of the gyroscope inclusion, as proper use of that option goes a long way towards making the game’s aiming accurate and fun.

N.O.V.A. 3 plays well on the iPhone, but I found the screen to be a bit cramped compared to the roomy iPad controls. Either way, a host of options such as auto-aim, attempt to help even touch-screen novices blast away with ease. While I imagine there are some folks that will never get used to touchscreen controls for an FPS, the fact remains that N.O.V.A. 3’s control schemes do a decent job of letting you take out baddies and navigate the environments with ease.

By the way, those environments you’ll be traversing across look absolutely gorgeous. N.O.V.A. 3 takes full advantage of the hardware offerings of the iPhone 4S and new iPad, which leads to one of the most visually impressive FPS titles I’ve played on iOS. The textures, weather and visual effects – even the shadows are all well done and simply stunning.

As nice as the game looks on the small scree, N.O.V.A. 3 begs to be played on a new iPad. The larger retina-display of the tablet lets you truly appreciate just how far the visuals have come in the series. The fact that the game manages to look this good while successfully running (for the most part) at a decent framerate is probably the most impressive accomplishment. Granted, there were a few mishaps with the graphics engine, such as a few instances of falling through environments, the occasional slowdown when there’s a lot of action on the screen and the unusually lengthy loading screens (that occasionally make you think the game crashed), but these do little to detract from what is an otherwise impressive visual system.


It would be easy to simply classify N.O.V.A. 3 as impressive eye candy and leave it at that, but Gameloft deserves credit for continuing the trend of creating a well-rounded FPS experience complete with a full story-driven campaign, a plethora of control and gameplay options and a balanced gameplay experience. We sometimes talk about games that possess that certain something that make them ideal for showcasing the might of iOS. I’d argue that, while N.O.V.A. 3 may not necessarily be at the top of that shortlist, it has enough going for it to warrant being close to such a classification.
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So much words that explain nothing about the game =/
 
PrinceOfApathy said:
Good grief. What kind of human being sets out to fight the tyranny and oppressive black hole that is the indie development scene, everyone knows Indies slide money under the table for a favorable light to be shed on their title.

Also if you couldn't tell I was being sarcastic, let me just say I was. Good job internet and humanity, bring out the pitch forks for an indie game, and just let the entire Mass Effect series of blatantly bloated reviews from 1 to 3 slide.....
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Because overinflated review scores for AAA titles will ever change or ever matter.
 
So hang on an editor in chief of a gaming website " read over everything and make sure the tone fits in with the site, play the games and make sure everything sounds right, and then I make sure the score lines up with the review text as well as our historical ratings. If anything doesn't add up, I talk to the review author and we come to an agreement on edits, scoring, and things like that."

Wait what...
 
Hodapp's statement just makes this even worse. The fact that he can edit a review and basically force the reviewer into changing their opinion to fit with their "historical ratings" and "tone of the site" is disgusting. I now understand why Touch Arcade's reviews are so bland and the scores are so uniform.
 
i absolutely LOVE that they have layers and layers of checks before they score something 5/5

who the fuck cares! they need to figure out something better than having layers and layers of checks for a numerical scoring system.


i can understand if they published a review without proofing it or whatever. but "because of the score" only exposes how stupid they are for coveting their 5/5 mark.


lol @ neogaf drama explosion. guess any affront to their authority on their site is a meaningful blow to their astute reputation. never even heard of them before today.
 
...But, instead of the whole "starting a conversation" step we've got yet another NeoGAF drama explosion.

The conspiracy theories surrounding this are a little weird though. Look at the rest of our five star games and ask yourself if Love Me Not really fits in with those. We just made a mistake, and for what it's worth I'm very sorry about this and it won't happen again.
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Yeah, I perused the first page of the five star list. You clearly need a bigger name in the iOS market to qualify. Don't be discouraged, it's Touch Arcade, the AMEX Centurian of iOS reviews.

edit: Probably not an entirely fair comment but Eli brought it on himself by inviting us to check out those 5 star scores. The issue, as I see it is that he buckled under negative comments from visitors and rather than owning the score he passed it off on a free-lancer. If those comments hadn't been there, I think the article never would have been touched.
 
Yeah, that part confused me too. We have a reviews editor where I write at, but they're there to make sure the writing isn't filled with grammatical errors and the like. Our score is our own and it falls on each individual to give a piece of media what we believe it deserves.
 
Sye d'Burns said:
Yeah, I perused the first page of the five star list. You clearly need a bigger name in the iOS market to qualify.
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image.php

wtf is going on?

this isn't even loljournalism no more. I'm just confused o_O.
 
Neuromancer said:
In other words theyre saying Touch Arcade isn't evil, just incompetent. Got it.
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Basically.

The biggest mistake they made was letting this Brad guy send out an e-mail without it being overseen by an editor, as they meant him to 'start a conversation' and he sent an e-mail saying 'Your game isn't worth what we reviewed it at, and we're just now realizing that, so we pulled the review. Thx for understanding."

Gee, I wonder why OP went on GAF after that, instead of engaging in the dialogue TouchArcade so clearly tried to start there.
 
RyougaSaotome said:
Yeah, that part confused me too. We have a reviews editor where I write at, but they're there to make sure the writing isn't filled with grammatical errors and the like. Our score is our own and it falls on each individual to give a piece of media what we believe it deserves.
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This. So much this. I've never ever heard of or been a part of a site where the editor makes a writer change their score in order to fit in with the "tone of the site". I didn't really have a problem with them pulling the review at first because I figured that they had a good reason to do so. The reason they gave is just completely bullshit.
 
Look at the rest of our five star games and ask yourself if Love Me Not really fits in with those.
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Like seriously, what does this even mean? I've been lead to believe different people can have different opinions. And last time I checked, there isn't just one reviewer on their site.
 
chickdigger802 said:
Like seriously, what does this even mean? I've been lead to believe different people can have different opinions. And last time I checked, there isn't just one reviewer on their site.
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Apparently the other reviewers are allowed to have their own opinion. As long as it's the same as Eli's.

Henry Ford said:
Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.
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chickdigger802 said:
Like seriously, what does this even mean? I've been lead to believe different people can have different opinions. And last time I checked, there isn't just one reviewer on their site.
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I feel like hodapp is the kind of person who would read this thread, see your username here, then disregard the fact that you've been at toucharcade since 2009 and have 1k posts there when addressing your reply in the thread on their site

Someone should save that post btw, could have amusing implications in the future
 
Hmm, can't help but see something shady here.

Step 1: Post a hyperbolically positive review of an obscure game.
Step 2: Pull the review after a few days, citing a "mistake"
Step 3: Obscure game developer contacts the site to complain.
Step 4: Site elicits a bribe to correct the "mistake"
Step 5: Go to step 1...
 
This is one of the biggest problems with reviewing for a number of websites.
It's especially apparent on indie or budget titles where the developers or certain other interested parties decide it's worth putting their credibility on the line to influence ratings.

I used to write for a site called XBLAratings and it's far too easy to tell who actually reviews and who just wants to make their game look good. I got to be pretty damn unpopular when I started attacking some of the shit that's been put up on XBLIG. Hell the first thing that blew my mind was way back when I reviewed Virtual On XBLA. The editor decided it was too high a score and posted a review of their own to knock the average down.
 
I can't believe Hodapp actually said this:

The conspiracy theories surrounding this are a little weird though. Look at the rest of our five star games and ask yourself if Love Me Not really fits in with those. We just made a mistake, and for what it's worth I'm very sorry about this and it won't happen again.
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That is...so incredibly insulting.
 
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