Should Users Even Be Allowed To Rate/Vote On Titles/Articles And/Or Should User-Review Systems Be Changed?

[Slasken]

You see a title getting 1000 user-reviews with 70 percent negative on Steam while 30 are positive....you consider reading through hundreds of user-reviews an "easy way to filter the bad from good ones"?

Or is there another way how you can spot them? Probably easier and faster than reading through probably several hundreds of pointless and crappy, completely valueless "rants" rather than "reviews"?

Yes, Steam marks times with potential review-bombing happening, but it´s about lousy/bad/pointless reviews happening on Steam and those are happen all the time regardless of any review-bombings happening and as a matter of fact, those bad/lousy/pointless "reviews" are not marked in any way.

I don't have any problems filtering through the reviews, no. I just scroll down the reviews, and check out both positive and negative reviews. I use the filter function to filter out those that have played less than one hour.

I also check the discussion threads about the game if I am unsure of a purchase. And I also check how often the game if updated.

 

[Brian Boru]

We don't need to erase and rewrite history just because we're uncomfortable with how some things happened

I thought the quotes I used would make it obvious I was referring to the factual record, not any discomfort with how things used to be. Go the discomfort route and every niche splinter group will have its own version of history, changing by the year with each new lie, fad and fashion.

We need an agreed 'best version' of what actually happened as a base line. As long as that exists, groups can spin it however they like to suit their agenda, without befouling the common well of knowledge.

I don't believe in completely writing a person off, including all of the good things they did, just because they also did bad things.

"The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones"
—William Shakespeare

I don´t care about community-standards as well as guidelines

Pencils TO in as a potential future moderator.

I get offended by stupid people.

Oh, you should have said. I'll grab Woody and we'll head out—sorry about that, may your liver prosper longer.

 

[Colif]

I would have mentioned it earlier if it was that easy

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I thought the quotes I used would make it obvious I was referring to the factual record, not any discomfort with how things used to be. Go the discomfort route and every niche splinter group will have its own version of history, changing by the year with each new lie, fad and fashion.

In that case, I'm onboard with that. I'm all for correcting history that is factually incorrect. I just don't like it when people try to change what actually happened to suit today's standards.

 

[ToxicOffender]

Metacritic

Oh my....OH MY! 🤣

Whenever i think of METACRITIC user reviews, i see that place being the place with probably the most review-bombings happening, but being so terribly dumb that it´s really way too easy to spot them actually, like:

Hundreds of similiar "Number"-Nicknames all giving about the same lines with rating the lowest, as it was happening with DEATH STRANDING.

Fun-Fact: It can happen that it´s actually just one guy or just a very few, actually making those hundreds of bad-reviews! So with DEATH STRANDING as remember, it was actually just one guy, they even gave him an interview if i remember right.

Needless to say, such a person should probably better off taking place onto the couch of a shrink, rather than sitting there writing fake reviews for hours with taking even longer to create multiple fake accounts.

On the other hand, he probably just got bored with playing video-games and rather has more fun creating fake accounts while writing dumb fake reviews.

 

[ToxicOffender]

I don't have any problems filtering through the reviews, no. I just scroll down the reviews, and check out both positive and negative reviews. I use the filter function to filter out those that have played less than one hour.

I also check the discussion threads about the game if I am unsure of a purchase. And I also check how often the game if updated.

I very well understand! The only question would be, wouldn´t it be more accurate, "safe" and faster just to check on "professional"-reviews in magazines, being for sure more "objective" than most user-reviews could be?

Oh, i of course as well check user-reviews, but i actually only check the NEGATIVES, because that way i can find out how a game probably really sucks besides those point- and valueless rant-reviews, rather than reading POSITIVE reviews.

Talking about user-reviews in general, i skip all those 1,000,000 words reviews starting with things like "This is a shoot-em up game, where you move your starship up with moving the left trigger up and moving left with......BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH" 🤣

 

[Frindis]

Well isn't this a lively thread? Time to do something about that!

Do I get manipulated by good or bad reviews? Obviously. So much as to me buying the game? Well, that depends. A genre I like, a reviewer I like, and also the majority of the overwhelming reviews will help in this. Not that overwhelming reviews are instant buy or avoidance, but if it got a long timeline with this then chances are I'm more persuaded.

You could remove one-word reviews, but then you'll also remove the ability for people to express themselves. Not everyone is Ernest Hemmingway who can make a novel with just five words *tips hat*, but that does not mean you should not be able to try, even if you are just there for the memes. Steam has a system for combating the review bombing, but it is not a perfect system.

Speaking of commercialism, history, and anything in between to jump on that small derailment: Whether you are eating tofu bread with diamond water in your Beverly Hills mansion or gulping down a Mountain Dew after devouring a Royal with cheese, we are all connected around one of the biggest health problems the world has seen and in that sense, history does not just repeat itself, it finds new and interesting ways. My point with the art made with a child's drawing skills is to show that it is all connected.

 

[Colif]

What makes the opinion of an official reviewer any different to a user? Just because you get to write an article, doesn't make you any better than someone who has bought and played/watched your product. There is no course that you have to take to be a "Games reviewer" or "movie reviewer" and if there is, its a lovely scam they have going there.

Not all critics are neutral. Some work for companies who also make the products they review.
Literally this weekend Tencent got rid of its media wing whose main job was to convince people to buy their games.
Too much money involved in convincing people to buy crap.

The people who paid for it should have just as much say as those who didn't.

But then I don't read reviews of anything apart from hardware. There is a lot less fanboyism in the Hardware industry, provided you avoid Userbenchmark.com who love Intel so much that Intel told them to stop.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Oh my....OH MY! 🤣

Whenever i think of METACRITIC user reviews, i see that place being the place with probably the most review-bombings happening, but being so terribly dumb that it´s really way too easy to spot them actually, like:

Hundreds of similiar "Number"-Nicknames all giving about the same lines with rating the lowest, as it was happening with DEATH STRANDING.

Fun-Fact: It can happen that it´s actually just one guy or just a very few, actually making those hundreds of bad-reviews! So with DEATH STRANDING as remember, it was actually just one guy, they even gave him an interview if i remember right.

Needless to say, such a person should probably better off taking place onto the couch of a shrink, rather than sitting there writing fake reviews for hours with taking even longer to create multiple fake accounts.

On the other hand, he probably just got bored with playing video-games and rather has more fun creating fake accounts while writing dumb fake reviews.

Mostly just the aggregated reviewers score there at a glance. Sometimes I read a review or two from an outlet/reviewer I recognize that's close to the aggregate score.

I know a lot of people dislike metacritic, and there are good reasons for that. But it's just another tool that can help to judge if you want to look closer at a game. For me if an FPS campaign gets a 70 there I probably wont look too closely, but if theres something turn based around that score its not the end of the world. Depends on the types of games you like.

What makes the opinion of an official reviewer any different to a user? Just because you get to write an article, doesn't make you any better than someone who has bought and played/watched your product. There is no course that you have to take to be a "Games reviewer" or "movie reviewer" and if there is, its a lovely scam they have going there.

Not all critics are neutral. Some work for companies who also make the products they review.
Literally this weekend Tencent got rid of its media wing whose main job was to convince people to buy their games.
Too much money involved in convincing people to buy crap.

The people who paid for it should have just as much say as those who didn't.

But then I don't read reviews of anything apart from hardware. There is a lot less fanboyism in the Hardware industry, provided you avoid Userbenchmark.com who love Intel so much that Intel told them to stop.

I kind of disagree here, of course experience is subjective, but good reviewers generally have played a wider range of games than the average gamer, and so should have a lot more frame of reference to explain the finer differences between games within a genre or whatever. You also kind of roughly get to know which reviewers have liked games you really liked in the past and factor that in as well.

Of course everyone has their own tastes and you might not always agree with how they felt, thats when the other methods come in, and you can read more than one review for balance and weigh up the common praise and faults in your own mind that way.

 

[ToxicOffender]

You could remove one-word reviews, but then you'll also remove the ability for people to express themselves.

That doesn´t matters much as we are on the Internet and the so called "Freedom Of Speech" already died approx. ten years ago with things on forums actually getting so out of hand that even for just telling your honest opinion could make others tend to accuse you of being a "Troll" coz you have the guts to not get in line with the rest of the forum-hivemind...like for example:

User-A: "#1 is my opinion!"
User-B: "#1 is wrong! #2 is right!"
User-A: "#1 is still my opinion and you have to live with it for the rest of your life!"
User-C: "User-B is right with #2 and User-A is wrong with #1!"
User-A: "User-B and User-C are just butthurt, while being totally wrong with #2 and me being right with #1!"
User-B: "Don´t feed the Troll! Can someone ban this user please?"
User-C: "Close this Thread as well, it´s just Troll-Bait!"

I am online since 56-modem times and think i´ve seen "Freedom Of Speech" actually fading away so slowly and "unnoticed" that people already accepted it without even being aware of it.

There are countless numbers of examples i could tell how "Freedom Of Speech" is practically non-existent anymore, in countless forums and even if this is actually one of the far better and way more "grown-up" forums i visited within the last years, you also notice how people aren´t allowed to really say what they want, regardless of their age and the approx. age of the rest of the users here and also regardless of any possible policital stance they are have.

But this is all "normal", i am not ranting anymore as i´ve already accepted that sad fact like everyone else.

What makes the opinion of an official reviewer any different to a user?

There are good reviews from official reviewers as there are bad ones.
There are good reviews from users as there are bada ones.

But then again you have way more bad user-reviews than you have bad official-reviewers reviews...and you especially have way more infantile-toxic-braindead user-reviews.

If someone is forcing me to trust a review, then i wouldn´t hesitate to trust the one from an official gamer mag rather than some user begging for attention with this user-review on steam.

But then again...i am actually not trusting any reviews at all, that doesn´t mean i wouldn´t read them.

By the way, in my teen-age, when there wasn´t any internet, i bought all them magazines, reading and studying each and everyone of them reviews, but then again there weren´t so many titles to pick from, so as a matter of fact, i basically was buying ALL of the games being released per month mostly anyway.

 

[Frindis]

@ToxicOffenderThat is because freedom of expression is not absolute. You have to take into consideration the social platform and its rules also. There is a limit to both ways of course, which is for example why Twitch, Facebook & YouTube have been in the search light earlier.

 

[ToxicOffender]

@ToxicOffenderThat is because freedom of expression is not absolute. You have to take into consideration the social platform and its rules also.

No.

I am......TADAAAAAA!!! THE TOXIC OFFENDER!!!....i can say whatever i want! 🤭 🤣