Topic: Is it time to ditch user reviews on Metacritic?

I've be wondering for a while whether review aggregate sites should ditch user reviews altogether, or whether they should lock user reviews for a few days or even weeks after launch for games. The truth is these sites always descend into the worst kinda of nonsense with big game release, with the review bombing that always goes on with things like Animal Crossing and of course more recently TLoU2. I have to say the toxicity around TLoU2 has topped me over into the get rid of user reviews camp, which is a shame, because I think having somewhere for gamers to leave genuine feedback would be useful for developers, but these hate filled rants? While they might be cathartic to the author, they're truly toxic to anyone else. What do others think?

User reviews are just as valid as published reviews from other websites. They are not restricted in what they are allowed to talk about and therefore give a complete view of the game.

@hotukdeals the thing is I used to agree with you, I even used to take time to write reviews for such sites when I felt there were aspects of games (good or bad) that were broadly missed by gaming sites reviews. However, there was never any verification of whether I actually had purchased or played the game, would a review be valid if I hadn't played the game? Hell no. This speaks to a fire problem I have with sites like metacritic now, in normal circumstances I'm with you, my view and other gamers views are just as useful and valid as a game journalists view. When we've actually played the game.

When I look at metacritic user reviews of exclusive games now, or any big release, it's usually a crapfest. People review bombing because it's not on their system, or because they want to ***** on the next big thing, and others giving ridiculously positive reviews because it is on their system of choice, or because it's the next big thing. The vast majority of these reviews contain no salient points and aren't illuminating in any way.

I'm not sure the system can be fixed to be honest, but posting a review less than a hour after a game has been released to the public should not be possible in my opinion. Maybe that might be a useful start, but metacritic and co don't give a ***** about that. They live off of ad revenue, so they are literally looking to drive as many people to their sites as possible, so are disincentivised from tackling this behaviour.

Truth is these sorts of site should be a useful resource for people who are looking at whether or not to purchase a product, but that's rarely how they are used, which is a shame, because I do not necessarily trust the embargoed and censored reviews of the big gaming sites. Publishers have far to much power in the relationship and often I find such websites are little more than an extension of publishers marketing teams.

@SirAngry I tend not to pay much attention to user reviews as there is just too much garbage you have to get through to genuine stuff. I usually know what games I'm getting anyway, so I don't normally look at professional reviews either.

If there is something I'm not sure on (and these are usually older titles) I have a couple of sites and YouTube channels I always use. But even then I do not agree with them all of the time a nor do I expect to.

It works the other way too, if go on the PS store, Cyberpunk 2077 has a 5 star rating from 655 ratings. How is that possible when the game is not even out yet?

I'm not sure what the answer is really, I'll continue to ignore user reviews but it still does my head when I hear about review bombing and stuff.

@JohnnyShoulder don't get me started on the PSN ratings thing. It's ridiculous, ratings on a store like the PSN store should only be allowed by accounts who have verified purchase / have the game. It's not hard to implement.

I too have a few reviewers who I trust, and use when trying to decide what games to buy. With sites like metacritic though user reviews actually could be a useful resource for developers, but rarely are. They could also be useful to gamers, but right now I just don't feel they are. So does anyone use these sites for their intended purpose? And if not, what are people using them for?

In general, I'm pro-users having more opportunities to express their opinions and grievances online. If that means some games get hammered in the user reviews department unfairly, then so be it. I don't think metacritic is obligated to protect the reputation of games that happen to be controversial for whatever reason.

I do think this review bombing nonsense would end VERY quickly if metacritic required users to confirm ownership of the product before leaving a review, though. Imagine if it drew from account information on a variety of storefronts and services — walmart, gamestop, playstation store, amazon, etc. — in order to confirm your access to the title. I don't know if there's a way to safely and easily do that, but it would make user reviews on that website vastly more useful.

Anybody with a bit of sense would know not to take any user reviews with a 0/10 score as valid criticism.

The problem isn't with the sites it's with the people. We live in a culture where moderation and middle ground just aren't there to a large degree. The internet I would argue has made people and/or society more toxic and tribal. We know the games industry buys reviews from critics (not every publisher and developer but some, especially the more financially powerful one's) so user scores and reviews are a necessary counterweight. The system needs improvement yes but not abolishment. People are always more likely to give a score to something based on their emotional response to it rather than an objective one. The issue I think is that there needs to be some sort of verification process. Of course professional critics also rarely play games to completion so who's to say.

I personally use user reviews as a guideline and try to identify any commonalities, good and bad.

I think the problem has also been over exaggerated by the response to the TLoU Pt II. People just cannot seem to accept that this game is not perfect. That there are serious flaws in the writing. Anyone who doesn't agree is just labeled as some sort of bigot. You're a racist, a homophobe, a sexist etc. In the comments section of the PushSquare article about the so called 'review bombing' there have been some particularly vile things said about people who criticised the game (usually very sexist remarks about and towards men).

@Kidfried I absolutely agree, aggregates are useless, and I've never quite understood studio heads using a metacritic average as proof of a job well done. However, I did used to think they were a useful resource for finding review with varied views to try and get a rounded picture of what to expect from a game, and maybe even introduce me to critics I'd not come across before. I too have a handful of critics I tend to refer to, as I know generally speaking their tastes and my own align. But, if I'd wanting a critical view of something I might naturally love, going to reviews that feel the same does kind of end up being an echo chamber. Were places like metacritic not a cesspit of the worst humanity has to offer then it could be a valuable resource.

@Ralizah I too am all for giving consumers a greater voice in terms of representing their views. All to often you get the professional games press all pretty much agreeing on something because there isn't a massive breadth of experience or cultural background within games reviewing. Most are seriously into games and as such have a very narrow world view generally. So, I think places like metacritic could be a useful resource, it's just that they're not right now. Maybe they need curating better, just not sure how you'd achieve that.

@ApostateMage while I tend to agree, should we equally not take a 10/10 review seriously because it too is an extreme? I'm also not sure the score or aggregate score is the thing I'm necessarily most concerned about, I think it's the hateful comments that actually drown out genuine critiques. Flicking through some of the negative TLoU2 reviews you can find the odd one that reads genuine, but it's list in a torrent of abusive hatred, which just doesn't make it pleasant to sift through.

@ApostateMage And by what authority or power do you have the right to say a 0/10 is not valid? Have you personally met the people giving 0/10 scores? Have you read every single 0/10 review? What makes a 1/10 or a 5/10 more valid than a 0/10? The score is reflective of how that person feels about the game.

@TheDude89 the latest Pokémon and Animal Crossing games were as equally toxic in terms of user reviews, well, in my opinion they were at least.

I too like you used to like looking through user reviews because often I found gamers pick up on things professional reviewers often don't, so I am really disappointed places like metacritic have descended into what they are. I wouldn't want to get rid of them totally, but there needs to be some form redesign of how they work.

@TheDude89 A 0/10 game would be a fundamentally broken product, and even scores lower than 5/10, at least, should be reserved for games utterly lacking in polish. If someone is going to disregard the standards of a numerical rating system because they're upset about a plot twist, then I don't think their opinions are worth listening to.

@TheDude89 See, @Ralizah has common sense.

@Ralizah I know for a fact that you can sign into Steam on other websites to access information about games that you own. That would already stop a few people from review bombing. You can sign into Xbox Live on Windows because of their push towards Game Pass PC as well. Isn’t there a website where you sign into PSN and can track trophies? If I’m right then that’s the main three services which could be accessed on Metacritic’s site and would be easy to verify. It’s as simple as that.

@nessisonett that is all very true. Requiring reviewers to log in using one of those services or indeed verification from one of them would go a long way to making sure that reviewers at least own the products they review. I just think that on some level we need to make sure those writing reviews at least have experience of the product.

@Ralizah @SirAngry @nessisonett It should be something like any of the trophy/achievement sites, you have to link your PS/Xbox gamertag to use the site. When you update the site it automatically tracks your trophies/achievements, so something like that could be used by metacritic to ensure only people that have played the game can review it.

@Ralizah That is your opinion. Doesn't make it fact nor does it mean a 0/10 review is invalid. Unless you have met personally with every single person leaving a review you cannot judge how they are using it. There is no international legal standard that states a numerical system for rating video games based on quality as viewed by an individual must be used in a certain way. You want to use it that way and that's fine, other people may quantify a game in a diffrent way or by different qualities and assign it a value which could be a 0 or a 10. You're not the judge and jury of how people can and can't use rating systems.

@ApostateMage Actually no, it's simply a different point of view.

@TheDude89 I don't subscribe to this self-defeating notion that all opinions are equal. Some opinions are thoughtless or stupid, and others are sound or well-reasoned. It's a disservice to people out there who actually attempt to maintain soberness of judgment to state that using a numerical rating system as an outlet for your unexamined emotions is just "a different point of view." If someone treats a rating system as entirely arbitrary ("this game gets zero stars cuz of muh Joel/SJW developers/etc."), then it follows that their co-option of the system to use an an outlet for their disappointment is unworthy of consideration.

And, anyway, I am the judge and jury of how I feel about people using rating systems, thank you very much. Which is all we've ever talked about in this thread. Nobody has argued that we should be dragging the review bombers out of their houses and throwing them in prison or something.

@nessisonett Yeah, it seems relatively easy to integrate game tracking into third party websites. I use at least one PS trophy tracking website myself. A big site like metacritic should be able to incorporate it somehow. Even if it's only for games on some systems, it'd probably help with the review bombing problem.

If someone wants to buy a brand new game in order to give it a 0/10 score, then that's fair, I think. But this practice of people who don't even own the game spamming it with zeroes in review bombing campaigns just contributes to the increasing irrelevance of user input on that site.

It's better than silencing users entirely, anyway.

@TheDude89 @JohnnyShoulder @SirAngry @nessisonett @ApostateMage @Ralizah @Kidfried @hotukdeals

This is a bigger subject than you realise and the argument is 2 fold.

1) Review sites
2) Scoring scales

1 - Review sites initially were extremely useful at the onset of the Internet. Niche and the vast majority of reviews were independent and written by honest brokers. That has now completely changed now it's overground and easy to compile a review. Companies regularly promote internal positive reviews and write their own, there is no disincentive and no legal laws in place other than libel laws which struggle with the anonymity of user reviews as a form of self promotion. So you have employees of companies writing their own reviews drowning out the negative reviews. The negative reviews in some instances can be taken down but its not worth the effort when you can just bang 10 positive reviews up instead. TLOU2 example is similar you have a swathe of individuals who share a common ideology acting in a specific way in an effort to derail a product. You can't prove they haven't played the game - we all know they were never going to buy the game anyway. The amount of negative reviews is ridiculous. So the whole system is fake, fraudulent and dishonest. For other examples see hotel reviews and restaurant reviews.

2) Scoring scales. Giving something a score out of 10 is never descriptive enough, we have all played games which take no advantage of bleeding edge tech and had fun, we have all played technical Marvels which have left us cold. Scoring games, movies or music out of 10 is ridiculous. Same can be said of holidays, restaurants or beauty products. The scoring on meta critic for none professional reviews - is just not cricket. With professional reviews at least they have a scale in the terms and conditions which in turn leads to a form of standardisation. User reviews are just a number plucked from the air based based on their often narrow minded interpretation of said game and scoring. It's why I have massive nostalgia for in depth 6 page reviews from old magazines, something @Ralizah taps into in the review message thread. Big meaty reviews listing the various gameplay, graphical and technical mechanisms will always trump the a typical trill metacritic review; 1 star - it's crap.

@Ralizah And who decides which opinion is thoughtless or stupid and which are sound and reasonable? Should we establish a thought police? Again I also don't see anywhere that it says all human beings must treat numerical rating systems in exactly the same way.

And yes it is a point of view. From my point of view Part II has incredibly bad writing, goes beyond what is necessary or justified by the plot in violence and it's depictions, has gameplay that is easily bettered by dozens of other games this generation, has an ending that I found illogical, unsatisfying and disrespectful to Joel, Ellie and myself as a player and fan of the original and lacked any of the impact of the original. I also found it to just be a miserable experience overall to the point where I had no investment in the characters or the world and just wanted the entire thing to be over because it was so thoroughly miserable to play. Now that is my point of view. I give the game a 0/10. Even graphically there are better games on PS4. Now someone else my disagree and say the game is a 10/10. Which one of us is right? The answer is neither because both opinions are our point of view. It is how we have interpreted the game.

I never said you weren't the judge and jury of how you feel. I said you weren't the judge and jury of deciding how people use rating systems. There is a difference. You can feel whatever you want. But you don't get to decide whose opinions are valid and whose aren't.