Is the GB community mature enough to handle User Score?

Simple question really.

Yes we've all seen what happens on websites like metacritic but there are places out there were user score works. Usually they are smaller websites but I don't think GB is really that big either. I am fully aware that user score means nothing but it would be a cool experiement to see how the community's opinion differs or is in check with what the editorial staff has to say.

i can handle it

The internet will continue to be the internet.

I think it would be great if it was possible to flag the content for mis-representing the actual product. The reason I bring this is up is something like Metacritic is getting out of hand. Countless people are posting reviews for the lag they are experiencing with Battle.net like this is the user review section for an iPhone game.

It would be cool to see user scores that are tied to the achievement system. You could only vote once you unlocked an achievement for finishing the game.

Otherwise, I'd have to say no. Too many idiots down-voting games that they never played, due to DRM issues or other nonsense.

Hard to say, really. I think it'd be rather neat.

This feels like opening a very bad can of worms.

I'm all for it.

Nope.

I think that kind of system undermines user reviews.

No open community of video game players is.

Certainly not this one.

If they do it, they at least need to require an attached written review and delete shitty 3-sentence ones. Also maybe round to the nearest whole star.

I would like it, but what's there to stop all the manbabies from flooding the site to downvote the next Mass Effect or Diablo or anything else they decided to collectively hate that week?

It seems pointless though. Not everyone will have the same scale.

I think games are either 1 star, 3 star or 5 star, as in Avoid, Maybe and Buy.

Also, there isnt really a point. Will I buy a game cause the community gave it 5 stars? No.

Here I prefer user reviews to editorial reviews. They tend to be more objective and less longwinded.

Sadly, I think that user scores for gaming will always be trolled by 13 year olds.

@musclerider said:

The internet will continue to be the internet.

This. Absolutely not. User reviews are fine the way they are and make it much harder to cheese the system. Pretty much impossible, really.

User scores will always suck because people will always suck.

@BabyChooChoo said:

I would like it, but what's there to stop all the manbabies from flooding the site to downvote the next Mass Effect or Diablo or anything else they decided to collectively hate that week?

maybe they have a low score because they are bad games

I guess one way to control it is to make it a members only feature, meaning only members would be able to vote but everyone can see the user scores.

Like someone has already said, the internet is still the internet.

No one is powerful enough to handle the user score with any sense of maturity.

No because I had once gotten into an argument over differing points of view with another user and then all of a sudden I got a message that all my user written reviews at the time received negative marks.

Maybe if it only took into account the score given on user reviews. So at least you would have to write to the word limit and trolls could be flagged.

the everything is a 0 or 10 brigade will always plague users review score everwhere. rendering them utterly pointless.

GiantBomb already has a user-score. It's averaged from the scores given by users who review a game.

If you mean a score where you just click a dial or a number of stars without actually writing a review, then -- no. If you can't be bothered to write a couple paragraphs sharing your thoughts about a game, then any "score" you attribute to it is probably fairly worthless and meaningless.

Everyone of us can write a review on this website if we want to.

Make people defend their score if they want to give a game one, at least that way you can read their review to see if their opinion is worth anything to you.

i think if it could be linked to an account then yes. but i think to prevent trolls you would need to have some proof that you are truly pat of the GB community. the only way i could see that being done is by how many posts you have in the forums or maybe a couple of blogs.

I think we have a persistent enough problem with spam accounts. I'd rather not see people join or create additional accounts just to pump up or discredit a game.

@gjedwards said:

i think if it could be linked to an account then yes. but i think to prevent trolls you would need to have some proof that you are truly pat of the GB community. the only way i could see that being done is by how many posts you have in the forums or maybe a couple of blogs.

Nice idea in theory, but you could easily inflate that count by quoting random stuff and putting "this" under it.

@PenguinDust said:

I think we have a persistent enough problem with spam accounts. I'd rather not see people join or create additional accounts just to pump up or discredit a game.

Also, this.

Is the GB community mature enough to

*scrolls down to post*

No

*scrolls back up to read the actual question*

No

@SpaceInsomniac said:

It would be cool to see user scores that are tied to the achievement system. You could only vote once you unlocked an achievement for finishing the game.

Otherwise, I'd have to say no. Too many idiots down-voting games that they never played, due to DRM issues or other nonsense.

!

Nope.

Absolutely not and it never will be. But when has that ever stopped the Giant Bomb crew from doing anything?

No, it's a fundamentally bad idea to allow people to score something without explaining why. GB already has individual user reviews that require text, and that seems like the best way to handle something like that.

Boiling a game down to a single number is pointless.

Allowing people with no repercussions to post an equally weighted score to a product that you cannot even verify that they owned, let a lone played, it's also pointless.

If people raced to the internet to post as many positive comments as they do for negative ones than maybe, but until then it's pretty valueless to want to collect opinions from people who I don't know and try to make it meaningful to me.

Bad, bad idea.

I can see it would be easily trolled with no text ratings and the like, but I would say the 'actual' GB community is more than mature enough to handle user scores. But we would need tight control over it, Staff and Mods would probably need to monitor these ratings quite a lot of the time if we want a credible and accurate user score database, and quite frankly that would be hard to do.

It feels like GB can handle it but I'm not interested. I think scores let alone structured reviews are a "necessary evil" to support what they are doing. Spreading this to users is not helpful especially in the wake of what has gone down with Mass Effect 3 and Diablo 3.

@Vinny_Says: It all depends. The "internets" is very big (Ohh realllyyy) haha so you have a wide ample selection of fine gentlemen and ladies around. Some good, some bad. So its a give and take I guess. It could go both ways, though GB is normally more mature in its user content than other sites so it could work.

I think it would work if the game was directly tied to your achievements. If the site could flag certain achievements that allowed you to post a score of the game then it could work.

The problem with user score isnt that people are down voting games that they like, or up voting games that they do. its that people do so with the end of the spectrem, they will give a game a 0 because they didnt like it, because they want to have an impact on the scale. This skews the scale and stops anyone from wanting to give a game a 4 or a 8.

So if GB dose implement it, I would suggest a system were you can ONLY give a game a 5, 1 or 3. this would help keep the scales more even. Or just use 3 stars for user reviews, but that might be confusing.

@Vinny_Says:

You can already check that.

http://www.giantbomb.com/grand-theft-auto-iv/61-20457/reviews/

On the right where it says 'add a review' you can see below it that the users on average gave the game 4.4/5 stars compared to Jeff's 5 star review. Also, when you click the 'review' tab you can see average user score again.

Haha... No.

I think it would just lead to people zeroing games that they dont like the franchise of. In otherwords im afraid that some of the community isnt mature enough.

No, just look at the Diablo 3 and Mass Effect 3 threads.

I'll suggest this: Instead of text user reviews, I think only Youtube video reviews should be allowed. That format lends itself to a better quick review, especially if you don't mention a score, than just another 4 paragraphs with X/Y score at the bottom.

This website has user reviews. That more than suffices.

You can't handle it!

@rmanthorp said:

User scores will always suck because people will always suck.

So true... so very true.

I don't think it would work, especially, for more popular games that people love to hate ie. CoD or Halo. There would be lots of fanboys with immediate 5/5 and lots of haters who never played the game to give 0/5. Also, some people just have it in for certain publishers and developers. So, I think a lot of scores would be about the bullshit surrounding the game rather than the actual game itself.

I think it's kind of pointless anyway since it's all just opinion and it wouldn't matter to me whatever the user score ended up being. I honestly don't even really care what the editorial score ends up being. Sometimes it's interesting to read reviews after I've played a game and formulated my own opinion to see what other people took from the experience. Especially, since video game reviews are becoming more akin to movie criticism than product buyers guides.