Polygon changes review score...again

Terrible decision. Same thing happened to Diablo 3 but for 99.9% of that game's lifespan I don't doubt that server connectivity has been totally fine. Altering the score because of the servers on day one isn't useful purchasing advice for someone a week, or a month down the road.

" It remains to be seen if EA's servers will be up to the task of hosting however many simultaneous SimCity games will be played post-release."

"SimCity was reviewed using pre-release code provided by Electronic Arts and Maxis on development servers."

The two sentences I quoted from the review had their asses covered on the problem. Servers will be fixed and the game will likely run like it should and did during pre-release. If it doesn't, and the game continues to have crippling bugs and/or continues to have server issues 1-2 weeks post release. Than a score change would have been more appropriate at that time. Not on release day, when it was almost expected that the game was going to have server problems. That said, I do appreciate that they are trying something different in game journalism. I just think they didn't implement it correctly.

Is it not covered in their ethics page?

Kidding aside, they should've either waited or waited. Wait to publish the review to make sure it is accurate OR change the review DAYS later to make sure everything works within a reasonable time period. The fact that less than 24 hours later (they published it yesterday not earlier today) they change it means nothing and as you said....does it go back up if/when it is fixed. I was rooting for Polygon but since the launch they are a bunch of morons, McElroy's excluded, still wish they were at Joystiq.

I can understand their position here, though I'm not sure I agree with it.

They tried to publish their review somewhat early because games are moving to having pre-order incentives to get customers to buy before they know what they're getting. In an effort to server that consumer, having an idea of how good a game is before I choose to pre-order it is a pretty meaningful resource. As game houses continue to push the boundaries of what is "good taste" pre-order benefits, it will become more and more important for us consumers to know what we're actually buying.

Then there is somewhat of a frustration from our end that we have little power to do something about a game having a shoddy launch. We've already handed over our money, so we can't really make the bad stop. Polygon appears to be trying to negatively influence future sales so they can, in their limited ability, say back to Maxis/EA "We won't continue to tolerate this sort of stuff."

Basically the games industry has been increasingly doing a lot of things that are really bad for the consumer, and Polygon is trying to fight back against that. Now, is this the correct or best way to do that? That's not clear. They're still just poking around to see what works.

Gaming Journalism.

This shows a worrying level of naivety from Polygon. Of course the servers are going to be fucked on day one because EA, and any other company, will never pay for the extra server space required to deal with the spike in activity on day one. Why would they pay for space that will only be used for a few days, and then sit there as a dead weight next week. The server issues are extrinsic to the game itself and will not be a factor even a month down the line. Personally, I would have left the review as it is and linked a news story saying "Hey Simcity's fucked right now, maybe wait till its inevitably fixed".

I'm gonna post the same thing I posted on another gaming forum since people just love jumping to silly conclusions:

http://www.polygon.com/pages/about-reviews

Polygon's reviews and database have been built based on the idea of updates, or "bumps," as I've called them. If a game changes in a substantive way, we can add an update to our reviews that informs you how and why, and we can modify our scores accordingly. This will appear on the reviews in question as a timeline of that game's evolution and our corresponding recommendation (or lack thereof). The original review score will never vanish or go away, but our readers will be able to better understand where our opinions as a site reside over time for games we review.

Why are people defending the game....if the servers get fixed tomorrow, so F-ING what? The score got dinged because EA lied. They let everyone review the game in a FAKE environment, they purposefully lied in how they presented how it works. That game deserved an 8 from the start, and it EA lie that boosted it.

Updating scores is a great idea. Games evolve, they get patched, the community changes, new content comes out, and all the rest. Some games are very different now from release, and a check-in or update would be warranted.

Updating your pre-release score 24 hours later makes no sense whatsoever. Your first review should represent the game on release. It's telling people what to think about a new game. If it doesn't do that and you have to update the score shortly after it gets released, you did something wrong.

Changing review scores as a game ages is an interesting idea but I'm not sure it's a needed idea. It's also seems incredibly hard to do it "right".

In any case, we all knew this game was going to have launch day issues and it'll be running better within the next few days. This wasn't the time for them to make some kind of statement about their review scores.

@monkeyking1969: Them people who drank the cool-aid don't want negative press about SimCity. It's a funny story, people who buy the game don't want to admit faults. Same thing we saw with DMC when no one bought it but people who did blamed fans. Buying a product makes you protect it.

Justin McElroy has confirmed on twitter that, if the server issues are fixed, they will re-adjust the score of the game, and continue to do so as problems appear and are fixed. Which... I don't even know what to say about that, but I'm clearly not going to be using their reviews for anything but a laugh.

On a site note, why couldn't they just wait a few days like everyone else?

This seems quite stupid. If the game ended up not having a major feature or something like that, a changed score would make sense. They are just having server issues that will be ironed out eventually.

I've got a crazy idea, guys: every site gets rid of the rating numbers and instead just write reviews that we as individuals read.

Fucking bonkers, right?

Changing the score for what will most likely be a temporary issue seems ill advised. In fact, this seems more like something that you would include as a disclaimer in the review rather than something that actively affects the score. A fluid rating system like that just sounds like something devised to be able to avoid controversy and appease the internet. Not impressed. Have the balls to stand by your review.

@jakob187: Why? The majority of gamers still preorder games before reviews. Game devs need review scores to feed their families, you want Randy Pichford to not be able to put food in his kids mouth?

@make_me_mad said:

Completely agree, updating a score is a cool/new-ish idea but this is not the situation you apply it on. MK9 had bad online for months and that should consider a hypothetical review update, not within the first 24 hours, that is what a news story is for until the issue becomes a long standing problem

This is just another example of how review scores mean absolutely nothing.

The internet seems to be imploding over Sim City.

Sim City 4 2K is still pretty good guys.

Yeah it's weird that all SimCity reviews will now forever be locked to this, potentially brief, moment in time. SimCity games have mad legs so it's not outlandish in the least to think that someone could be reading these reviews two, three, four years from now. And all they'll see is how broken the game is even if it's been running flawlessly ever since.

It's a bit of a pickle.

I think it was a bad editorial decision to change the score. It gives the impression of a weak editorial process. I do like the idea of revisiting games and updating reviews, but this doesn't seem like a good use of it. By all means inform consumers about temporary service-related problems, but stand by your recommendation.

Hold on, Polygon's score is still 95 on Metacritic. Who am I supposed to trust???????????????????????

Lolygon

@superjoe said:

Metacritic, they are our Lord and Savior in terms of what games we should play

I believe Metacritic's policy that they don't change scores after they go on the site. So, that's always going to be a 95 for Polygon.

Im pretty sure its just me but people were already reacting to the 9.5 before the game was even out, relating it directly to what the reviewer had to say about the game and werent so sure if his story related to that 9.5. Now an obvious day one borking of the system (which as far as I can tell is actually going way better than how Diablo 3 fared) drops this review. Im betting by friday the servers will be pretty stable and i bet that will get pushed to an 8.5 or 9 (not to the original 9.5).

Also considering this varying review score, does it then make it very awkward for publishers/developers to quote polygon when a review score actually changes? What if simcity in the UK attached a little sticker that said "Polygon rates it a 9.5!"

I'm a games journalist myself, and I'm actually about to review SimCity myself. EA Australia didn't give us pre-access codes, instead we are getting retail versions delivered to our doors (should be here today), and the game isn't out here for a few more days.

However, assuming that I had pre-launch access like Polygon obviously did. The game played like a 9.5, based on an ideal setting with the servers, then the game deserves a 9.5. Just because people are experiencing frustrations with the server load right now, doesn't mean the score of the game should suddenly be dropped. This seems to always happen with a game that is super popular and requires an online connection for play.

What I personally would have done is simply put a note at the end of the review, stating that online servers were causing issues that hamper the experience for now. I would have stated that I was playing on pre-release servers, which when running optimally, provided a great experience.

If a week after release the server issue is still causing a lot of pain for consumers, I would then amend the score and give my reasons. Not the day of release. Not the day after. I'd give EA a chance to fix the issue before punishing the score of a game a few days before, I thought was near perfect.

Now it's going to be interesting. We get the game on launch day, which means that as reviewers, we are going to be met with the server issues no doubt. Not the best impression to give the gaming media if you ask me :P

This is pretty gross.

The idea of having the possibility of revising a score was to be able to revisit a game later, after multiple updates and/or new content has been added. Rating a game 9.5 before it was released only to revise the score after it's clear that the best thing to do was to wait is a huge disservice to their readers. Some people undoubtedly bought the game following this review and some of them might have otherwise waited.

It's 2013. Why are people still accepting these absurd launch day failures as par for the course? Why are reviewers such as Polygon going easy on publishers for fumbling the ball, exactly when they need to be making their best impression?

(An 8/10 score for a game where you lose progress and have your tiny bonsai cities corrupted with no recourse since you can't create hard saves is going easy on them.)

EX-EX-EX-EX-CLU-CLU-CLU-EX-EX-EX-CLU-CLU-EX-CLU-SI-SI-SI-EX-EX-CLUSIVEEEEEEEEEEEEX.

They probably should have waited to post the review in the first place. Posting a review score of 9.5 before the game launches just encourages people to pre-order and then be disappointed when they have trouble playing the game. They are doing a disservice to their readers by doing that.

For the record I've played a couple hours of SimCity today and the only problems I had with the servers was when I first launched the game the North American servers were listed as Busy and I had to wait like 2 or 3 minutes to log in.

Doesn't seem fair to base the scores on server stability, at least early in the game's life cycle. Aren't tons of games known for having terrible launch servers specifically because that's the highest traffic the game will ever receive? Then again, it's just as dumb to have factored the pre-release servers into the review, so maybe the right thing would have been to review the game mechanics and then put an asterisk at the bottom about the online features.

If you are going to require an internet connection for a single-player game then your servers should work 100% of the time. I think reviewers need to be tougher on these games that launch in a broken state. It's bad game design that could easily be fixed (offline mode) and we don't have any problem with reviewers giving low scores for other kinds of bad design.

ok, so let's say they improve the servers beyond what they were like pre-release. Does the game's score then get boosted by 3, giving it a score of 11 out of 10?

@weltal said:

No, it's on EA, not SimCity. The game itself is still a 9, according to Polygon. This would be like rating Call of Duty (pick one, any of them) and giving it an 8, 9, or 10, but then lowering it because the community is bad. The game itself is great, but the things surrounding the game ultimately cause it a lower score? That's something I expect from crying fans a la DMC, not so-called professional reviewers.

So EA is infamous for shutting down servers on their multiplayer titles. What happens in a year or two when EA wants to shutdown the servers on their always online games? Are they going to release an offline option, or basically just screw over everyone?

Exactly my thought.

@chavtheworld said:

That's the dumbest thing I've heard. Everything else you said was dumb too, but the bolded part is the dumbest. You don't think whether or not it works might be kinda relevant as to whether or not it deserves a 9.5? You don't think changing the review in two months -by which time everybody has bought an ostensibly broken game, because you mistakenly told them it was amazing- might be a little bit too late to be useful? Benefit of the doubt should not be given to the publisher at the potential expense of the reader.

They've obviously fucked up, but it's better that they hold their hands up to it now than try and brazen it out. Bottom line is that a game which doesn't function reliably because of a problem their end doesn't deserve a score of 9.5 (or an 8 for that matter). Basic functionality is pretty fundamental to a game being 'good', and Polygon have a responsibility not to leave up consumer advice they know to be misleading. They can always change it back again, if and when the game eventually becomes unfucked.

Dumb enough to base your purchase solely on a review score then you get what you get and go QQ in your pillow.

It's a 95 on Metacritic forever, so I guess that early review is the gift that will keep on giving (to EA).

How does Metacritic handle this situation? Do they take the updated score into consideration?

Except that's not like a bad community at all. The servers are required to play, a nice or mean community is not. The servers don't surround the game, they are the game. It's unfortunate because if that wasn't the case I'd agree.

So the score is only relevant for the US release? If the servers are fixed on release for the rest of the world, which score is correct?

Confused!

Did they had a paragraph to explain why they dropped the score? If so than I am OK with it.

Good for them. It's running like shit at release. They did the right thing.

I heard Justin McElroy say something along the lines of 'a review is a living document and can and will change based off of what happens to it and its services post launch'. I guess I can see that logic but, then, what is the point of their reviews? I thought reviews were buying advice for products that have a short shelf-life as products worth buying new. I mean their system would make for good buying advice for games a year down the line if that game's services change dramatically and they stay to their logic and change that game's review score. But who would care about that review a year from now?

@darukaru said:

Absolutely. Train wreck launches should not be given a free pass just because it's the norm.

As far as I'm concerned these companies have two valid options:

• Suck it up and make sure they have enough server capacity to handle launch.
• Don't sell more copies than they can serve.

Selling something you know isn't going to work properly isn't an ok option just because you aren't prepared to accept either of those two. I can't think of any other walk of life where you could pull this shit off and still have consumers defending you. 'Oh, they took your money and then double-booked your room so you have to sleep outside in the rain? Deal with it, the room will probably be available tomorrow, maybe. You know hotels get busy this time of year, you entitled jerk!'

So in a few weeks, when the game is working properly, are they going to change it back...?

@zudthespud said:

Yah this seems to be the biggest issue for me. Good for them for calling EA out on broken servers, but not everyone is buying games day 1. In a week are there going to change the score? because the precedent they have set right now kind of forces them.....

Side note, for this game and D3 I could have told anyone that the servers were going to be shit in the first few days........ I dunno why people are surprised and why reviewers are not ready for this kind of thing. This is why having QLs is such an amazing idea, you can tell your thoughts about the game and not be tied to a review until you have time to thoroughly go over it.

Nope. 8 is still a good store, everyone just wants to overreact. Everyone is saying the game is fun, so if the game is fun it's fun and that's all that matters really.