Power to the People, Until the Power's Out of Control

Sounds like people mad at the internet because there penis growing pills didn't work.

According to Metacritic, Dragon Age 2 has a score of 79. I don't think I trust Metacritic anymore..

@bransonhuggins said:

Look, if you are going to a site, and basing your buying off of what score something got, then you have other problems that aren't going to be fixed here.

As someone else put, if you look at most sites, especially now about say MW3 or BF3 you will see this, "MW3 sucks ass, BF3 is better" or "BF3 sucks. MW3 is going to be amazing". Well, really people, all you do is have pissing contest.

Just because you don't like a game, doesn't mean it sucks. I am not a huge fan of GoW, but i will tell you right now, it's an amazing game. It's just not a game that is for me. does that take away from it being good at all? NO. Why? Because it wasn't made for ME. It was made for a lot of people, and I just happen to not like it much. But I have enough of a brain to know that just because I don't like something, it doesn't mean it sucks. It just means, I didn't like it.

On the filp side of that, there have been plenty of games that people have said suck, but that I have to say I have enjoyed. Just because someone comes on and gives a bad review, doesn't mean that you shouldn't play it. Make up your own mind, and form your own opinion.

As far as Amazon goes, listen people, if you go onto Amazon, and you give something a 1 star review, and your gripe is with the shipper or anything BESIDES THE ACTUAL PRODUCTS, then shut the fuck up. You are here to review a product, so review it. No one cares if it didn't get there in time to meet your standards. that in no way represents the product, that represents the shipper.

My thoughts exactly. CoD isn't my cup of tea, yet I'm willing to admit it's a very well made game. Conversely, you (in the general sense not talking to anyone in particular) may not like FFXIII as much as I did, but that doesn't make it garbage. Metacritic does have its uses, though. If I'm looking at a game I might want to rent or buy, I will typically run over to MC. I than look at the excerpts from different sources with different scores, and click through some positive and some negative to get a balanced perspective. For me, it's more about aggregating the reviews all in one place rather than me have to go through sites like IGN, which is a terribly designed site, 1UP etc. individually to find their reviews. It's just easier that way.

Anyone who pays attention to USER reviews on metacritic is an idiot. They're completely worthless, and should be done away with. That won't happen, though, as they mean idiots reading reviews from other idiots, and having a pissing contest about them that results in a shitload of page views.

I'm sure the owners of Metacritic really couldn't care less about those 0 scores, otherwise they'd take action against that sort of crap themselves in the first place. I can't think of ANY game this console generation that deserves a 0 or 1 out of 10.

@markusespar said:

Even with professional reviews, the mean score (based on an aggregation of dissimilar data points) is a fundamentally flawed metric. I'd love to see someone create a Metacritic competitor that allowed users to custom-aggregate scores based on sources they trust, whether those sources be professional games journalists or other users.

It's an interesting point. It's been an issue with reviews of all sorts since long before the internet. For every independent, highly-trusted critic there's a swathe of critics sitting in official or distributor circles who dispense high scores like they're going out of fashion. Truth is you trust certain reviewers more so than even certain sites or publications. It all depends on your personal taste and also the natural ebb and flow of critic's credibility. When in doubt, play the demo, I suppose. ;)

This proves how utterly useless metacritic is.

Meta Critic's user scores have always been garbage. They have been the target of fanboy rage for a long time now. If a game is a big exclusive, then it is guaranteed to get voted down. Also, there are a lot of assholes out there, who just want to vote something down. I have never trusted user ratings when there are no written reviews attached. They have no accountability, and no way to verify that they are a credible source for reviewing a game.

I only ever use Meta Critic as a source for links to the different reviews. I have my list of reviewers that I tend to agree with, and Meta Critic a is a good way to get links to all of them at the same time. Putting any stock what so ever in the user reviews is foolish on the both the developer and end user sides.

Well... one relatively simple solution. Don't let anyone cast a vote without posting a review.

I know this won't magically fix things over night, the system could still be abused however there are a lot fewer people out there willing to post a review (of any quality) than there are people who will vote a score with two mouse clicks... All they'd need at that point is a netflix style button you can push letting you report a review if it's not really a review. Even fewer harassers would bother taking the time to write a quality review.

The best solution is to ignore ALL reviews, and just buy what looks cool. Lots of games have demos, others have plenty of footage online. You don't need someone's opinion guiding by their own personal taste, which you may or may not agree with.

Unfortunately Metacritic isnt going away, so they have to fix this.

And this problem has a really easy solution, dont let people rate a game without writing their reasons behind the rating. I assume Metacritic wont do anything about this until it happens to something big like CoD or BF.

Never liked Metacritic, always seemed to easy a system to abuse for the good or bad.

People go to Metacritic for the user reviews? There's a reason it's called Metacritic and not Metafanboy...

Metacritic should change it so the user reviews have no effect on the score.

What the fuck is Metacritic doing by tallying user reviews!?!?!?? Sure people like to have their say about a game, but it should not be mashed in with the media's own PROFESSIONAL critiques. If they separated the two, then this whole issue wouldn't even exist!

It's like if Giantbomb combined its scores with player reviews. It's stupid and unprofessional, which says a lot about Metacritic.

@markusespar said:

Even with professional reviews, the mean score (based on an aggregation of dissimilar data points) is a fundamentally flawed metric. I'd love to see someone create a Metacritic competitor that allowed users to custom-aggregate scores based on sources they trust, whether those sources be professional games journalists or other users.

YES. THIS. And it wouldn't be hard to do either. You could simply add games to your tracking list and, when the reviews come out, the tracked game's aggregate score will represent the opinions you trust.

I love your articles!

While the scores assigned by critics are important, so are user reviews

Here's where you're wrong. While reviewers can sometimes be mistaken, users are on the whole idiots. Users either post because they loved it or hated it. No one who plays a game that's average will go to the effort to post a review, but critics have to. Why would I want to listen to a bunch of trolls/fan boys? At least it's possible a professional critic might have an unbiased review even if this is not always the case.

3rd Strike Online Edition got 0's from reviews saying "THEY SHOULD HAVE MADE MEGA MAN LEGENDS. CAPCOM SUCKS" and so on.
But GIantbomb also has user reviews like that.
 
I think the only chance to do something about it is, that people have to care about their account. Use Facebook-Login for example.

@Cretaceous_Bob: Wow you really don't understand what he meant? How thick are you? I understand oversite is a far cry from oversight, but geez. Good thing you pointed that out, otherwise more people would have been as confused as you are!

I have an idea! Let's not care about Metacritic anymore!

Seriously, I don't remember the last time a specific review or group of reviews actually impacted what I bought. I guess I'm the exception to the rule but I go more on word of mouth and what I read and see about the game before it comes out and decide if I want to play it. If a game I like gets bad reviews, I don't really care. I don't like a lot of games that got great reviews too.

@selbie said:

What the fuck is Metacritic doing by tallying user reviews!?!?!?? Sure people like to have their say about a game, but it should not be mashed in with the media's own PROFESSIONAL critiques. If they separated the two, then this whole issue wouldn't even exist!

The two already are separated. User scores have absolutely no impact on the metascore, which is only based on critic reviews. There's the metascore, and the users score, and neither of them have anything to do with one another.

The problem isn't Metacritic. It's the dipshits that have placed such an absurdly high emphasis on it.

Let Jim Sterling explain.

Unfortunately, we're in a strange period in the growth of gaming where reviews are becoming a sort of bible for many. As a result, Metacritic has unfortunately become a battlefield for fanboys to fight in, and companies starved for any means to gauge reactions in the public use it as a sort of bible.

It's going to take a long time to shake this off... It may never happen, now that the internet is being carved up among various fanboy camps. Hopefully corporations will find an alternative means to gauge user satisfaction before the fanboy war burns a truly classic game.

This is the reason I don't really trust people's unsolicited opinions. The user reviews on metacritic, even the ones where they write actual reviews, are mostly valueless and reactionary. It's the same with anything though. To a lot of people, if they don't like, say, a new album by a band, to them it's the worst thing in the world, and they need to tell everybody. The mere fact that anybody else might like it makes them very angry.

Although it's all ultimately subjective, I think good reviewers strive toward some objectivity. Call me elitist, but unless you can write at least a cogent paragraph - hell, even a sentence - about something, then personally I'm not really interested in your opinion.

@MaddProdigy said:

@Cretaceous_Bob: Wow you really don't understand what he meant? How thick are you? I understand oversite is a far cry from oversight, but geez. Good thing you pointed that out, otherwise more people would have been as confused as you are!

Or I was trying to reduce the amount of time a professional writer had a blatant typo in public view. How thick are you?

Its all about trusted sources pal. I dont know em - I dont trust em!

NEVER LISTEN TO THE USERS UNLESS YOU COMPETELY TRUST THEM.

The internet and gaming is full of too many kids to be taken seriously.

Man...People can be such jerks.

It looks like Metacritic has taken action.
 
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/37425/Metacritic_Takes_Step_To_Remove_Spam_User_Reviews.php
 
I'm sure this won't be the last of it, but the price of credibility is eternal vigilance.

The problem with empowering people is that a lot of people are dicks and will abuse that power. If Metacritic wants honest reviews, they're going to get people giving zeroes with no written content, expecting people to given anymore (while at least some will) is seriously over-estimating our species.

@AaronChance: True, but it helps. I like to read a variety of reviews and read through them. I know the biases of the reviewers and who are closest to what I like. This doesn't apply to games I know I will buy like Skyrim or any Valve game, though.

If you are using metacritic for video game reviews you are doing it wrong.

I can't believe bonuses and royalties can be based on something like Metacritic. The video game industry is truly twisted.