Influenced or not... I'd still look at the meta-score of game reviewers over that of the general internet crowd that often goes on pissy, whiny campaigns against a game that hurt their butts.
To wit, Archeage: Metascore 78, User score 3.7. Just take a look at all the 0 or 1 user reviewers @ Metacritic who have only ever done 1 review...lol.
So... do I think that professional game reviewers fall prey to the industry's seduction? Yup... but their reviews are still 100% more credible than the typical anonymous forum or Metacritic user review.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
This is why this is a stupid conversation to have... For many TOR was a good game, for many it wasn't. It all boils down to whether or not you enjoyed the direction the game was given. Generally reviews are about whether a game offers enough fun and engagement to justify it's cost. As well as whether it's executed it's direction well...a subjective topic..... Some just have a problem accepting that their sense of taste isn't universal.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
So you say that game publishers universally spend a bunch of money trying to woo the media? Why do they do that? Is it because they're all stupid and waste money? Or are they getting something for it? If the latter, then what are they getting for it? What do they think they're getting for it? If you can't answer that, then any claim of "but it doesn't give them better reviews" rings hollow.
Influenced or not... I'd still look at the meta-score of game reviewers over that of the general internet crowd that often goes on pissy, whiny campaigns against a game that hurt their butts.
To wit, Archeage: Metascore 78, User score 3.7. Just take a look at all the 0 or 1 user reviewers @ Metacritic who have only ever done 1 review...lol.
So... do I think that professional game reviewers fall prey to the industry's seduction? Yup... but their reviews are still 100% more credible than the typical anonymous forum or Metacritic user review.
That's debatable as there's no distinction between no-name sites and respected reviewers. For example, the top score for ArcheAge is 85, which is from a site that regularly gives games 99/100 and so on. I would discredit that score based on that. I tend to think that the user metacritic scores are fine as long as there's a large sampling.
So you say that game publishers universally spend a bunch of money trying to woo the media? Why do they do that? Is it because they're all stupid and waste money? Or are they getting something for it? If the latter, then what are they getting for it? What do they think they're getting for it? If you can't answer that, then any claim of "but it doesn't give them better reviews" rings hollow.
'Even though I may receive a tote bag from a company, pick up a beta key at an event, play a free review copy and, unthinkably, make a new friend on the development team, I’m not going to give the game a good score if it’s crap.'
'One more niggling comment on this topic that may be out there is the idea that because writers are human, somehow all the swag, parties, and privileges must in some way influence their thought process when they go into a review, even if by a 0.1 score margin. To be quite honest, I’m not the biggest fan of swag, and while I do enjoy going to parties as much as the next person, I’d be just as happy attending a lecture-style preview by a developer and paying for my own lunch. The truth of the matter is that the video games industry, as any other field, has its own way of functioning, and free stuff, game shows, and schmoozing are all part of it.'
Reciprocity. Look into it.
As for the rest of the article the best you can gain from this is to get people to believe that YOU don't accept bribes or increase scores for perks. You can't possibly speak for the entire industry and to try is silly. Have you personally been attacked about your review process? I don't understand the point of this article.
I'm guessing it is in preparation for some controversial upcoming review here Archeage .
So...in your opinion, should the MMORPG.COM Archeage final score fall within the metacritic average of 78 + or - or within the user score average of 3.7? Which of those numbers do you think is more credible considering the very public campaign by some disgruntled Archeage patrons who didn't win on day one to get everyone to sign up at metacritic and vote 0 or 1?
I can guarantee you it will be within the correct 78% range and not 3.7... might as well start screaming "bought review" now...why wait?
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Influenced or not... I'd still look at the meta-score of game reviewers over that of the general internet crowd that often goes on pissy, whiny campaigns against a game that hurt their butts.
To wit, Archeage: Metascore 78, User score 3.7. Just take a look at all the 0 or 1 user reviewers @ Metacritic who have only ever done 1 review...lol.
So... do I think that professional game reviewers fall prey to the industry's seduction? Yup... but their reviews are still 100% more credible than the typical anonymous forum or Metacritic user review.
That's debatable as there's no distinction between no-name sites and respected reviewers. For example, the top score for ArcheAge is 85, which is from a site that regularly gives games 99/100 and so on, and on average gives a 77% higher score than other reviewers. I would discredit that score based on that. I tend to think that the user metacritic scores are fine as long as there's a large sampling.
Metacritic user scores are useless. Why? Because they don't use a weighted system and a 0 by someone who just signed up to do that one hatchet job counts as much as the 7 a metacritic user of 10 years who has 100 reviews gives it - the end result of those 2 reviews is 3.5 average
It's a very dumb system that can be manipulated as it currently is for Archeage. It has even less credibility than the influenced critic reviews.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
'Even though I may receive a tote bag from a company, pick up a beta key at an event, play a free review copy and, unthinkably, make a new friend on the development team, I’m not going to give the game a good score if it’s crap.'
'One more niggling comment on this topic that may be out there is the idea that because writers are human, somehow all the swag, parties, and privileges must in some way influence their thought process when they go into a review, even if by a 0.1 score margin. To be quite honest, I’m not the biggest fan of swag, and while I do enjoy going to parties as much as the next person, I’d be just as happy attending a lecture-style preview by a developer and paying for my own lunch. The truth of the matter is that the video games industry, as any other field, has its own way of functioning, and free stuff, game shows, and schmoozing are all part of it.'
Reciprocity. Look into it.
As for the rest of the article the best you can gain from this is to get people to believe that YOU don't accept bribes or increase scores for perks. You can't possibly speak for the entire industry and to try is silly. Have you personally been attacked about your review process? I don't understand the point of this article.
I'm guessing it is in preparation for some controversial upcoming review here Archeage .
So...in your opinion, should the MMORPG.COM Archeage final score fall within the metacritic average of 78 + or - or within the user score average of 3.7? Which of those numbers do you think is more credible considering the very public campaign by some disgruntled Archeage patrons who didn't win on day one to get everyone to sign up at metacritic and vote 0 or 1?
I can guarantee you it will be within the correct 78% range and not 3.7... might as well start screaming "bought review" now...why wait?
From what I have read and heard...I'd say neither. More like 50% or 5/10. I haven't really heard anything positive except from those that are die hard fans. Which is ok...but not a true judge of the game.
As to the OP....Myth? It's been known to be true since forever. The same reason we see ads on TV for the worst games. Money talks.
Is why we are getting Katey Perry for this year's Super Bowl.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
Metacritic user scores are useless. Why? Because they don't use a weighted system and a 0 by someone who just signed up to do that one hatchet job counts as much as the 7 a metacritic user of 10 years who has 100 reviews gives it - the end result of those 2 reviews is 3.5 average
It's a very dumb system that can be manipulated as it currently is for Archeage. It has even less credibility than the influenced critic reviews.
They're not useless, an awful lot of attention is paid to them. With ArcheAge it's pretty much all 0s and 10s, but that becomes more useful once the sampling is large enough. You're assuming that the people giving 0s have a vendetta, while the people giving 10 are being honest, which is far from objective.
I think that both have to be treated cautiously. ArcheAge has a sampling of just 5 reviews from sites nobody has heard of. That makes the critic score irrelevant at the moment.
So you say that game publishers universally spend a bunch of money trying to woo the media? Why do they do that? Is it because they're all stupid and waste money? Or are they getting something for it? If the latter, then what are they getting for it? What do they think they're getting for it? If you can't answer that, then any claim of "but it doesn't give them better reviews" rings hollow.
There's a lot they could get from that, marketing hype, magazine layouts/exclusives best of shows...etc..etc..etc...Trade shows and the like are where a lot of that money goes, moving million dollar booths all over the country (at times even the world) isn't cheap.
It doesn't mean it's always going to lead to better scores, plenty of highly publicized/marketed games fail to bring in big scores universally. Even in those respective avenues that spent millions to dominate the pages of.
Does it happen (the topic of the OP)... Yes of course.. it's inevitable.. However, the degree and rate at which it happens, is often overblown in the hysteria that permeates sites like this.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
'Even though I may receive a tote bag from a company, pick up a beta key at an event, play a free review copy and, unthinkably, make a new friend on the development team, I’m not going to give the game a good score if it’s crap.'
'One more niggling comment on this topic that may be out there is the idea that because writers are human, somehow all the swag, parties, and privileges must in some way influence their thought process when they go into a review, even if by a 0.1 score margin. To be quite honest, I’m not the biggest fan of swag, and while I do enjoy going to parties as much as the next person, I’d be just as happy attending a lecture-style preview by a developer and paying for my own lunch. The truth of the matter is that the video games industry, as any other field, has its own way of functioning, and free stuff, game shows, and schmoozing are all part of it.'
Reciprocity. Look into it.
As for the rest of the article the best you can gain from this is to get people to believe that YOU don't accept bribes or increase scores for perks. You can't possibly speak for the entire industry and to try is silly. Have you personally been attacked about your review process? I don't understand the point of this article.
I'm guessing it is in preparation for some controversial upcoming review here Archeage .
So...in your opinion, should the MMORPG.COM Archeage final score fall within the metacritic average of 78 + or - or within the user score average of 3.7? Which of those numbers do you think is more credible considering the very public campaign by some disgruntled Archeage patrons who didn't win on day one to get everyone to sign up at metacritic and vote 0 or 1?
I can guarantee you it will be within the correct 78% range and not 3.7... might as well start screaming "bought review" now...why wait?
From what I have read and heard...I'd say neither. More like 50% or 5/10. I haven't really heard anything positive except from those that are die hard fans. Which is ok...but not a true judge of the game.
As to the OP....Myth? It's been known to be true since forever. The same reason we see ads on TV for the worst games. Money talks.
Is why we are getting Katey Perry for this year's Super Bowl.
It's a F2P game. Instead of "reading" and "hearing" you might try "playing" and making up your own mind... then you wouldn't have the superficial biased impression that the only positive comes from "hard core" fans.
There are people who do try most of these MMOs... some of them even try to do honest assesments based on their own hands-on experience. Archeage isn't perfect by any means but it does enough things right to warrant a "good" rating - certainly not a 50% based on reading forums lol.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
If a MMORPG staff member could honestly answer this; Has the TSW hype going on this year truly not been paid for? As a Norwegian myself, I do not see why you would publish that many columns for a game that has that low of a popularity.
Sure mabye they invited you to a interview, but would that result in 5+ columns for a single game that has been out since 2++ years and basically another failure by Funcom. Can you honestly tell me, that you just went; Oh hey, lets make 5++ columns on TSW, put their banner on the site at the same time, with no money at all trading hands?
In my eyes, this site is the last one I come for honest reviews.
Metacritic user scores are useless. Why? Because they don't use a weighted system and a 0 by someone who just signed up to do that one hatchet job counts as much as the 7 a metacritic user of 10 years who has 100 reviews gives it - the end result of those 2 reviews is 3.5 average
It's a very dumb system that can be manipulated as it currently is for Archeage. It has even less credibility than the influenced critic reviews.
They're not useless, an awful lot of attention is paid to them. With ArcheAge it's pretty much all 0s and 10s, but that becomes more useful once the sampling is large enough. You're assuming that the people giving 0s have a vendetta, while the people giving 10 are being honest, which is far from objective.
I think that both have to be treated cautiously. ArcheAge has a sampling of just 5 reviews from sites nobody has heard of. That makes the critic score irrelevant at the moment.
Who would you believe. a wannabe second-tier critic using his own name trying to earn a living at game reviewing, or Mr. "Archeagesucksdicks" with his 0 or Mr. "McLovingarcheage" with his 10. I'd still listen to the 2nd tier reviewer...but that's just me
Of course the 10s are just as invalid as the 0s but I don't know of any pro-archeage "go to metacritic and vote 10!" campaigns and I do know about the "vote 0" ones from Reddit and Archeage's own official forums. You can click on the user's name at metacritic and see how many reviews they've done there. If you do that, the 3.7 aggregate user score will start to make sense.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
'Even though I may receive a tote bag from a company, pick up a beta key at an event, play a free review copy and, unthinkably, make a new friend on the development team, I’m not going to give the game a good score if it’s crap.'
'One more niggling comment on this topic that may be out there is the idea that because writers are human, somehow all the swag, parties, and privileges must in some way influence their thought process when they go into a review, even if by a 0.1 score margin. To be quite honest, I’m not the biggest fan of swag, and while I do enjoy going to parties as much as the next person, I’d be just as happy attending a lecture-style preview by a developer and paying for my own lunch. The truth of the matter is that the video games industry, as any other field, has its own way of functioning, and free stuff, game shows, and schmoozing are all part of it.'
Reciprocity. Look into it.
As for the rest of the article the best you can gain from this is to get people to believe that YOU don't accept bribes or increase scores for perks. You can't possibly speak for the entire industry and to try is silly. Have you personally been attacked about your review process? I don't understand the point of this article.
I'm guessing it is in preparation for some controversial upcoming review here Archeage .
So...in your opinion, should the MMORPG.COM Archeage final score fall within the metacritic average of 78 + or - or within the user score average of 3.7? Which of those numbers do you think is more credible considering the very public campaign by some disgruntled Archeage patrons who didn't win on day one to get everyone to sign up at metacritic and vote 0 or 1?
I can guarantee you it will be within the correct 78% range and not 3.7... might as well start screaming "bought review" now...why wait?
From what I have read and heard...I'd say neither. More like 50% or 5/10. I haven't really heard anything positive except from those that are die hard fans. Which is ok...but not a true judge of the game.
As to the OP....Myth? It's been known to be true since forever. The same reason we see ads on TV for the worst games. Money talks.
Is why we are getting Katey Perry for this year's Super Bowl.
It's a F2P game. Instead of "reading" and "hearing" you might try "playing" and making up your own mind... then you wouldn't have the superficial biased impression that the only positive comes from "hard core" fans.
There are people who do try most of these MMOs... some of them even try to do honest assesments based on their own hands-on experience. Archeage isn't perfect by any means but it does enough things right to warrant a "good" rating - certainly not a 50% based on reading forums lol.
It's not superficial to watch vids and reading/hearing about a game as long as you aren't dead set to hate a game. You get that right? Pretty obvious that I was being open minded about it, just sharing the multiple posts about the game. Most of which are bad. Yes, taken with a grain of salt, should make it less biased....but still shows me it's a "/meh" game at best.
So hard to understand?
My opinion is FROM those who tried it. I never said anything more than that also....that I read and heard. That IS enough for me not to dog it, but to judge it as a game I wont try.
Get over it.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
'Even though I may receive a tote bag from a company, pick up a beta key at an event, play a free review copy and, unthinkably, make a new friend on the development team, I’m not going to give the game a good score if it’s crap.'
'One more niggling comment on this topic that may be out there is the idea that because writers are human, somehow all the swag, parties, and privileges must in some way influence their thought process when they go into a review, even if by a 0.1 score margin. To be quite honest, I’m not the biggest fan of swag, and while I do enjoy going to parties as much as the next person, I’d be just as happy attending a lecture-style preview by a developer and paying for my own lunch. The truth of the matter is that the video games industry, as any other field, has its own way of functioning, and free stuff, game shows, and schmoozing are all part of it.'
Reciprocity. Look into it.
As for the rest of the article the best you can gain from this is to get people to believe that YOU don't accept bribes or increase scores for perks. You can't possibly speak for the entire industry and to try is silly. Have you personally been attacked about your review process? I don't understand the point of this article.
I'm guessing it is in preparation for some controversial upcoming review here Archeage .
So...in your opinion, should the MMORPG.COM Archeage final score fall within the metacritic average of 78 + or - or within the user score average of 3.7? Which of those numbers do you think is more credible considering the very public campaign by some disgruntled Archeage patrons who didn't win on day one to get everyone to sign up at metacritic and vote 0 or 1?
I can guarantee you it will be within the correct 78% range and not 3.7... might as well start screaming "bought review" now...why wait?
From what I have read and heard...I'd say neither. More like 50% or 5/10. I haven't really heard anything positive except from those that are die hard fans. Which is ok...but not a true judge of the game.
As to the OP....Myth? It's been known to be true since forever. The same reason we see ads on TV for the worst games. Money talks.
Is why we are getting Katey Perry for this year's Super Bowl.
It's a F2P game. Instead of "reading" and "hearing" you might try "playing" and making up your own mind... then you wouldn't have the superficial biased impression that the only positive comes from "hard core" fans.
There are people who do try most of these MMOs... some of them even try to do honest assesments based on their own hands-on experience. Archeage isn't perfect by any means but it does enough things right to warrant a "good" rating - certainly not a 50% based on reading forums lol.
It's not superficial to watch vids and reading/hearing about a game as long as you aren't dead set to hate a game. You get that right? Pretty obvious that I was being open minded about it, just sharing the multiple posts about the game. Most of which are bad. Yes, taken with a grain of salt, should make it less biased....but still shows me it's a "/meh" game at best.
So hard to understand?
My opinion is FROM those who tried it. I never said anything more than that also....that I read and heard. That IS enough for me not to dog it, but to judge it as a game I wont try.
Get over it.
Just so you know... you don't know shit compared to anyone who has actually played it.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Who would you believe. a wannabe second-tier critic using his own name trying to earn a living at game reviewing, or Mr. "Archeagesucksdicks" with his 0 or Mr. "McLovingarcheage" with his 10. I'd still listen to the 2nd tier reviewer...but that's just me
Of course the 10s are just as invalid as the 0s but I don't know of any pro-archeage "go to metacritic and vote 10!" campaigns and I do know about the "vote 0" ones from Reddit and Archeage's own official forums. You can click on the user's name at metacritic and see how many reviews they've done there. If you do that, the 3.7 aggregate user score will start to make sense.
I don't believe that the game should be 0 or 10. What I'm saying is that once enough people do vote, an average forms which starts to represent something more useful. You're making many assumptions about who is voting and why - it's all speculation and doesn't get anywhere. It's currently too early to read much into any of the scores.
I don't think that just because someone writes a review on a website that it automatically has any credibility, ignoring anything to do with the topic of the thread. I just looked at the top review for ArcheAge. He got to level 20 or so, played the game for a couple of hours, and of course didn't experience most of it. That makes the review pretty poor, an MMO cannot be sensibly reviewed that way.
'Even though I may receive a tote bag from a company, pick up a beta key at an event, play a free review copy and, unthinkably, make a new friend on the development team, I’m not going to give the game a good score if it’s crap.'
'One more niggling comment on this topic that may be out there is the idea that because writers are human, somehow all the swag, parties, and privileges must in some way influence their thought process when they go into a review, even if by a 0.1 score margin. To be quite honest, I’m not the biggest fan of swag, and while I do enjoy going to parties as much as the next person, I’d be just as happy attending a lecture-style preview by a developer and paying for my own lunch. The truth of the matter is that the video games industry, as any other field, has its own way of functioning, and free stuff, game shows, and schmoozing are all part of it.'
Reciprocity. Look into it.
As for the rest of the article the best you can gain from this is to get people to believe that YOU don't accept bribes or increase scores for perks. You can't possibly speak for the entire industry and to try is silly. Have you personally been attacked about your review process? I don't understand the point of this article.
I'm guessing it is in preparation for some controversial upcoming review here Archeage .
So...in your opinion, should the MMORPG.COM Archeage final score fall within the metacritic average of 78 + or - or within the user score average of 3.7? Which of those numbers do you think is more credible considering the very public campaign by some disgruntled Archeage patrons who didn't win on day one to get everyone to sign up at metacritic and vote 0 or 1?
I can guarantee you it will be within the correct 78% range and not 3.7... might as well start screaming "bought review" now...why wait?
From what I have read and heard...I'd say neither. More like 50% or 5/10. I haven't really heard anything positive except from those that are die hard fans. Which is ok...but not a true judge of the game.
As to the OP....Myth? It's been known to be true since forever. The same reason we see ads on TV for the worst games. Money talks.
Is why we are getting Katey Perry for this year's Super Bowl.
It's a F2P game. Instead of "reading" and "hearing" you might try "playing" and making up your own mind... then you wouldn't have the superficial biased impression that the only positive comes from "hard core" fans.
There are people who do try most of these MMOs... some of them even try to do honest assesments based on their own hands-on experience. Archeage isn't perfect by any means but it does enough things right to warrant a "good" rating - certainly not a 50% based on reading forums lol.
It's not superficial to watch vids and reading/hearing about a game as long as you aren't dead set to hate a game. You get that right? Pretty obvious that I was being open minded about it, just sharing the multiple posts about the game. Most of which are bad. Yes, taken with a grain of salt, should make it less biased....but still shows me it's a "/meh" game at best.
So hard to understand?
My opinion is FROM those who tried it. I never said anything more than that also....that I read and heard. That IS enough for me not to dog it, but to judge it as a game I wont try.
Get over it.
Just so you know... you don't know shit compared to anyone who has actually played it.
Just so you know....I trust the 3k plus members of my guild as well as others here and there and what they say about games. I don't waste my time otherwise. Have fun with your attitude.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
Currently on vacation with my family. I did not see Som's article until today. I can however say that WE DO NOT accept payment for reviews, but some companies have tried. Usually Eastern imported MMOs, and never a big AAA company.
And I know for a fact of two of our direct competitors who DO accept $$$ for their favorable reviews. I won't say who without proof to back it up. But they're not likely the kind of sites that most of our readers would visit outside of good Google Search returns. They don't have the community that Massively and MMORPG support.
And if those sites do it, it's highly likely that other sites across other genres and countries do as well.
So while you may not agree with scores we sometimes give, they've never been paid for.
For the TSW COLUMN: we honestly just see good traffic on those, as the game has a following here and abroad. Niche though it may be. We generally write what you guys read, so if people stop clicking TSW columns, we will move on.
Cheers! Now I'm going back to vacation.
PS - The column stays. Som is wrong about some thing's, but there's still plenty of value in this discussion. Go ahead and try to hash out what sites DO accept paid reviews.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
One thing that I will say in defense of this particular site is that if they were selling high review scores, League of Angels would have been rated higher than a 4.0. They've sure bought an awful lot of ads.
It's also possible that the "paying money to woo the media" could work similarly to how it often does in politics: paying not so much for favorable treatment as merely to avoid unfavorable treatment. You don't pay money to promote your game? Well then, we ignore your game entirely and people never hear about it from our site.
The opposite of people loving your game is not people hating your game. It's people not caring about your game, or better yet, never hearing about your game at all. Even a review that rates a game 6/10 with some scathing comments on the game can often be very much preferable to a site never mentioning that your game exists.
Good to see that the elephant is out of the room. It was simply both too obvious with some scores, and other people like TotalBiscuit etc. also said that it happens, so no point denying the very existence.
And that is what most people, including me, posted on the last article about this. It's not about whether MMORPG does it, but simply that it does happen.
I wouldn't be surprised if *some* review here at MMORPG.com did get bought though. A lot of people work here, a lot of reviews happen, so who's to say it never happend? Still, the simple fact that it's not counted amongst the major gaming magazines etc. like Gamespot, Kotaku etc. who regularly get cited on the box etc. to show how good it is means it's not as likely that someone will try.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
If you have to "prove" you are unbiased, you generally aren't unbiased.
That is not only a logical fallacy since you have no grounds to claim it "generally" happens, but it is also a pretty dangerous mentality. Every person, this includes even a game reviewer, MUST be considered innocent until proven guilty.
It's like saying that no law abiding citizen should be against total invigilation because they obviously have nothing to hide. Four0Six, do you mind that your location is tracked and all your mails, phone calls and bills are stored by the CIA? Obviously, if you had nothing to hide you wouldn't mind that at all, right? And if you do mind, then does it mean you are generally guilty and should be immediately detained?
Originally posted by nethaniah
Seriously Farmville? Yeah I think it's great. In a World where half our population is dying of hunger the more fortunate half is spending their time harvesting food that doesn't exist.
Going to use my other passion, synthesisers to say how I feel.
I get a printed magazine through my door every month. The articles in it seem to be far less biased (prepared to point out obvious flaws etc) than other music mags/sites.
However, every month the same 3 well known manafactures have full page advets on the inside front cover, inside back cover and actual back cover.
I do not believe this can't influnce reviews no matter how strongly they deny it. If one of the companies release a range of crap synths, if the magazine tells it's readers to avoid at all costs, the company is hardly going to want to pay to advertise in their magazine like
Further more, the company might decide not to send any more instruments to them to review.
They will then be in a position of selling a magazine with virtually zero input on one of the major players, hence could loose readership.
I don't blame them for this, I just think it's impossible for unbiased reviews.
The party I went to in my comment in the previous article was a few years ago when magazines were still the norm. There was a hash chilli, most people stoned, and these magazine guests really knew the games company staff, not like they were invited and met most of them on the night.
The boss of that games company is probably one of the most well knows names in gaming, a name that most of you would know.
While I always suspected this, I didn't realise how very personally friendly they were with each other until that night.
Comments
I have to say I was thinking the exact same.
Influenced or not... I'd still look at the meta-score of game reviewers over that of the general internet crowd that often goes on pissy, whiny campaigns against a game that hurt their butts.
To wit, Archeage: Metascore 78, User score 3.7. Just take a look at all the 0 or 1 user reviewers @ Metacritic who have only ever done 1 review...lol.
So... do I think that professional game reviewers fall prey to the industry's seduction? Yup... but their reviews are still 100% more credible than the typical anonymous forum or Metacritic user review.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
This is why this is a stupid conversation to have... For many TOR was a good game, for many it wasn't. It all boils down to whether or not you enjoyed the direction the game was given. Generally reviews are about whether a game offers enough fun and engagement to justify it's cost. As well as whether it's executed it's direction well...a subjective topic..... Some just have a problem accepting that their sense of taste isn't universal.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
So you say that game publishers universally spend a bunch of money trying to woo the media? Why do they do that? Is it because they're all stupid and waste money? Or are they getting something for it? If the latter, then what are they getting for it? What do they think they're getting for it? If you can't answer that, then any claim of "but it doesn't give them better reviews" rings hollow.
That's debatable as there's no distinction between no-name sites and respected reviewers. For example, the top score for ArcheAge is 85, which is from a site that regularly gives games 99/100 and so on. I would discredit that score based on that. I tend to think that the user metacritic scores are fine as long as there's a large sampling.
Irrefutable pure logic.
/thread
My gaming blog
So...in your opinion, should the MMORPG.COM Archeage final score fall within the metacritic average of 78 + or - or within the user score average of 3.7? Which of those numbers do you think is more credible considering the very public campaign by some disgruntled Archeage patrons who didn't win on day one to get everyone to sign up at metacritic and vote 0 or 1?
I can guarantee you it will be within the correct 78% range and not 3.7... might as well start screaming "bought review" now...why wait?
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Metacritic user scores are useless. Why? Because they don't use a weighted system and a 0 by someone who just signed up to do that one hatchet job counts as much as the 7 a metacritic user of 10 years who has 100 reviews gives it - the end result of those 2 reviews is 3.5 average
It's a very dumb system that can be manipulated as it currently is for Archeage. It has even less credibility than the influenced critic reviews.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
From what I have read and heard...I'd say neither. More like 50% or 5/10. I haven't really heard anything positive except from those that are die hard fans. Which is ok...but not a true judge of the game.
As to the OP....Myth? It's been known to be true since forever. The same reason we see ads on TV for the worst games. Money talks.
Is why we are getting Katey Perry for this year's Super Bowl.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
They're not useless, an awful lot of attention is paid to them. With ArcheAge it's pretty much all 0s and 10s, but that becomes more useful once the sampling is large enough. You're assuming that the people giving 0s have a vendetta, while the people giving 10 are being honest, which is far from objective.
I think that both have to be treated cautiously. ArcheAge has a sampling of just 5 reviews from sites nobody has heard of. That makes the critic score irrelevant at the moment.
There's a lot they could get from that, marketing hype, magazine layouts/exclusives best of shows...etc..etc..etc...Trade shows and the like are where a lot of that money goes, moving million dollar booths all over the country (at times even the world) isn't cheap.
It doesn't mean it's always going to lead to better scores, plenty of highly publicized/marketed games fail to bring in big scores universally. Even in those respective avenues that spent millions to dominate the pages of.
Does it happen (the topic of the OP)... Yes of course.. it's inevitable.. However, the degree and rate at which it happens, is often overblown in the hysteria that permeates sites like this.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It's a F2P game. Instead of "reading" and "hearing" you might try "playing" and making up your own mind... then you wouldn't have the superficial biased impression that the only positive comes from "hard core" fans.
There are people who do try most of these MMOs... some of them even try to do honest assesments based on their own hands-on experience. Archeage isn't perfect by any means but it does enough things right to warrant a "good" rating - certainly not a 50% based on reading forums lol.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
If a MMORPG staff member could honestly answer this; Has the TSW hype going on this year truly not been paid for? As a Norwegian myself, I do not see why you would publish that many columns for a game that has that low of a popularity.
Sure mabye they invited you to a interview, but would that result in 5+ columns for a single game that has been out since 2++ years and basically another failure by Funcom. Can you honestly tell me, that you just went; Oh hey, lets make 5++ columns on TSW, put their banner on the site at the same time, with no money at all trading hands?
In my eyes, this site is the last one I come for honest reviews.
Who would you believe. a wannabe second-tier critic using his own name trying to earn a living at game reviewing, or Mr. "Archeagesucksdicks" with his 0 or Mr. "McLovingarcheage" with his 10. I'd still listen to the 2nd tier reviewer...but that's just me
Of course the 10s are just as invalid as the 0s but I don't know of any pro-archeage "go to metacritic and vote 10!" campaigns and I do know about the "vote 0" ones from Reddit and Archeage's own official forums. You can click on the user's name at metacritic and see how many reviews they've done there. If you do that, the 3.7 aggregate user score will start to make sense.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
It's not superficial to watch vids and reading/hearing about a game as long as you aren't dead set to hate a game. You get that right? Pretty obvious that I was being open minded about it, just sharing the multiple posts about the game. Most of which are bad. Yes, taken with a grain of salt, should make it less biased....but still shows me it's a "/meh" game at best.
So hard to understand?
My opinion is FROM those who tried it. I never said anything more than that also....that I read and heard. That IS enough for me not to dog it, but to judge it as a game I wont try.
Get over it.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
Just so you know... you don't know shit compared to anyone who has actually played it.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I don't believe that the game should be 0 or 10. What I'm saying is that once enough people do vote, an average forms which starts to represent something more useful. You're making many assumptions about who is voting and why - it's all speculation and doesn't get anywhere. It's currently too early to read much into any of the scores.
I don't think that just because someone writes a review on a website that it automatically has any credibility, ignoring anything to do with the topic of the thread. I just looked at the top review for ArcheAge. He got to level 20 or so, played the game for a couple of hours, and of course didn't experience most of it. That makes the review pretty poor, an MMO cannot be sensibly reviewed that way.
Just so you know....I trust the 3k plus members of my guild as well as others here and there and what they say about games. I don't waste my time otherwise. Have fun with your attitude.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
When you think about it, why would paying for advertising affect a review anyway?
Obviously the company still wants to advertise...
Currently on vacation with my family. I did not see Som's article until today. I can however say that WE DO NOT accept payment for reviews, but some companies have tried. Usually Eastern imported MMOs, and never a big AAA company.
And I know for a fact of two of our direct competitors who DO accept $$$ for their favorable reviews. I won't say who without proof to back it up. But they're not likely the kind of sites that most of our readers would visit outside of good Google Search returns. They don't have the community that Massively and MMORPG support.
And if those sites do it, it's highly likely that other sites across other genres and countries do as well.
So while you may not agree with scores we sometimes give, they've never been paid for.
For the TSW COLUMN: we honestly just see good traffic on those, as the game has a following here and abroad. Niche though it may be. We generally write what you guys read, so if people stop clicking TSW columns, we will move on.
Cheers! Now I'm going back to vacation.
PS - The column stays. Som is wrong about some thing's, but there's still plenty of value in this discussion. Go ahead and try to hash out what sites DO accept paid reviews.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
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This! Although I would be shocked if someone had proof that MMORPG did it.
One thing that I will say in defense of this particular site is that if they were selling high review scores, League of Angels would have been rated higher than a 4.0. They've sure bought an awful lot of ads.
It's also possible that the "paying money to woo the media" could work similarly to how it often does in politics: paying not so much for favorable treatment as merely to avoid unfavorable treatment. You don't pay money to promote your game? Well then, we ignore your game entirely and people never hear about it from our site.
The opposite of people loving your game is not people hating your game. It's people not caring about your game, or better yet, never hearing about your game at all. Even a review that rates a game 6/10 with some scathing comments on the game can often be very much preferable to a site never mentioning that your game exists.
Good to see that the elephant is out of the room. It was simply both too obvious with some scores, and other people like TotalBiscuit etc. also said that it happens, so no point denying the very existence.
And that is what most people, including me, posted on the last article about this. It's not about whether MMORPG does it, but simply that it does happen.
I wouldn't be surprised if *some* review here at MMORPG.com did get bought though. A lot of people work here, a lot of reviews happen, so who's to say it never happend? Still, the simple fact that it's not counted amongst the major gaming magazines etc. like Gamespot, Kotaku etc. who regularly get cited on the box etc. to show how good it is means it's not as likely that someone will try.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
That is not only a logical fallacy since you have no grounds to claim it "generally" happens, but it is also a pretty dangerous mentality. Every person, this includes even a game reviewer, MUST be considered innocent until proven guilty.
It's like saying that no law abiding citizen should be against total invigilation because they obviously have nothing to hide. Four0Six, do you mind that your location is tracked and all your mails, phone calls and bills are stored by the CIA? Obviously, if you had nothing to hide you wouldn't mind that at all, right? And if you do mind, then does it mean you are generally guilty and should be immediately detained?
I get a printed magazine through my door every month. The articles in it seem to be far less biased (prepared to point out obvious flaws etc) than other music mags/sites.
However, every month the same 3 well known manafactures have full page advets on the inside front cover, inside back cover and actual back cover.
I do not believe this can't influnce reviews no matter how strongly they deny it. If one of the companies release a range of crap synths, if the magazine tells it's readers to avoid at all costs, the company is hardly going to want to pay to advertise in their magazine like
Further more, the company might decide not to send any more instruments to them to review.
They will then be in a position of selling a magazine with virtually zero input on one of the major players, hence could loose readership.
I don't blame them for this, I just think it's impossible for unbiased reviews.
The party I went to in my comment in the previous article was a few years ago when magazines were still the norm. There was a hash chilli, most people stoned, and these magazine guests really knew
the games company staff, not like they were invited and met most of them on the night.
The boss of that games company is probably one of the most well knows names in gaming, a name that most of you would know.
While I always suspected this, I didn't realise how very personally friendly they were with each other until that night.
This was in England