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Starfield, is it getting review bombed?
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this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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Are user reviews on places like Metacritic or Steam ever relevant? Review bombing happens consistently any time anyone is slightly miffed at something, which in gaming is literally all the time.
I'm not exposed to that many "gamer takes" lately, luckily. I watched a recent dunkey video on Starfield reviews, that had some thumb-headed idiot screaming in falsetto about the pronoun switch (oh, the horror, for such a thing to exist! oh, the humanity!). Other than that I haven't seen that much complaining about that specific thing. While it could still be about that, I also think it could easily be getting underwhelming scores because it's... a bit underwhelming. (So far, anyway, I haven't played a lot yet)
I think you need to own the game on steam to review it so there's some gatekeeping there at least
I hate Steam's review system, though. Binary yes or no is not useful to me. I want to know if a game is good (maybe a play eventually) vs absolutely amazing (where I might prioritize playing it right away). Such granularity is also useful because a 10/10 might be worth it even if it's not my favourite type of game, but a 7/10 can be very worthwhile if it is the type of game I adore.
It's a shame that user reviews on sites like Metacritic are just consistent trash. Too many users only know 0 or 10 and the user reviews are often review bombed. I wish regular users could at least give numbers like critics. No professional critic is gonna give a game a 0 because of a handful of problems, for example, but average people will totally give a game a zero for that. Only problem with critics is that they often have a perspective that makes them detached from the average person, since they spend all their time reviewing. Ideally user reviews would fill that gap, but users are incredibly fickle.
I think Steam's Yes/No system is the best option we've got for user review scores. As you said yourself, for most people, it's either 0 or a 10. And while granularity can help, it's worthless when it differs on a user to user basis. One users 5 is another users 7. And is the difference between a 1 and a 2 even remotely the same between a 9 and a 10? Probably not.
The biggest argument I could see is that "Mixed" option where it's neither option, but I feel like that doesn't really help anyone overall and is just indecisive.
At least with 0-10, I know to ignore any review that gives a zero. And usually I'd view 10s as just a binary recommend.
If you just ignore a score of 0, then why even have it and conversely, why not show the same treatment towards the equally as ridiculous score of a 10?
That should help in theory, but Steam is infamous for this problem, too, so it can't be helping all that much.
Yes, just look at what's going on with the Warhammer 3 controversy