The Emotional cost of bad reviews

[Minos]

http://www.gamebizblog.com/gamebizblog/ ... views.html

Pretty interesting read.

I actually kinda agree with him that Force Unleashed reviews were unfair. Even though I'm not a huge Star Wars fan I loved this game. The plot and the action are brilliant.

[Warby]

everything commercial i have been attached to got horrible reviews ... so ... welcome to my world suckers

[Furyo]

My emotional cost of reviews only comes up as the sales stay down. Which in some cases is simply never to be seen. In the case of Force Unleashed, I'm sure that bonus would have weighed my emotions way down.

Face it, reviewers will only ever review things subjectively. And guess what, maybe just maybe that game wasn't made for them in the first place. If it sells 5 million copies, somewhere deep down the game must have some sort of redeeming value.

[Hourences]

It is so easy to review a game (or whatever else) that it attracts many people who have no clue really. You can get a spot as a reviewer on some big local gaming site if you are 16 years old and you still get to influence at the very least a few 1000 people by talking about something you may have no clue about really.

But hey, what can you do. The public is harsh and very unfair and they are not too different from all those random reviews, only their opinion is more hidden and less influential (exceptions aside).

And of course there are also just bad games

[Taylor]

I would expect most people to have the emotional stability to take on the chin a review that awards the game a bad score and clearly justifies their reason for doing so, you can't really do anything in this scenario but be humble and find some choice quotes for your post-mortem. Though I find it very frustrating to read a review that is, itself, bad; even for games I won't play. Everyone here should be able to call some of those to memory instantly.

[Grinwhrl]

Yeah, its too bad what happened to FU and its staff, the game was great in my opinion. My only grip is that it was to short, but I still had a blast playing from start to finish.

[Jetsetlemming]

Words cannot describe my lack of sympathy for someone complaining about middle of the road reviews for a middle of the road game that sold millions.

Wait, yes they can. I have a complete lack of sympathy for someone complaining about middle of the road reviews for a middle of the road game that sold millions.

[Mazy]

Pffft, Kane & Lynch got horrible reviews, and that was something that I worked on for almost 3 years, and you don't see anyone from IO going around and whining like this. I guess the comparison might be slightly off, given that K&L was a pretty terrible game and semi-deserved all the bad reviews, but it doesn't change the fact that lots of people spent lots of time on getting it out.

They need to grow the fuck up and realize that not everyone is gonna love what you do, fucking babies .

Plus I think Force Unleashed was fairly mediocre the whole way through

[Jetsetlemming]

What made Kane and Lynch terrible? From that Jeff Gerstmann infamous review video when the game came out, it seemed like mostly "blah blah blah I don't like the characters the cover system is literally shit in digital form", and that sounded like it was annoying but not horribly deal breaking, especially looking at it from someone who loved the hell out of Freedom Fighters. Some of the features mentioned, like Player Two seeing a different scenario than Player One due to hallucinations/craziness sounded really neat. Never got a chance to play it though. It just feels hard to believe that IO could go from making Blood Money to making "terrible".

The Metacritic for K&L is only a little bit lower than Force Unleashed actually, 67% for the PC version, 65/64% for consoles. Force Unleashed was 72 (averaged between platforms ignoring handhelds)

[Skjalg]

edit; hehe mazy.. bad day?

[2d-chris]

what mazy said +1

[Mazy]

What made Kane and Lynch terrible? From that Jeff Gerstmann infamous review video when the game came out, it seemed like mostly "blah blah blah I don't like the characters the cover system is literally shit in digital form", and that sounded like it was annoying but not horribly deal breaking, especially looking at it from someone who loved the hell out of Freedom Fighters. Some of the features mentioned, like Player Two seeing a different scenario than Player One due to hallucinations/craziness sounded really neat. Never got a chance to play it though. It just feels hard to believe that IO could go from making Blood Money to making "terrible".

The Metacritic for K&L is only a little bit lower than Force Unleashed actually, 67% for the PC version, 65/64% for consoles. Force Unleashed was 72 (averaged between platforms ignoring handhelds)

Well, I think its a terrible game :G

edit; hehe mazy.. bad day?

No, just speaking my mind.

[dux]

What made Kane and Lynch terrible? From that Jeff Gerstmann infamous review video when the game came out, it seemed like mostly "blah blah blah I don't like the characters the cover system is literally shit in digital form", and that sounded like it was annoying but not horribly deal breaking, especially looking at it from someone who loved the hell out of Freedom Fighters. Some of the features mentioned, like Player Two seeing a different scenario than Player One due to hallucinations/craziness sounded really neat. Never got a chance to play it though. It just feels hard to believe that IO could go from making Blood Money to making "terrible".

The Metacritic for K&L is only a little bit lower than Force Unleashed actually, 67% for the PC version, 65/64% for consoles. Force Unleashed was 72 (averaged between platforms ignoring handhelds)

I wish games would stop being judged on numbers and percentages. Rrrgh.

[kleinluka]

K&L was okay... wasnt horrible but wasnt great either~~~~~~~~

[CompoSITe]

I would like to see some stats on review scores to sales and the correlation of the two.

I am not convinced that reviews really affect game sales. Maybe it does with the interwebs being so popular with the kids these days but I saw a lot of our sales come from just word of mouth.

You make a good game. People play it. They like it, tell a friend and he goes out and gets it. (or rents it, lol)

I think that most game that have been coming out lately are only about 80% there. It seems like Devs have been putting so much time into bringing there graphics up to "next Gen" standards that they let gameplay, AI, controls, and the bigger picture of making the game fun slide. Maybe they think they will have time at the end of the project to polish the fun and they run out of time. Maybe they just can't stand back from the game and see the blatantly bad things. I am not sure but until they do they will continue to push mediocre games out the door and end up with mediocre scores.

And yeah the folks that worked there ass off for 2-3 years will feel lousy.