Game reviews?

[Jamison]

Why is it so many games have a majority (+1000) of positive reviews, yet the "recent" reviews are negative? To me, it seems like there is possibly a group of people who are purposely posting negative reviews with the intent of hurting Steam game sales. Any thoughts?

[Mivo]

Eh, I don't really give much credibility to new reviews for new games. Reviews based on first impressions are not very useful to me, and I think people tend to over-emphasize the positive of their new full price purchases. A game has to be really bad (No Man's Sky) for a sizable number of first-day purchasers to write negative reviews. And even with a game like that, you still have the "It's not so bad, it'll get better with patches!" or "It's awesome, best game ever!" kind of reviews.

Anyway, I think it's unlikely that people write negative reviews for the purpose of "hurting Steam sales". I feel it's far more likely that positive reviews are written (and you can buy them) to mislead potential customers and increase sales. Why should only the negative reviews be fake, but not the positive ones? The latter scenario is directly related to profit, the former isn't.

[cinedine]

Because the first reviews often don't reflect every aspect of the game. Especially if it has a considerable (or lack thereof) endgame. Also some games age badly and newer games have done what they did better. Or games run bad on newer hardware. Or people might have tried a game to see what's all the fuzz about it and didn't get it. Or the developers might have made some decissions that don't fare well with the community. Or ...

There can be as many reasons as there are games. You also see the exact opposite. Technomancer issitting on an alltime mixed score while the most recent is positive.

[Start_Running]

Not surprising. Some people see the positive reviews and try the game then find it not to their liking. Particularly if it's a game that gets a lot of hype.. It's why I never really look at recent. I always filter negative and positive seperately.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Jamison:

Why is it so many games have a majority (+1000) of positive reviews, yet the "recent" reviews are negative? To me, it seems like there is possibly a group of people who are purposely posting negative reviews with the intent of hurting Steam game sales. Any thoughts?

1. Why does your post have a bunch of blank lines?

2. Are these recent games or games that have been here for a while?

3. Are they well-known games or obscure games?

4. How many reviews is that "recent" score based on? And how many reviews is the overall score based on?

[Gallifrey - CSSC Gaming Founder]

Paranoia - unless you've evidence to substantiate it.

Mivo has a point. Early adopters are most likely to be enthusiastiv propenents of the game.

A game may look and play great at first and then reveal its flaws later.

With low numbers of reviews there have been allegations of "positive" doctoring by devs (Paid reviews, free games to supporters).

Recent changes may have chaged the game for the worse per gamers. I'm not sure that I'd give Robocraft SUCH a high review now as in the form it was when I reviewed it.

Incompatibility with Windows 10.

There are legitimate reasons why reviews may improve or worsen over time. A lot of clues can be found by reading the reviews.

But if you find a pattern of the same group of people constantly giving two word bad reviews to games inform Steam. I'm sure they'll be grateful to weed them out.

S.x.

[Nosferatu]

Typically its because people who first get the game, will write a review and after a while will either decide it's not as bad as they first thought or something got fixed in patches and they will re-write their review to positive. People who recently have the game typically don't have many hours put in the game so they judge the game based on their short impressions of it instead of playing the game for 10+ hours. Remember the required amount of time to write a review for a game is only 5 minutes playing the game.

[Jamison]

Lol, I must have "sticky" fingered the enter button and forgot to delete back. Sorry, I'll see if I can edit the extra spaces out.

I'm talking about games in general. Could be new releases, or several years old. I find quite a few of them have mostly positive reviews, but in the last 30 days of reviews, mostly negative. This is me going off the review stats posted on a game's store page.

[Start_Running]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Jamison:

Lol, I must have "sticky" fingered the enter button and forgot to delete back. Sorry, I'll see if I can edit the extra spaces out.

I'm talking about games in general. Could be new releases, or several years old. I find quite a few of them have mostly positive reviews, but in the last 30 days of reviews, mostly negative. This is me going off the review stats posted on a game's store page.

This is why you're kinda better off ignoring recent.

[BossGalaga]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von gallifrey:

Paranoia - unless you've evidence to substantiate it.

Mivo has a point. Early adopters are most likely to be enthusiastiv propenents of the game.

A game may look and play great at first and then reveal its flaws later.

Especially when game developers release a beta or early access game and promise the sun, the moon and the stars to their playerbase and then they don't even deliver on a spec of dust.

[Heoughten]

hmm