It seems like devs' opinions on reviews are based on their experience with them. The devs for DUSK and Primordia are very much in favor of reviews, as their games' user acclaim is part of the...
It seems like devs' opinions on reviews are based on their experience with them. The devs for DUSK and Primordia are very much in favor of reviews, as their games' user acclaim is part of the reason for their games' success. On the other hand, devs on the receiving end of review bombing or unfair negative reviews like Kunai and AI: The Somnium Files are much more in favor of revamping or revoking them, having experienced the issues with them firsthand. It makes sense that each perspective would see the corresponding values/harms.
The problem with user reviews as I see it is that they fulfill a need -- separating the wheat from the chaff and narrowing the confidence interval about a game's quality -- but they're unfortunately not very good at that. As identified in the article, they're susceptible to all sorts of issues. On Steam in particular, there's often an opposite of review bombing, where joke reviews and memey stuff rises to the top. For example: for a good long while, one of the best reviewed games tagged "LGBTQ+" on Steam was Gachi Heroes (NSFW), which is nothing more than a gay joke.
I ultimately think that user reviews are a useful but rudimentary tool, but I'm not sure what a better solution is. I would say that I'm aware of user reviews in that I pay attention to them and they definitely influence my perception of a game (probably more than I'd like, to be honest), but I try to take them as a single data point in a constellation of information rather than any definitive marker of quality or lack thereof.
It seems like devs' opinions on reviews are based on their experience with them. The devs for DUSK and Primordia are very much in favor of reviews, as their games' user acclaim is part of the reason for their games' success. On the other hand, devs on the receiving end of review bombing or unfair negative reviews like Kunai and AI: The Somnium Files are much more in favor of revamping or revoking them, having experienced the issues with them firsthand. It makes sense that each perspective would see the corresponding values/harms.
The problem with user reviews as I see it is that they fulfill a need -- separating the wheat from the chaff and narrowing the confidence interval about a game's quality -- but they're unfortunately not very good at that. As identified in the article, they're susceptible to all sorts of issues. On Steam in particular, there's often an opposite of review bombing, where joke reviews and memey stuff rises to the top. For example: for a good long while, one of the best reviewed games tagged "LGBTQ+" on Steam was Gachi Heroes (NSFW), which is nothing more than a gay joke.
I ultimately think that user reviews are a useful but rudimentary tool, but I'm not sure what a better solution is. I would say that I'm aware of user reviews in that I pay attention to them and they definitely influence my perception of a game (probably more than I'd like, to be honest), but I try to take them as a single data point in a constellation of information rather than any definitive marker of quality or lack thereof.