& # 39; Bombing Review & # 39; seems to be increasingly popular these days, with Kunai becoming the latest game to get such treatment from a selfless person. In case you didn't know, the word refers to the act of giving games a very low and unethical user rating on websites like Metacritic, lowering the average user reviews and consequently showing that it is a bad & # 39;
We're almost expecting a major major release – both major Pokémon shows are headed for the switch, fans are quick to accuse developer Game Freak of all the strategy under the sun, and games like Astral Chain have also started to burn. being alone on the console – but the trend seems to extend to indie games, too.
The game's presenter Benjamin de Jager was able to find that, in the case of Kuwai, there was only one person to blame. In blog post In Gamasutra, he presented evidence of a Reddit user who nearly blamed him for the bombing, explaining that they controlled the Metacritic system. The bomber said, "I made us about 200 different accounts just to ruin the game's score".
Some of the negative effects of an action like this are obvious – would you spend money on a game if you saw that many users (apparently real ones) didn't seem to like it? – but it goes deeper than that. People over here GamesIndustry.biz shared a conversation with producer Bram Stege and Dotemu marketing head Arnaud De Sousa, who describes the "very pressing" the review-bombing effects it can have. We have shared some selection criteria below.
De Sousa: "Bombing reviews are something that we see from time to time. But it's usually not in indie games, and it's usually got a message behind it. Because developers are changing something, because the internet is really bad – there's always an agenda behind it .But here's a random dude. just choosing a random game to update the bomb because he can. "
Stege: "It's stressful. You hope Metacritic viewers are smart enough to see, & # 39; Well, they got 8.3 from critics and 1.6 from players, so something must be up. & # 39; Hopefully it doesn't affect the sale. It would have hurt the sale. But it is very frustrating. He worked for two years in the game. He put all the blood, sweat and tears Then one person on a Sunday afternoon without any effort would break your score from a great, good institution to 1.7. It's very stressful. "
It also results in the studio moving forward, especially when it comes to learning about what players like and dislike about certain aspects of the game.
De Sousa: "We're always looking for a review. It's just interesting to get feedback … If you work in this game for two years, you get a tunnel view and you don't always see other points of view. Sometimes, we see a review and it's just someone who played the game for 20 minutes and you gave it a 0, so it depends on the quality of the reviews. But for someone who played the game for 30 hours and gave good feedback, whether it was good or bad, it's really fun to read. "
The full interview is an exciting book, so we would encourage you to check it out here if you are interested.
