Online user reviews have come to play a crucial role in our decisions about which products to buy, what TV to watch, and what games to play.
But after initial enthusiasm, many platforms have pushed back against them. Netflix’s star ratings and written user reviews are a distant memory, and even YouTube no longer shows the number of “dislikes” a video receives.
Negativity in particular is a no-no. Instagram and Facebook will let you “like” a post, but if you dislike it they don’t want to know. Steam, the world’s largest distributor of PC games, has also struggled with negative reviews – in particular, co-ordinated negative campaigns known as “review bombing”.
However, in recent research published in The Internet and Higher Education we put a video game up for community review. After thousands of players and hundreds of written reviews we found that user feedback, properly managed, can lead to significant improvements.
One reason community reviews have become less popular is the rise of “review bombing”, the co-ordinated practice of leaving large numbers of negative user reviews on a game or product in order to reduce its aggregate review score.
Most review-bombing incidents appear to stem from more than just not enjoying a game. They may be driven by ideological disagreement with the content of the game or dislike of the actions of a developer.
Other times this activity is automated by bots to suppress media or send a warning to companies. To take one example, a gaming review YouTube channel called Gamer’s Nexus recently reported that one of its videos exposing a scam had received an attack of co-ordinated “dislikes”.
When community reviews work, the consumer benefits by getting real-world information from the users of a product.
On YouTube, for example, the removal of dislike counts makes it hard to quickly assess the quality of a video. This is particularly important information for DIY or crafting videos.
The removal of dislikes also makes it more likely that a viewer will be caught out by clickbait, or tricked into watching a video that does not host the content promised.
Our new study shows the advantages of community reviews. It demonstrates how, when handled carefully and objectively, community feedback can go a long way towards helping a game develop.
We made an educational game called The King’s Request for use in a medical and health sciences program. The aim was to crowdsource more feedback than we could get from students in our classes, so we released the game for free on Steam.
Of the 16,000 players, 150 provided written reviews. We analysed this feedback, which in many cases provided ideas and methods, to improve the game.
This is one example of where feedback from the gaming community, although opinionated in many cases, can genuinely help the development process, benefiting all stakeholders involved. This is particularly important as “serious” or educational games are a growing component of modern curriculums.
Censoring community reviews, even if the aim is to prevent misinformation, does make it harder for developers and educational designers to receive feedback, for viewers to receive quick information, and for paying customers to have their voice.
The trend has been to remove negative community ratings. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki defended the removal of dislike counts earlier this year, and Netflix appears to have no interest in bringing back its five-star rating system.
However, not all outlets are following this trend. TikTok has been testing a dislike button for written contributions in a way that enables the community to filter out unhelpful posts.
TikTok argues that, once released, this will foster authentic engagement in the comment sections.
And the Epic Games Store, a competitor of Steam, recently implemented a system of random user surveys to keep community feedback while avoiding review bombing. Google has also been trying new things, finding some success in tackling review bombing through artificial intelligence.
Christian Moro, Associate Professor of Science & Medicine, Bond University and James Birt, Associate Professor of Computer Games and Associate Dean Engagement, Bond University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Yup. The only function its serves is to give some gamers some form of momentary validation. As they write their ‘reviews’ safe in the anonymity the internet offers, its as if they are striking some form of revolutionary blow to a Big Bad, safe in the belief their words are warning to potential gamers. Yeah nah, they are too deluded to realise the thing they wrote is not a unbiased review but an overwrought piece of bias rhetoric, often nothing to do with the full game. Normally complaining about a single bad choice the devs made. So not a review and certainly not making them the great revolutionary they feel.
I hope they keep them just because of how mad it makes you lol.
Exactly, we’ve always known that objectivity is always the best approach, that it’s an extremely tough balance to maintain and amplifying negativity or hiding criticism is always detrimental in the long run.
“Real Online Feedback” but in some cases the review bombing itself is cause by a lack of communication.
When developers refuse to acknowledge
community feedback or take action that is oblivious to the community as a whole… that causes a cascade of reviewing bombing.
Real Feedback only works if the developers are willing to listen from the start, is it not? Else what options do gamers have, screaming into the void… oh look, there is a button the moves a graph that developers look at, I will make the needle move.
When a product sucks absolute balls and a large number of completely unrelated consumers independently come to the conclusion that the 2/10 product they’ve just consumed is indeed a 2/10, it’s not review bombing. Any product that’s wildly unpopular because it sucks is said to be “review bombed” even though there’s no coordination with any of the people leaving the review. The term is devoid of all meaning with how irresponsibly it’s used by media outlets.
Shockingly, crappy products can receive a large number of reviews calling them crap because the product is actually crap. Hiding those reviews means these corporations intend for consumers to buy subpar garbage with absolutely no critical engagement on the storefront itself and that’s far worse than negative reviews. These storefronts want your money and if they leave indicators that some shows or games are complete tripe, then people won’t consume like the company wants. The “feedback” angle is BS – it’s always about the money and negative reviews result in less sales. Netflix can’t sell you their latest junk, live adaption of an anime if their own store page is indicating that it’s 0.3 stars out of five.
People review bomb because it works. It makes the wet towels of society mad. People review bomb because they know game companies will pay attention, and they do pay attention.
Online feedback is easily and often ignored. As long as review bombing continues to work and rustle them jimmies it will continue. Removing reviews does not benefit the consumer, It only benefits shady companies who want to sell utter shit and get away with it.
Want people to stop review bombing? Stop making shit games or ruining games with shit decisions and stop getting mad when people review bomb. do that and review bombing will disappear.
If you engage with your community and make them feel heard review bombing will not happen. It really is that easy.
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