I agree and disagree.

I agree a few bugs shouldn't drop a game from 10/10 to 1/10, but I disagree with a notion that bugs shouldn't considerably hinder a score. I think a game like Skyrim with all it's bugs should have got 5/10 maximum even though I love the game. The Developers should not be releasing games until they are ready and that means virtually bug free. It is the only way that Dev's will actually finish a game before pumping it out to make their profit.

Any game with so many bugs should not be allowed to recieve scores in to the top half of the 10 scale, we do not accept such poor management in all other industries so why should we accept it in computer gaming? This fad of releasing broken games is going to stay so long as reviewers keep giving them rediculously high scores for games that are bug infested, it is one of the things about the current generation of gaming that I have grown to loathe.

Advertising money, not bribes. But just as effective in getting the same outcome for the Developer.

The OP has faaar too much time on his little elitist hands.

But I feel you would agree with his sentiment that reviewers are rewarding developer companies for releasing buggy games. There is a lot the OP writes that I certainly do not agree with, but that one where games recieve huge scores when the finishes touches have not even been applied is a sorry state of affairs for all of us gamers. Can you imagine if the car industry was as unregulated as this? There would be crashes and break downs every second in the same small city, thankfully a big deal is made in the media when a car is released broken such as when BMW had to repair the ball bearings in the break pedal because they could snap and Toyota's break issue where it might not work.

In the mobile phone market any device that is released faulty is legally required to be replaced and pulled from the shelves, protecting the consumer. Apple have replaced over 1 million iPhone 4's due to poor software bugs with reception and battery life being drained! Samsung have replaced over 4 million Galaxy S2s because of a software bug that kept switching wifi preferences.... because of regulation. This is why mobile phone products are generally really high quality in the finished state when released, regulation.

The result of this is that cars and mobile phones are generally of extremely high quality virtually fault free, both are completely unrelated products yet regulated in a simular way in concern of quality of the finished product, the consumer ends up benefitting and the companies have to make a good impression when a new product goes on sale on day one.

Computer games should also be brought under tighter regulation and any game riddled with bugs should be immediately pulled of the shelves, or the download disabled, until fixed in its entirity. This will have two good effects:


Games will no longer have ridiculously short development times, because these days they are rushed no matter what people will say otherwise
Games will be optimised better for the platform they are intended for should they be a multi-platform game, for instance a multiplat being optimised for PS3, and a version optimised for 360 and a version optimised for PC. That did not happen for Skyrim, nor does it happen often for other games.

I have done some games journalism in the past (although I wasn't a reviewer), and I got paid for it. Otherwise I wouldn't have done it. I presume the OP works for free because he/she seems to have a big problem with this.

I like games. I like writing. I like writing about games. I also like being able to afford games and feeding myself and my family.

If the OP wants a fantasy world where writers work for free and do what we do out of the goodness of our hearts you can count me out. I like eating food too much.

No, I wouldn't. And I won't debate it, either, as the OP is a paranoid psycho with a severe superiority complex (look, I can come to psychological conclusions about people via forum posts too! Wee!). Or a really committed troll.

So you think it is a good idea to reward poor implementation and poor management? Okay I will accept you have your own opinion, but I am confused by it lol.

Dear OP:
I don't give two [censored] about what you think of Skyrim or any other TES game for that matter. I really do not. My choice to play Skyrim was based off my experiences playing Arena and Daggerfall and the other TES games that proceeded them. A reviewer could give Skyrim a 0/10 and could have never won a GOTY award and I would still play it based on my past experience with TES titles. I don't care about the kids who wouldn't play it because it got such a low score it just means having to read less [censored]ing by hammer legion members on the forums.

Not at all. I just don't believe game reviewers have that much of an impact in the first place. You honestly believe a couple good reviews sway the large majority opinion on a video game? Do you think that thousands of people chose to play call of duty, skyrim, or battlefield just because some dude with a keyboard, high school literary skills, and a big number at the end of a couple paragraphs said so? Here's a hint: they didn't.

Ratings and sales numbers completely disagree with you, I thought you should know that. Contrary to what you think, there are alot of gamers out there that are not hardcoe. Of all the people who buy games, hardcoe gamers are a minority. A loud minority granted, but a minority nonetheless. People get hyped, and ratings add to the hype, people buy the game.

Let's look at an infamous example where ratings were not good. Haze. Had loads of hype, massive hype. Ratings came out, they were bad. Very bad. Hype instantly evapourated. Sales bombed.

Ratings do affect sales and people's decision to buy a game and there is no debate there, this is not an opinion it is actuality.

Nah, i think it would have been "lolwut? "

But, i don't read reviews, i base my purchases on my own tastes and the word of mouth around the internet. i don't even know what scores the games i play have gotten

Skyrim i bought due to experince with previous Bethesda games (F3 and Oblivion); an open-world dungeon crawler with poor story, balance, and UI. Boy if they didn't deliver

This, RE:ORC got absolutely slammed in the reviews. I still bought it and enjoy it.

When we discuss things like bugs and compare them to games from this generation and games from NES, it's really unfair. I mean, the whole world of Mario is probably the size of a building in Skyrim (I have no idea if this is correct, i'm just making a point) So, if you're game was only contained to one building it would probably be bug free. Unless of course you gave free players free range to manipulate items in the area, talk with people, kill people in many and varied ways, etc etc. The reason game design is so bugged more than not when it is released it's because the player base can be crazy and do things that the testers would never think of. It's just how that works. So, if you have a phone, or a car, there is really not all that much you can do that someone else won't.

No kidding. The absurdity of the malcontented True RPG Fans^TM knows no bounds.

I never read mainstream reviews myself. But, I always read user reviews on sites like Amazon and Metacritic (when they are more than one paragraph in length and are not written in flamebait).

Precisely, and the number of positive user reviews far outnumber negative user reviews on sites that allow users to post them. OP Fail.

Writing objective truth on issues like entertainment is extremely hard if not impossible. The opinions and preferences of the reviewer will shine through, and color how he or she perceive and experience the game. However, the objective truth is not the point of a review. The point is to give a good idea of what type of game it is and how well it succeeded in attaining its goal.

So, there is no advantage for a game journal if they get the game for review early, as opposed to getting it later? No hype value that generate sales and page views? And game publishers cannot, say, favor gaming journals that write nice reviews by giving them an early copy?

Also, if OP is right and IGN is owned by Murdoch, I would say that it a pretty strong and explicit connection

Skyrim on ps3 tends to be a bit different. Looking at amazon anyway. Quite a few negative user scores. Still an overall 3 to 3.5 out of 5, but lower than the pc and xbox360.

Also, I believe IGN actually talked about the problems Skyrim was having on ps3. Granted they did give it a good score, but at least they did mention the problems later. Many sites completely ignored it.

Personally, I find your "complex constructive debate" to be rambling, hard to follow in places, and loaded with personal opinion/bias/strange anti-corporate propaganda. But, hey....


Me, I don't read reviews too closely. I check them out for a general idea of what a game is like (for ones that I'm not familiar with) and to see if there are any major issues. I certainly don't grant reviewers any special status as providing The One Truth (the fact that you can see wildly varying reviews depending on the reviewer shows that would be silly.) But neither do I dismiss them all away as part of some nebulous corporate "conspiracy."

That's true. I saw that. But I don't own a PS3 so I never take PS3 reviews into account. Their multi-plats are Xbox ports so I've seen a trend where their user reviews are always either slightly or significantly lower.

This.

As a professional tech journalist I find your position interesting. I can appreciate your frustrations, I even share some of them. We are forced in this industry to form an opinion on a product in a relatively short time and then make definative statements. To make it worse we are forced to rely on the "kindness" of the companies to get us review material and so to keep in those good graces must be diplomatic in our findings. This is a simple, sad and unspoken truth within this industry, it is also one of the reasons my show has not grown faster with tech companies.

I have been doing a tech talk radio show for 15 years and there is one things I have never done, been diplomatic. If I feel something is worth taking a look I say it and if not then I say that. We do not give out little awards or stars with every review, in fact we just now considering our first ever awards show and it will be different from anything else ever done. We also do a look back segement. You see I agree that we do not get enough time to look at a product and be fair but what about after 6 months or a year? We do go back and re-look at various products over the year and see how it has held up under the test of time. Yes that includes the games we look at.

We even get to offer something extra becuase of our format as a live radio show. YOU, the audience can call or email into the show LIVE and take part in the discussion with questions and comments.

Now as for your specific comments. We do not cover the console market at this time so I cannot speak to those issues. I can say we noted some of the glitches within Skyrim with out review but found none that were game breaking. I know some people disagree with that but on the 4 different computers and players we used in our test bed we never had a single crash or glitch during game play besides the odd falling horse or backward flying dragon. Certainly nothing that would be considered game breaking or that kept us from enjoying the game.

Now I am not sure of the conspiracy but I can tell you that in my experience a lot of review sites prostitue their objectivity to ensure they stay in the good graces of the companies. They will candy coat the review to gloss over things that the company would perfer attention not be paid too.

The key to find a review site you can trust is to read the reviews. Reviews at the end of the day are opinions, plain and simple. Everyones opinions are based on their own biases and this is a fact that, dispite what some reviewers claim, will never change. Never trust a single review source, try to find three our four that you can trust.

By the way to the guy that said 10 years okay Skyrim would not have gotten a good score. You son have no clue what was hapopening in gaming 10 years ago. Skyrim 10 years ago would have been proclaimed the greatest game of all time for the tech it brought forward anc ould have had twice the bugs.

I was speaking mostly of Skyrims lack of depth in that regard. Technically its fine. If a game with the scope Skyrim has was available with the level of detail it has ten years ago, then sure. But it was impossible.
From my experience, older games were deeper and more involving. If Morrowind had the depth of Skyrim, TES wouldn't be where it is today. Purely IMO.

I like to read all the reviews from magazines, I don't like user reviews. All the idiots can spam negative votes on Metacritic, that's not journalism. A person who rates 1/10 or 2/10 a game like this is not quite mentally sane, even if you dislike one or more aspects, you can't deny it has some strong points too so give it a 5 or a 6, that's more fair. The professional critics have a more responsible input in my opinion, they can't afford to lose their job because of extreme subjectivity.

This is so absolutely true and a point I've been making to the True RPG Fans^TM on this site. The Nostalgia Effect can really cloud one's vision. It's insanity, I tell you!