Exactly! Or for games that comes out with a really bad bug or performance issues.
There are games that never recover from that, even fixing its problems. Its not because a game had a save bug in the release that won't recommend it forever.
And a lot of people simply never change its reviews because of how mad they were.
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I think the thumbs system is to blame on this. Its too black and white and it encourages people to be black or white on their reviews.
There should be a box for positive sides of the game that would be mandatory to fill.
Other thing I can think of, is that review of someone would only show on the page of the game if the person is a regular reviewer.
It would count towards the score, but if all reviews are from users with 1 or 2 reviews, it could be something like "The reviews can't be shown because the users are not verified reviewers".
Or a tab to "see non-verified reviews", that would not be the main visible.
I don't like the idea of anyone writing reviews, because there is too much "10/10 it has cards", "shit game lost 1 hour of my life" reviews. And often I've found some of these to be misleading.
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What I would like to see in the future is a "star" system. Thumbs up and thumbs down makes it too hard to review a game sometimes. As I don't don't write any review when the outcome would be a thumbs down (I don't agree with thumbs systeam, I think almost no game out there is simply good or bad), I would much rather prefer giving it a 3 stars out of 5, or a 5 out of 10 to make it more accurate.
Perhaps it could be unlocked for users with a X number of reviews, to prevent people from rage giving 0 stars to games because of a recent cheater wave or something like that.
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There are some really really bad straight up scam games out there that deserve a straight up thumbs down, but for the most part a star system would be far more accurate, I do wanna be able to give zero stars though lol
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True. But I think the best way to show it is the overall score.
While there are games that deserves a 0, there are too many games that I've find to be between simply "Yes" and "No".
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Agreed. Honestly need just a shovelware button, to warn people of utter trash that's clearly pure garbage with no redeeming quality.
Just a little pop up that says, this title has been labeled as shit by more than X, where X is the number of people rounded to the nearest 10, then 100, and so on.
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I feel like that isn't a good idea. One person's 7/10 is the equivalent to another person's 6/10 or 8/10. The meaning to the numbers is completely subjective. Also, some people are strictly against giving games scores. If they added the score system a lot of people wouldn't use the review system anymore because of it. You can put a score in your review already but it doesn't get put to a total score, which I believe is a good thing. Hopefully what I wrote makes sense. Thanks for telling us about this update, too!
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It does. I understand your point, even tho I stick with mine.
Everything is subjective in the end, even the tumbs system. The thumbs up given to The Witcher 3 are not the same as a "10/10 it has cards" thumbs up, right?
But yeah, there are people against score systems. I agree that giving objective scores to games might be unfair, but while there is no other way, is what works better, mainly because a lot of people simply don't read full reviews.
I would never give a score if everyone read my reviews completely.
I see it not as a objective score of what the game is, but as a way to accurately describe what I felt about the game in comparison with others I've played.
Anyway thanks for your insight. I get what you mean. :)
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Your Witcher 3 example is great. There should be a section just for joke reviews. It's annoying trying to sift through the joke reviews when you're looking for an in depth review.
People not fully reading reviews is a problem too, and I feel like a score system wouldn't help with that issue. The score at the end is subjective (as we've already covered). With scores, the whole purpose of a review is gone. Reviews should give you an in depth look at the game. With a score, you just see a subjective number that is mostly meaningless. By looking at an 8/10, you don't know what was done right, and what was done wrong. If you just look at the score, you could miss the fact that there's a mechanic in the game that you don't particularly like, but the reviewer might have.
In the end, reviews will never be perfect. We will never have a perfect system for them and people will always just skip to the end for the score. Thanks for having a great discussion with me!
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Just a 3 tiered option could work, as in, can't recommend, needs work, and recommend. Those are nice and neat. Where as right now, if you feel like a game has promise, but can't recommend it presently due to glitches, or lack of content like MMOs tend to be early release, you have no option but negative or positive.
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I feel like there shouldn't be a neutral option (which is what I think you mean by "needs work"). The review system on Steam, IMO, is for if you really like or dislike a game. I don't think you should review a game if you think it's ok. I feel like it should be reviewed if you really liked it or really didn't like it. But once again, how the review system works is completely subjective and Valve can't ever make everyone happy with it.
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No, I meant very specifically needs work, as in, I should look back at this when it's had more updates. For a game like MMOs or early access games, reviews early on are not at all indicative of the product after just a few months often.
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Why shouldn't you review a game if you have a mixed or moderate reaction to it?
I read reviews primarily for two reasons: (1) to find out what the game is like and whether I want it before I play, (2) to compare my reactions to those of others, and see if they can add to my appreciation after I've played. In both cases, if many players had in-between reactions, my purposes are served by finding out about them.
Also, especially when many players have middling reactions, it seems like that data being represented would make the overall rating for the game more accurate. I'm sure the mix of good and bad reviews goes some way to reflect a mixed reaction in the overall score. But it's interesting to compare to, say, the histogram you get on Amazon. Some products have a ton of middle of the road reviews and few at the polls; others are polarizing with fewer in the middle. On Steam the ratings system makes these two reactions look similar, so long as positive and negative reviews are roughly mixed.
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Looking back on what I said, I changed my mind. Writing reviews when you have a mixed reaction to it is fine. I just personally wouldn't write reviews for games I feel that way about. What you said makes a lot of sense though!
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The problem with star ratings is that your review only really matters if you rate it 1 or 5 stars.
I know that when i check out reviews on sites with star ratings, I only ever look at the 5s to see what's good and the 1s to see what's wrong. Plus, if you give a "fair" in-between rating, you change the average less than someone who picked an extreme score. At least with the thumb system, every review is guaranteed to be weighted the same and you get a measure of how many people like it.
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I see your point, but I don't agree for several reasons. Here are some considerations:
First, whether you read them or not, the middling reviews impact the overall rating, which I think a lot of people pay attention to. What is more, it seems likely that forcing the middling reactions into thumbs up or thumbs down skews the data on some games. Imagine a game where most people like it reasonably well and some like it very well. Now imagine a game where most people LOVE IT. On a star system these games would have different overall scores. But forcing a binary review will reduce the difference between their overall scores.
I personally do read mixed reviews. On amazon I often read the 3s and 4s figuring they'll give me more useful, nuanced info than I'll get from the extreme raters. I doubt I'm alone in this. (On Steam I often seek out the reviews that seem well-written and explain their judgments.)
Then there's the worry about some reviews not counting as much. Yes, 3/5 moves that pointer less than 1/5, but I'm not sure I see why this matters. You seem to be assuming that the reviewer's goal is to move the overall rating as much as possible rather than to give accurate feedback. And there are ways of making this reaction count plenty: Amazon has achieved this by letting us view a histogram of user reactions. This is great because it shows not just an average, but where more people came down on the item. If there are a ton of 3 star reviews, that will catch my attention even if the overall rating of the product is higher or lower. The histogram with a ton of people at 4 looks very different than one with a ton at 3, which is different again from one where the reactions are mixed between extremely positive and extremely negative. This information isn't just averaged out so that we can't see it.
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Nope I hate having to rate a game with stars. I write reviews all the time and I refuse to rate games out of 10. It just seems wrong to give a game a number rating to me. I love steams thumbs up/ down system.
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"You can now view all reviews regardless of language"
God bless!
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I know right. I like to browse Steam in english, but I want to see reviews in my own language (Brazilian Portuguese) sometimes too.
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This is great, games aren't like movies, they get better over time, a static review rating isn't really effective.
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Still doesn't solve the problem of the occasional fanboys massively downvoting negative reviews, making all of them averaging 50% in one big uninformative mess you have to dig through to actually get which one have insights versus the random hateful rant...
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LOL sorry I'll blur it!
I had just reviewed that game so I went to the last game page I visited.
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Eh, no worries. I was just surprised to see my name up there :) Plus, I don't mind the free publicity either :p
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Uhm you were kinda late with this news, use search before creating same discussion.
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Eww this looks overly cluttered and just messy and really difficult to use. I like the attempt of what there trying to do but they didn't execute it very well. Prefered the old style.
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Original post: http://store.steampowered.com/news/21695
One common theme we've been seeing in customer feedback about the Steam review system is that it isn't always easy to tell what the current experience is like in a game months after release. This new set of changes released today is designed to better describe the current customer experience in those games. We do this by better exposing the newly posted reviews and by calculating a summary of those recent reviews.
Visibility For Recently Posted Reviews
While there are plenty of new reviews posted every day, we saw that it was often difficult for newer reviews to be seen and voted on enough to become listed as most helpful. As a result, the most helpful reviews presented on a store page would often describe an outdated view of a game that might have changed dramatically over the course of Early Access or post-release development. By listing recently posted reviews more prominently and by defaulting to recent helpful reviews, Steam can now show a more current idea of what it's like to play the game now.
Recent Review Score
Another problem we identified was that review score that appears at the top of a product page didn't always reflect the dynamic nature of the game. For that review score, we'd previously only been compiling an overall score using a simple calculation of the percentage of all reviews that were positive. This let us be really transparent in how the score was being calculated, but didn't accommodate cases when a game has changed a lot (for better or worse) over time.
To address that, we've now added a Recent review score that calculates the positive percentage of reviews within the past 30 days (as long as there are enough reviews posted within those 30 days and as long as the game has been available on Steam for at least 45 days). The overall score is still present as well in case you still find that information helpful.
Other Review Updates
In addition to the above updates, we've made a few other changes:
The customer review section on a game's store page has a new "Summary" tab that focuses on recent helpful reviews and recently posted reviews. You can still find overall most help reviews by selecting "Most Helpful" tab.
There's a new checkbox when writing a review to more easily disclose if you received the copy of the game for free.
You can now view all reviews regardless of language by selecting "All Languages" from the language dropdown in the reviews tab of the Community Hub for the game.
Example:
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