I want more good reviews! A post about what to do and not to do! in Off Topic

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ID:42826
 
May 11 2008, 8:14 pm
Hello, the BYOND anime guild has a variety of features and purposes to get all players of all anime based games to interact in an attempt to better the games and experience itself, so on that note im going to mention my sadness that we havnt had a review worth posting in weeks.

First off, i am always reluctant to post a review that has no pictures. I pretty much make it a rule that they are required and yet out of all the reviews ive recieved this month, none of them bothered to attach a picture. Your making a review! what is more valuable than a good screenshot?

Secondly, i disabled grading metrics and i really discourage people to continue using them despite that fact. Saying i give this game a 4 on originality and a 10 overall even though we decided to go without these metrics is incredibly annoying for me. Due to the fact that people are paranoid about administration abuse here, i cannot edit a review and i can opt to either post it in its entirety or reject it, i havnt rejected any reviews based directly on this reasoning yet but in any review that is too weak to make it this is one of its flaws.

Also please, please dont send me reviews that are two lines long. 90% of reviews i get are 2 lines or under. Reviews are not the same as comments, these are supposed to be organized unbias accounts for a game in its entirety. Saying "The best byond players play on Naruto Ultimate Fire Aliance 3" and then hitting submit will and has made me sad because i waste so much time opening up reviews with high expectations only to see that. If you dont want to make a good review dont submit one, okay guys?

Make nice reviews, put them into word so you can check your spelling and grammar before posting it, remember that you dont want me to trash your review because of spelling errors! you spent time writing it so polish it up. Game reviews have to be fair! A review isnt just saying nice things but it isnt also just saying bad things, you need to play the game a lot and give a fair review that is constructive, key word, constructive to the owner of that game or the people looking for a game to play. If neither group benefits from your review because its more of a rant or a super bias opinion with no underlying facts then it will not get accepted!

On this note I hope to encourage those of you who do scoff and think to yourselves that you can do better, to do it! Please guys make some reviews, it means the world to game developers and really is a good way to help the community by helping those who only get flamers and brown-nosers see an unbiased review on the game they spend time making. Dont think we wont appreciate a well thought out review, everybody in the anime guild does!
#1 May 11 2008, 8:18 pm
I've been trying to write a review lately, but it's just hard to find a game I give enough of a shit about to spend my time writing one.
#2 May 11 2008, 8:18 pm
I hate to be a cocky bastard, but so far it looks like people were satisfied with my review, so perhaps you should recommend that reviewers use that level of depth and that style.

Also, I think that a grading scale can be used and effective if some concrete definitions are established. Foomer posted this website a while ago, and I found that it has a well defined grading scale.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/03/wiredcoms-game.html
#3 May 11 2008, 8:22 pm
it only works for professional reviewers and even then it is completely arbitrary and opinion. You should be able to come to a conclusion about the overall opinion of the review without a linear number by actually reading it. The reviews are targeted to players but also to owners, and a rating scale hasnt done any good so far so at current its simply not allowed.
#4 May 11 2008, 8:28 pm
The website isn't just a 'linear number;' it gives a pretty clear outline of what those numbers mean in comparison with other games. It's not really arbitrary in the fact that it gives a nice little recap of everything that's been discussed in the review.

Also, saying that it's 'opinion' is pretty ignorant, seeing as all reviews have at least some form of opinion. One person can think a game sucks and one person could love it; if a review were completely non-opinionated, it wouldn't be much more than 'you can walk around.' When you start talking about the manner in which you walk around, how the server lag effects walking around, and all that, that's opinion, but it's neccessary opinion.
#5 May 11 2008, 8:35 pm
I might take a crack at one later.

*Also U4M, what he's saying is, most people in this guild are INCREDIBLY biased. You may have a GM working for one game giving it a 10/10 for everything when it's entirely ripped, and another person giving it a 1 in every category. The rating system fails here when it's open to everyone.
#6 May 11 2008, 8:38 pm
Unwanted4Murder wrote:
The website isn't just a 'linear number;' it gives a pretty clear outline of what those numbers mean in comparison with other games. It's not really arbitrary in the fact that it gives a nice little recap of everything that's been discussed in the review.

Also, saying that it's 'opinion' is pretty ignorant, seeing as all reviews have at least some form of opinion. One person can think a game sucks and one person could love it; if a review were completely non-opinionated, it wouldn't be much more than 'you can walk around.' When you start talking about the manner in which you walk around, how the server lag effects walking around, and all that, that's opinion, but it's neccessary opinion.

the issue is that people take offense to scores they feel are too large or too small, oftentimes in relation to other game reviews which they admittingly shouldnt be trying to compare but it happens. I made a definitive post about my choice to eliminate scoring metrics and it was probably the most well recieved post ive ever written.
#7 May 11 2008, 8:40 pm
I'm not saying that taking away the scoring metric wasn't a good idea. I'm just saying that you shouldn't eliminate it entirely; for instance, it was well-used at the end of Hyren's BLN review.
#8 May 11 2008, 8:40 pm
IcewarriorX wrote:
I might take a crack at one later.

*Also U4M, what he's saying is, most people in this guild are INCREDIBLY biased. You may have a GM working for one game giving it a 10/10 for everything when it's entirely ripped, and another person giving it a 1 in every category. The rating system fails here when it's open to everyone.

Yeah Dan, this guy is right. Instead of eliminating the benefits a number based rating system could potentially offer, you need to limit who can do reviews.

I don't know about you guys, but a number rating gives me a better idea of how well a game performs.
#9 May 11 2008, 8:41 pm
DeathHyren wrote:
IcewarriorX wrote:
I might take a crack at one later.

*Also U4M, what he's saying is, most people in this guild are INCREDIBLY biased. You may have a GM working for one game giving it a 10/10 for everything when it's entirely ripped, and another person giving it a 1 in every category. The rating system fails here when it's open to everyone.

Yeah Dan, this guy is right. Instead of eliminating the benefits a number based rating system could potentially offer, you need to limit who can do reviews.

I don't know about you guys, but a number rating gives me a better idea of how well a game performs.

But i cant both be hands off and fair and selective in terms of which reviews i accept scores from. I have very strong opposing opinions.
#10 May 11 2008, 8:42 pm
No matter how standardized a those numbers are, they're still numbers that need to be translated to something concrete before they're meaningful to any player. We could set up a silly table that translates the numbers into things like "at least two original skills"... I can't think of a good comment to show how silly I think that idea is.

A review should tell the person reading it concrete things about the game, and a number is inherently abstract. If you just want to say "I think this game is really good" then you should be able to do that by telling people about the great equipment system (or whatever it is that you like), not by rating it "10". Likewise, if you think a game is terrible, then you should be able to tell people the exact reason why it's so terrible. If you just give it a 0 for gameplay, then you were obviously either really turned off by what you saw (and you can therefore tell people what turned you off), or you're just trash talking and can be disregarded.

I completely stand behind the choice Master Dan has made here.
#11 May 11 2008, 8:43 pm
IainPeregrine wrote:
No matter how standardized a those numbers are, they're still numbers that need to be translated to something concrete before they're meaningful to any player. We could set up a silly table that translates the numbers into things like "at least two original skills"... I can't think of a good comment to show how silly I think that idea is.

Yeah, I agree, but we can solve that with a concrete definition of what each number represents.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/03/wiredcoms-game.html
#12 May 11 2008, 8:44 pm
Unwanted4Murder wrote:
I'm not saying that taking away the scoring metric wasn't a good idea. I'm just saying that you shouldn't eliminate it entirely; for instance, it was well-used at the end of Hyren's BLN review.


That review isn't that great to be honest. It's unbearably long, without any pictures or anything to grab your attention.
#13 May 11 2008, 8:46 pm
That review isn't that great to be honest. It's unbearably long, without any pictures or anything to grab your attention.

Thats why I added a "conclusions" section that sums up the entire thing. =\
#14 May 11 2008, 8:47 pm
DeathHyren wrote:
That review isn't that great to be honest. It's unbearably long, without any pictures or anything to grab your attention.

Thats why I added a "conclusions" section that sums up the entire thing.

I'm just saying, for someone who actually spent time to do an unbiased review, it's probably the least-read one.

#15 May 11 2008, 8:48 pm
DeathHyren wrote:
IainPeregrine wrote:
No matter how standardized a those numbers are, they're still numbers that need to be translated to something concrete before they're meaningful to any player. We could set up a silly table that translates the numbers into things like "at least two original skills"... I can't think of a good comment to show how silly I think that idea is.

Yeah, I agree, but we can solve that with a concrete definition of what each number represents.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/03/wiredcoms-game.html

Those are not concrete in the way i mean though, concrete as in specific points that work towards and against a game based on an unbias evaluation of features and qualities of a game. You can have somebody think game A deserves a 10 because its great in their eyes and maybe they wanted a game like that to exist, and it filled a niche that they wanted on BYOND and they feel for what BYOND can do it hit the limits and was great. However somebody else may score it a 6 because their perception of how much room for improvement there is relative to the platform, and in terms of what type of game they like playing (RP vs PVP etc) will change their mind. Anytime a scoring metric can have such large variances between reviews for the same game, the you know its not concrete or rooted in fact enough, and even that wired article only tries to describe what a number means not how it is derived.
#16 May 11 2008, 8:49 pm
Protip: Real reviews aren't short. I'd say Hyren's review was maybe 2-3 pages. That's about right for a professional review.

BLN is smaller than a professional game, but it was still a good review. The fact that the average BYOND anime member has the attention span of a walnut isn't Hyren's fault.
#17 May 11 2008, 8:50 pm
It would actually be read more if it was shown on the BLN hub....

And I'd rather see a long ass review than something petty like that last Finale one that was deleted about 20 minutes ago.
#18 May 11 2008, 8:51 pm
Protip: Real reviews aren't short. I'd say Hyren's review was maybe 2-3 pages. That's about right for a professional review.

BLN is smaller than a professional game, but it was still a good review. The fact that the average BYOND anime member has the attention span of a walnut isn't Hyren's fault.
#19 May 11 2008, 8:51 pm
Unwanted4Murder wrote:
Protip: Real reviews aren't short. I'd say Hyren's review was maybe 2-3 pages. That's about right for a professional review.

BLN is smaller than a professional game, but it was still a good review. The fact that the average BYOND anime member has the attention span of a walnut isn't Hyren's fault.

It's not a "professional" review just because it's long and has a rating at the end. It has to be able to hold someone's attention even though they've never played the game before.

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