In general, I'm going to maintain that it's the user reviews that are off of the main readership - the people who write reviews are going to be biased in favor of the game, just as with many other 'niche' games that only appeal to a small section of the website's base. We sort of see this on metacritic, actually - note that Wii Sports only has 70 votes, while Zelda has hundreds. This is despite the fact that, quite demonstrably, more people own Wii Sports. Something is convincing fewer people to vote for Wii Sports, and I feel that it's that it's something of a niche game as far as hardcore gamers are concerned. And, as a niche title, I think the difference in scoring is quite appropriate.
I hope I'm not coming across as antagonistic - I strongly agree with your original claim that game reviewers don't know how to review games like Wii Sports properly. I just don't think that comparing user review scores to critical review scores provides strong evidence of this. Comparing the actual written reviews is much more telling, as you mention in a recent post, but is far less quantifiable. I'm also going to maintain that Wii Sports is fundamentally a niche game as far as the online readership of these sites is concerned.
I'm also in full agreement with you that we'll see a great deal of adaptation, and in the near future. We may even start to see nontraditional review specialists as nontraditional gamers become more mainstream on the internet. I think we'll see nontraditional games become a category similar to sports games - they'll be given scores that seem absurdly high to most of the site's readers but that seem just right to everyone who's actually interested in using the review score to determine whether or not to buy the game.
Existing User Log In
New User Registration
Register for a free account to gain full access to the VGChartz Network and join our thriving community.
