RolStoppable said:
What you get from people who have paid for a game is an answer to the important question if the game was worth buying to them. You also know that it is a closed ecosystem and the likelihood that people bought the game for an opportunity to troll it with a low score is miniscule. An average of 2.5 stars necessitates a high percentage of ratings that were either 1 or 2 stars, a score that people give when they are disappointed or displeased with their purchase. You can't see why people gave a low rating, but you can assume that they had actual reasons, unlike the user scores on Metacritic. The simple rating system on storefronts gives you generally a good idea. Games worth buying usually end up with 4, 4.5 or 5 stars. A rating of 3.5 stars is acceptable, because it still means that more people were satisfied with the purchase than deeming it only okay (3 stars) or even bad. Pretty much all other sources are skewed by troll ratings or come from people who did not have to pay for the game. That's one reason why so few reviewers do a proper job (commonly games are reviewed under the premise if they are worth playing which isn't the same thing as worth buying), another is that the reliance on ad income can lead to bumps in scores to appease publishers. |
I agree with what you're saying, but I still think allowing inexperienced users to review a game is flawed. I don't care what some 16 year old kid that has only ever owned an XB1 thinks of his purchase. But yeah, I'm going to let these storefronts influence my descisions more than I have in the past.
