This is an article taken from Next-Gen.biz :

EA Casual and the Problem with Reviews

By Kris Graft

 “They’re not swayed by a low score on IGN or a low score out of one of these gaming sites,” she continues. “It’s a little bit amusing, in that it’s people reviewing games against measures that are important to core gamers yet are not important to casual gamers.”

There’s a long-running and rather pointless debate about the correlation between videogame reviews and sales. The fact is that they do and they don’t matter. It all depends.

Reviews are more likely to impact sales for a hardcore strategy title, for instance, as the genre’s audience is inherently more dedicated to gaming and is more susceptible to falling under the hypnotic spell of critics' comments, which help validate a purchase.

The average buyer of Take-Two’s dismally-reviewed $40 Carnival Games for Wii, however, isn’t going to be visiting Metacritic to find out if the Dunk Tank mini-game compares favorably against the aiming mechanics of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

Carnival Games, with its 56 percent review average, managed to be the fourth-best-selling title on Wii in the US during September behind games like Metroid Prime 3, selling over 200,000 units. So Vrabek would appear to have a point about specialist game reviews. Casual gamers "don't read those things."

While Vrabek calls the supposed mismatch of traditional consumer gaming sites and casual games “amusing,” in the same breath she admits that casual game reviews are “a huge issue in the press and in the industry.” So, to an extent anyhow, specialist reviews really do matter to EA Casual. And as the casual division inherently needs to be everything to everyone, whether they be middle-aged women, older men, kids, teens and ‘tweens, finding review venues “appropriate” for the target audience isn’t an easy task.

“The concept of a one-size-fits-all evaluation tool isn’t as relevant,” argues EA Casual marketing VP Russell Arons, who used to head up the $1.5 billion Barbie toy business. “…The measurement [of a game’s appeal] for women aged 25 to 34 would more likely be whether or not they’d hang up on their girlfriend to play this game. ‘Would you hang up a phone conversation for this game?’ That’d probably be a truer measure for that target audience.”

Game critics, who are experts if only for the fact that many have played perhaps hundreds of games, will still insist though, shovelware is shovelware is shovelware, no matter who the intended audience may be.

But perhaps the execs leading EA Casual have a point, that—here it comes—specialist press outlets are playing casual games wrong.

Well, at least they're playing casual games from the perspective of a core gamer who’s seen it all, instead of a mass market Joe. A recent blog post by Texas-based analyst Bill Harris, who doesn’t cover the industry professionally (but is intelligent and up to speed nonetheless—add Dubious Quality to your RSS feed now), brought forth the possibility of a “fundamental disconnect between how the people who review Wii games play them and how everyone else plays them.”

“As a game for grown-ups, it's true that [Carnival Games] is a ‘throwaway,’ but as a game to play with your family, it's a blast,” Harris said.

For another example, look at Mario Party 8—reviews average 62 percent, but the game continues to be a top ten-seller on Amazon.com and has sold over a million units. Nobody cared that if it were taking a math test it would’ve scored a D-.

But the mass market, as “easy to please” as they are, snatching up games en masse such as Carnival Games, High School Musical and the like, won’t buy just anything. There are plenty of instances where, whether they are related to reviews or not, casual games fall short in sales despite strong backing from publishers. One example is EA’s own Boogie, a release that was hyped as a title that would appeal to the masses with catchy music and easy to pick-up-and-play rhythm mechanics. The game received mixed reviews and garnered sluggish sales of just over 68,000 units during its opening month. There’s obviously still work to be done here.

EA Casual hopes that the quiz game Smarty Pants, released in mid-November, strikes the same chord as successful casual counterparts. So far it's earning an average score of 65 Metacritic from eight specialist media outlets, but that certainly doesn't doom sales of such a mass market title.

Vrabek says that internally, EA needs to find out how to make sure reviews (good or bad) for casual games get in front of the target audience, as does the game publishing industry overall. She cited Yahoo Moms’ movie reviews as the type of mass-market venue that games need.

Under the EA Casual label are also kids’ games such as the top-selling Harry Potter series. Kids’ games are in a very similar situation as casual games as far as specialist reviews are concerned. A 20-something guy reviewing a game like THQ’s Cars is pretty pointless—can he possibly play the game from the perspective of a seven-year-old who idolizes Lightning McQueen? Will that seven-year-old's parents buy the game based on reviews or incessant begging from their kid? Despite mediocre reviews, Cars was the second-best-selling title of 2006 in the US with 2.6 million, according to the NPD Group, behind Madden NFL 2007.

“Metacritic scores or the GameRankings scores are just off-base,” insists Vrabek. “In fact, if you run a regression analysis against those scores on casual games or even kids games, sales don’t correlate.

“One of the things that I’m interested in doing and will be working with Russell and the team on is figuring out what are the measures that we need to be tracking for casual games.”

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Source :

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8233&Itemid=2

I'm very interested in this argument and I want to ask your opinion on this subject.    

It's a valid article, but they answered most of the questions they were asking already. Children don't care at all what the review of the new Spongebob game is. They just want it because they enjoy the character. I do believe there should be a seperate "fanboy" score if you have an attachment to the source material. In other words, the Dragonball Z games are decent, but to a fan, they tend to really love these games because they care about the anime. Things like well done fan service in a game should be built into the review or a seperate score.

As far as Moms go, they don't read reviews at all for their kids. Their kids tell them what to buy and the mothers buy them. You don't need venues for these mothers to read reviews from.

Also if a casual gaming woman wants a game and can't think to locate a gaming site or a vg magazine, she'll probably shop based on the box. I don't think we need a review section in Cosmo.

i agree with this--if you like casual games play them and base your opinions of them against more of the same--only a fool would compare metroid prime 3 to carnival games

@Onyxmeth

But there is new gamers like adults ( male or female ) that are starting to approach for the first time to VG ( or maybe they are lapsed gamers of Atari/Nes Era ) that want to purchase a product for them and for their family like for example Mario Party 8. They might try to inform about that game ( nobody want to waste money when you have a family ) on specialistic VG site like 1UP or IGN but all they can find are review "out of touch" with their taste ( and the market as MP8 sales show ).

I made this example because is a personal anecdotal fact ( a mine's friend brother ). 

Isn't time for a new type of VG journalism ( aside with traditional one ) ? 

There are some smart people in EA, they should leave.

I was happy until I saw the SmartyPants plug, and if you watch the UK advert you will know why (Damn, can't find it to upload).

Valid points. However, they don't acknowledge the fact that reputable review sites don't put reviewers on games that don't like the genre of the game. Or at the very least have a good deal of knowledge about that genre and what fans of that genre like. You don't have a person who doesn't like FPS games review Quake. Most reputable review sites give fair reviews to casual games. For example, the Mario Party series has traditionally garnered favorable reviews. Mario Party 8 didn't fare as well as the rest of the series because, from a quality standpoint, it's not as good as the ones before it.

That said, I do believe that review sites would be doing themselves and the casual gamers a favor by collecting reviewers that aren't core gamers at all. Most reviewers today aren't part of the target audience for these games. They just have good knowledge of the genre and what fans of the genre like. It would be better to have someone with a family review a family targeted game. The system isn't broken, as the article implies, but it could use some tweaking.

I agree, it is truly horrible.

It shows that people know what they want ... even if reviers don't.

This has happened in many entertainment industries:
High art =/= commercial success (does not equal).

For example, the critics loves "Arrested Development" but it could never attract viewers. Same with "30 Rock." Meanwhile, shows that are thought to be drivel in the eyes of many critics ("Samantha Who?" and "Two and Half Men") are the only comedies in the season-long top 20.

The fact that Carnival Games sold and Boogie did not also shows that there is some discernment among casual game buyers. Carnival Games is fun. Boogie had problems.

It is also noteworthy that both had ad campaigns, though the former was aimed more at casual gamers and the latter more at typical EA gamers. (I don't know how many target consumers for Boogie watch MTV or think about buying a game with a PG-13 ad theme for thier kids). So sometimes even the companies don't know how to spin their own casual games. The entire industry -- not just reviewers -- need to learn this.


Mike from Morgantown

I think the article is pretty spot-on.

There is a disconnect between say, me, the grizzled gamer. Veteran of 5 console wars, decorated for acts of heroism like the Sonic vs Mario food fight of '92. And, say, for instance ...someone who doesn't give a flying flip over a flaming red rolling rubber donut about anything video games related (the other 90% of the population).

Nintendo has opened up the market, just like they set out to do. The level of success is astounding, and my guess is it's going to keep on going at it for a while. The whole 200,000,000 consoles sold doesn't seem at all out of hand. I honestly can't say with a straight face that the PS1 or PS2 has anywhere near the wide appeal of the Wii. It speaks volumes when old people and parents have video game parties, which used to be the province of kids and occasionally young adults.

The times are changing and changing fast.

The problem is video game developers are generally uncreative hacks. There will be growing pains until someone finds a successful formula for everyone else to copy until it's no longer profitable.

The real joy in the Wii and DS is that development cost is so low you can actually toy with new and unique ideas, and with the user base rapidly growing you can throw it out there and see who nibbles.

It's a good time to be a gamer, old and new.

How is it different from casual moviegoers who will go see Transformers (61), whereas hardcore film buffs will instead choose to see No Country For Old Men (91)?

Does the fact that Transformers has made a lot more money ($319 million to $23.7 million) at the box office mean that movie reviewers are reviewing casual movies like Transformers wrong?

(also note that Transformers was PG-13, whereas No Country For Old Men was R for strong graphic violence, which around these parts means it was "more juvenile")