It is VERY concerning to me that EA asks reviews to change grades. What do you think?

[fourthreemafia]

Quote: Originally Posted by Alliball

Remember to always go with your first instinct. I don't see why anyone would get "very upset" sbout anything concerning something so trivial as a video game.

I agree to a point, but let me ask you something...

Do you enjoy videogame football?

If yes, you have to understand, that even if you dont follow reviews, ALOT of people base their decision on whether or not to buy games based on reviews.

And if they buy a game that isnt as good as advertised, EA makes more money. EA should make money because it is a quality game, not because they asked a review site to change their scores.

Madden 2010 is a quality game, but this is still BS.

[Freelance]

A 90 on a math test at a community college is not the same as a 90 on a math test at MIT.

"Scores" and "grades" are so relative. Some are more critical than others. I pay them little mind.

[Netherscourge]

Wait a minute - EA contacted a reviewer and asked them to change their review score?

What is that all about? That's pretty disturbing IMO.

That reminds me of Gamespot firing one of their reviewers a while ago because they posted a negative review of an Eidos game, in which Eidos had spent a ton of money advertising on the same website.


As if Eidos demanded Gamespot remove the review of the game because they OWED it to them for the Advertising money, or some crap like that.

I hope this is not the same thing here...

[MAzing87]

Quote: Originally Posted by sois

I got upset when I remembered the actual $$$ that I potentially waste on a game when I read entirely positive reviews on a game.

Yea there were many positive reviews for M10. M10 is not an A or AAA game, in my opinion. I have played it a few hours thus far and some of the issues I and many other posters have already described in other threads are head scratchers.

*I have seen a halftime highlight where the ball was invisible, my QB threw a completion (Brady threw with an empty hand and the WR caught the pass and was cradling air).

*The challenge system went untouched and there are questionable plays that can't be reviewed.

*No real differences between the 3-4 and 4-3 schemes.

*Drop in frame rate when the ball is hiked. This happens randomly, not too often but it happens.

Those are all cons.

The Pros:

*I like the fact that there are some sliders to tweak reaction time, and speed of the players. I was really impressed and hope to see some realistic NFL sliders in a few weeks.

*The animations of the players are excellent.

*The QB sig styles are accurate like I've never seen before.

I can't give it a score, but can say that it isn't an A or AAA game.

[swaldo]

Gaming Trend will have no credibility with me if they "re-review" the game. Nothing wrong with a 74, it just balances out the BS 100 reviews.

100 + 74 / 2 = 87

I have the PS3 version and I think it's ok, and I don't think it should be rated over 90 because it has core gameplay issues. However there will be some who will rate it over 90, as well there should be some that give it less than 80. The majority will be in between.

Also, the wishy-washy Gaming Trend director said "Thanks for the feedback" after people here were chiming in what a loser his reviewer is? Does he understand gaming companies hire people from poor countries to be forum fanboys? This was confirmed by EGM magazine a few years back and these people are smart and change their strategies so they are not too obvious (EGM stated forum readers fished out the rats easily when they first started doing it.) Not to mention how many EA employees that could be on this board supporting their own product! I'm not saying EA does this but it's something to be aware of. Don't ever let forum posters change your opinion on anything.

Get some balls and tell EA your review stands! Don't put your poor employee in a bad position. But doh! You'll lose future EA perks if you do that - political horse manuer.

[allgames]

I know some publishers pay Product Managers based on average review scores at MetaCritic/Gamerankings. It's possible that low score pulled them into another "bracket"
I know this because I consulted for a major game site and they showed me the data and explained how critical the avg. scores were for the people responsible for the games.
I'm not saying that's connected, but just some info to think about.

[bcruise]

Quote: Originally Posted by swaldo

Does he understand gaming companies hire people from poor countries to be forum fanboys? This was confirmed by EGM magazine a few years back and these people are smart and change their strategies so they are not too obvious (EGM stated forum readers fished out the rats easily when they first started doing it.) Not to mention how many EA employees that could be on this board supporting their own product! I'm not saying EA does this but it's something to be aware of. Don't ever let forum posters change your opinion on anything.

Do you happen to have a link to that? Sounds like an interesting read and I'm curious to know how they weeded them out...

I know EGM is a print mag, but I just thought I'd ask.

[rheerun]

I've worked at various software companies my entire career... this is a pretty common practice ... particularly at larger companies that have lots of dollars invested in prod mgmt and marketing.

We didn't ask people to change their scores directly, but we would follow-up if it was a bad score to make sure we understood what the problem was, what led the reviewer to have that stance etc. More often than you might think, there are misunderstandings about certain features, certain settings etc. And, I've seen numerous occasions where the follow-up leads to more clarity in which case the reviewers actually apologize, thank us for the clarification then update the score as appropriate.

I'm not saying that's what happened in this case... just that its not as surprising to me as it might be for others...