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Originally Posted by SoccerDude28
Well of course people have to give a reasoning to why they gave the score they did. It's not like a poll. That's what I meant  |
Well to be honest, I always read reviews here, other places, AND on Amazon, AND I take the Amazon stars into considerations on almost everything I buy. Of course there are problems because people have individual prejudices, but that's also true with individual reviewers.
Consumers differ as much as reviewers do, so even if you don't have a reviewer bias, it's hard for a review to cover everything a consumer might want. As BacardiJim pointed out when I asked about RPGs, not everyone is looking for the same thing. It may be a disadvantage to some people that Planescape: Torment (just picking a random item from that thread) involves a lot of reading, but I actually like games that involve a lot of reading. Some people hate them. So if you have reader reviews you can see the justifications. At Amazon, you also get to rank the reader reviews, so better ones (ones that people find more helpful) "float" to the top of the list (all reviews are posted.) I will read may a dozen reviews to see what people like and dislike about something, or more if it's an important purchase (like, a lot of $$$$), so that I can see what the consensus is. Yes, there tends to be some "inflation" across the board in scores for all ratings at these places, but you can factor that into a purchase easily enough.
There are always people who will give something great one star or something stupid 5 stars, but reading what they have to say in combination with the average is what is useful. I mean, if you REALLY thought that star systems were of no benefit, we wouldn't have them here at all, right?
I can understand if the objection is that it's a logistical nightmare, that it's not our function (since we're not really promoting game sales), and that it's duplicated elsewhere. But I don't see any principled drawback to the idea of putting up threads in the reader reviews section allowing ratings of games only if someone types up something in a limited space. If it's more of a practical concern that it's too much of a pain or we don't have the capacity to screen out say, people promoting their own games, just say that. (Maybe that's what you were trying to say, Jackal, and I misunderstood.)
