Forums > MobyGames > Why are negative reviews unpopular ?
Bregalad (937) on 10/9/2010 9:24 PM · Permalink · Report
People on Moby Games can say if they find reviews useful or not. I usually look at it to know if I did an "useful" review, and it's really interesting, my positive reviews always have the majority of people saying it's "useful", but my negative reviews always have the majority of people saying it's "not useful". So I'm trying to figure out why.
Personally, before buying a game, I always appreciate to read negative reviews (even if I totally disagree with the reviewer), so that I can have an idea of what might go wrong during the gameplay, or what I might have problems with. If the reviewers issues are out of place in my opinion (like he complains about lots of things that I wouldn't care, or that he says things I consider good to be bad), then I'm definitely going to play the game. If I see a few negative reviews with serious issues about the gameplay I'll be hesitant, and look for positive reviews that would claim something else. I find more interesting to read what is wrong in a game, than just read a long article that basically says "everything is fine with this game".
It's also usually more interesting / easier for me to find arguments about what went wrong in a game, and explain why I didn't like it, than find argument to explain why I'm so a hardcore fan of a game that it's "that" good but that I just happened to fell in love with.
A point is that this "useful / not useful" button could be turned into a "I agree with you / I disagree" button by people. Then I guess people find games good more often than bad, so more people agree with me on positive reviews. But that doesn't explain everything. You can have a poor review you agree with, but that is badly worded or that employs really lame arguments, that remains a bad review even if you agree with it's polarity. On the other side, it's perfectly possible to disagree with an excellent review made of good arguments.
However, it seems people ask for positive reviews exclusively. Why so ?
leilei (343) on 10/9/2010 9:59 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Bregalad wrote--] However, it seems people ask for positive reviews exclusively. Why so ? [/Q --end Bregalad wrote--]
That's not exactly true. That 3.5/5 star Metroid Other M review only has 2/15 helpful votes, but that's probably because of a 'durr its not metroid prime' hatedom or some reason - or rather: it simply isn't helpful with that stupid roleplaying making the entire "review".
Lain Crowley (6629) on 10/9/2010 10:01 PM · Permalink · Report
Evidence doesn't seem to back up your claims. You gave a glowing review to FFX, but the single person who rated that review said it wasn't helpful. You didn't care as much for FFX-2, and that got 7/7 positives. You blasted King's Kight, and that got 3/3+.
Really what seems to be the standard for whether or not people consider a review helpful is if it delivers what they're looking for. Sometimes people want informative. Sometimes they appreciate critical. It can go either way.
BurningStickMan (17916) on 10/9/2010 11:56 PM · Permalink · Report
"Useful" has also long been confused with "Agree With" here. Could be that people don't agree with what you said, regardless of how well you did or did not support your points.
Adzuken (836) on 10/10/2010 1:35 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
I don't find negative reviews always get poor ratings. My most venomous, which was directed at Ghostbusters for the NES, got a 10 out of 10 helpful. There are many factors in why someone would rate a review unhelpful, but I think people hate fanboyism the most. Like when someone gives a poor review to a game and makes it obvious that they hate it because it's more well respected than some other game that they believe deserves credit. Or inversely, they give a positive review as a counterpoint to negative reviews, because they believe their beloved game doesn't deserve to be so reviled. But that's just a theory. I can't claim to know exactly what goes through someone's head as they click either of those buttons.
Edit: Er, I should note that I'm not directing this at you, personally. I'm just thinking out loud.
Unicorn Lynx (181769) on 10/10/2010 2:44 AM · Permalink · Report
A point is that this "useful / not useful" button could be turned into a "I agree with you / I disagree" button by people.
You have a point there, and in many cases that is certainly so. People don't like it when their favorite games get negative critique. They will sometimes vote such a review "unhelpful" even if it was brilliantly written. This might not be very fair, but it's natural.
To use your case as an example, I can only honestly tell you why I voted your FFX-2 review "helpful" and your FFXII review "not helpful". Your negative review of FFX-2 strengthened my opinion that the game was, indeed, not very good. You were spot on when you described the story as "poor", and also referred to the fact there were no new locations to explore. You didn't trash the game, though, and pointed out some positives as well. Therefore, it was helpful to me.
On the other hand, your negative review of FFXII didn't help me notice the game's bad sides or anything. It didn't "open my eyes" in any way. In fact, I perceived the whole critique there as a case of conservative fanboyism that I've encountered too many times before. You criticized the game's main innovation: combat system. You can like or dislike FFXII's story and everything else; I understand you can dislike the combat, but you can't deny it was a revolution for the genre. Even if FFXII was completely disastrous in all other aspects, it deserved more than being dismissed as a "funeral" because it dared to break the mold in a pathetically outdated and conservative genre.
Indra was here (20752) on 10/10/2010 12:20 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
At a quick glance, I would agree. However, that is not always the case. Considering I specialize in 'negative' reviews, in the end it's not the number of person(s) that voted that 'your review is useful' that is important:
It's the number of people who even bothered to vote either way
I've frequently mentioned this to some new reviewers who are disgruntled with this useful/not useful. A really, really not useful review will in fact have less then 3-5 votes (although an unknown game is also a factor).
If more than five people even bothered to vote, at least it touched them enough to be happy or irritated.
Thus far, my personal record is to get 32 people to vote for one of my reviews, of which 17 of them were annoyed. Yay!
The best review by peer review thus far for me is 15 out of 15.
Unicorn Lynx (181769) on 10/10/2010 4:10 PM · Permalink · Report
The best review by peer review thus far for me is 15 out of 15.
For which game?
Indra was here (20752) on 10/10/2010 6:15 PM · Permalink · Report
Slug Camargo (583) on 10/10/2010 5:20 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Bregalad wrote--] A point is that this "useful / not useful" button could be turned into a "I agree with you / I disagree" button by people. [/Q --end Bregalad wrote--] I think you hit the nail in the middle of the nose there. Not with the actual claim, but with the doubt it raises/comes from: There is just no way to know whether a given person is pressing that button with its intended purpose or to punish/celebrate an opinion they share. This is probably one of the facts that gave birth to Web 2.0, in fact. Modern websites have no room for this kind of doubt since everyone can voice their opinion in painstaking detail. Which makes the internet the horrible place it is now :P
Bregalad (937) on 10/10/2010 7:36 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Hi guys. Thank you for your answers.
@leileilol:
You got a point. The older reviews were here before the system that put them at the top of the main page, therefore much less people were voting for them. So yeah, what I said in the first post isn't ALWAYS the case but it's still what happened the most often to me - positive reviews rated mostly helpful, and negative reviews rated mostly unhelpful.
@Adzuken:
You just happened to review one of the worst game ever made (I'm going to read it as soon as I'll finish this post BTW) so no surprise everyone agree with you - hence rating your review helpful. The same applies with my King's Knight review. When you write negative reviews about games that aren't obviously "an old piece of total s***t" but that are more controversial games, that's where your bashing review gets bashed back.
@Unicorn Lynx (or whatever your new pseudo is)
Thank you very much the feedback. This applies to you, but maybe it applies to a lot of other people too.
I just tried to express my sentiments as clearly as possible in the reviews though. Your own review of FF12 is a perfect example of a review I completely disagree with, yet rated it useful as it was greatly written. Your critiques against my reviews aren't entirely fonded though :
I admit I'm a total fanboy of older Final Fantasy games. Does this causes a major problem with me writing reviews ? I have written even more fanboy-ism positive reviews, and they were highly rated.
As I said in the review I might be considered conservative for rejecting most changes in FF12, but I tried to clearly explained why I reject them with arguments (other than "it's not like the previous games" which I agree is a lame argument).
I haven't technically disliked the story, I didn't understand it, so I said in the review it was poorly exposed to the player. However maybe I poorly exposed this opinion in the review ?
I don't remember to have denied that the combat system was a "revolution" (I didn't use this therm, which is by itself positive) I even mentioned something about that in the good chapter. I can't even be that conservative, as I said is that the combat system was completely different in every FF before - their only common point is the turn based battles and "attack - item" commands. If you find this alone to be terribly outdated, then you have a problem with Final Fantasy as a whole - a game concept is never outdated. Chess is thousand years old and isn't outdated.
And I raised more than one positive points about the game. With your (@ Unicorn Lynx) review I perfectly get your point that the new battle system is awesome for you because you didn't like the one in previous FFs (as you said once more in this post). However, you have positive reviews of basically all previous FFs - which is paradoxical if you hated their battle system (don't you ever take the risk to write negative reviews ?). If you consider a formula which is far from anything FF ever tried is better - then you obviously isn't a FF fan. (not that this is good or bad, you just aren't one). However, a Final Fantasy game is supposed to at least make FF fans satisfied. If it makes all "World of Warcraft" fans very satisfied and all "Final Fantasy" fans disappointed (I'm simplifying things, but that's basically what happened) can the game really be considered good ? For example, I hate the whole genre of first person shooters. If the next "Final Fantasy" game is going to be the best FPS ever made, I would still be negative about it - fanboy or not. This is to a lesser extent what happened with FF12.
Anyway I already said what there was to say in the review, what I want to know is how to word it better to make better negative and positive reviews in the future.
@Bhatara Dewa Indra I :
In this case I think my FF12 review was terribly useful - I don't think I've ever had so many votes. Anyways, the votes have HIGHLY increased since the new system that puts recent reviews on the main page.