Negativity on metacritic

[chemical_art]

As for those saying they've never heard of it outside of here... That's really frustrating. Erik worked his ASS off promoting this one, and I'm at a loss for what he could have done differently.

As said before, fall is a fairly busy time for games, and I still stand this genre is a niche one. By sheer volume, there are tons of  AAA games competing for attention right now, and looking at the steam page right now I don't see anything that makes me go "WOW! this is unique".

[Misery]

That's true, but the sites in question are often ones that dont even cover AAA games (and instead are entirely indie-focused);  it depends on the site. 

Many of the ones that do follow AAA games, the bigger sites like IGN or whatever (things at that level anyway) dont bother with indie games very much to begin with.  They will indeed be very busy right now with the big games that are approaching.

But yeah, it's specifically baffling on those sites that ARENT interested in the super major huge games.

[chemical_art]

Either the genre isn't appealing to the audience, the game wasn't unique, the sites were busy with other things, or there wasn't a good enough pitch from the developer.

None of these situations are good.

[Tridus]

I think the time of year has something to do with it. This is a busy time of year for games, with stuff like GTA 5 and two new consoles coming out, along with a slew of games, a new iPad, the 2DS, etc, etc, etc...

Overlap between those things and the audience for a game like this is nowhere near 100% of course, but it's also not 0%. Releasing games this time of year carrries the risk of simply being lost in the shuffle of so much stuff going on at once.

I don't have a better explanation than that for what's happened, because it doesn't seem to be any problem with the game itself. The reception to it has been good from the people who have tried it, and the press is pretty positive too.

That said, in the future I might think about scheduling expansions for October instead of new games. An AI War expansion (for example) has a built in audience and you're going to do alright on it at any time of year. A new game needs to find an audience, and when the air is being sucked out of the room by the titans of the industry, there's that much less air for every indie & small studio trying to release at the same time. (I mean even Path of Exile is releasing soon, it's just a really busy time of year.)

[PokerChen]

I am assuming that you have all countered this by rating positive scores on metacritic, right? It's the only way to counter neg-bombs.

[chemical_art]

I did, but an 8 only moves things so far.

[mrhanman]

I rated it a 9 and left a review.

[Mick]

Seems to me that the response on Metacritic is very positive. Just needed a larger sample and more people actually reviewing.

For all I know those initial zero-clicks could have easily been Metacritic trolls who click zero on games without even playing them at all.

It would be nice if the score was somehow weighted toward the scores given by people who actually bother to write a review. It seems much too easy to be able to just scroll through the list of all new games and click zero on everything that only has a handful of reviews so far.

Alternatively, Metacritic could just not even give a score at all until enough ratings come in. *shrug*

[Misery]

It would be nice if the score was somehow weighted toward the scores given by people who actually bother to write a review. It seems much too easy to be able to just scroll through the list of all new games and click zero on everything that only has a handful of reviews so far.

Alternatively, Metacritic could just not even give a score at all until enough ratings come in. *shrug*

That would make way too much sense though.

Cant have that.

[tigersfan]

It would be nice if the score was somehow weighted toward the scores given by people who actually bother to write a review. It seems much too easy to be able to just scroll through the list of all new games and click zero on everything that only has a handful of reviews so far.

All metacritic scores are weighted, but their weight system is secret. From my experience, it seems like the more ratings you put on the site, the more your future ratings weigh, but that's just conjecture.

[PokerChen]

It would be nice if the score was somehow weighted toward the scores given by people who actually bother to write a review. It seems much too easy to be able to just scroll through the list of all new games and click zero on everything that only has a handful of reviews so far.

All metacritic scores are weighted, but their weight system is secret. From my experience, it seems like the more ratings you put on the site, the more your future ratings weigh, but that's just conjecture.

One would weight towards reviews people found useful (not just reviews in and of themselves). The weight systems has to be secret to prevent people gaming it, as would any significant user-contribution system.

[chemical_art]

One would weight towards reviews people found useful (not just reviews in and of themselves). The weight systems has to be secret to prevent people gaming it, as would any significant user-contribution system.

Or simply do what IMDB does, and reviews below a certain number are increasingly weighed less. So giving a 1 would do not be such a drop for reviews as mathematically it should be. It would inflate scores, but reduce trolling.

[Pepisolo]

The score has certainly recovered. The game still has quite a few red ratings, though -- and this is only after a few days. Only Valley1 has received more negative user reviews. I dunno, it just strikes me as odd considering there's been very little negative talk about the game on steam or anywhere else and yet quite a few users are giving red ratings. I'm guessing maybe it's that Avast thing. Anyway, 7.1 ain't too bad, I suppose. There has been another critic review of 8, too, which is pretty cool. Nice to see the positive and informative user reviews on there as well.

[keith.lamothe]

I doubt it's the Avast thing, as we've only seen maybe a dozen reports of that (iirc) and all have found resolutions, that I know of.

Tons of games run on Unity and have that problem with Avast, I don't think all of them got big piles of negative votes just for that

[Pepisolo]

I doubt it's the Avast thing, as we've only seen maybe a dozen reports of that (iirc) and all have found resolutions, that I know of.

Tons of games run on Unity and have that problem with Avast, I don't think all of them got big piles of negative votes just for that

Alright. I guess the game is just a little easier to dislike than I thought then. For some reason I thought that people would find this game hard to trash, so I considered that something technical may be the root of the problem instead.