Are ratings actually affected by company payout to sites?

To me it honestly seems like it. With that debacle about jeff (a former reviewer) back in 2007 i THINK and something else that came to my attention.

I have FEAR and FEAR 2. Resident EVil 4 and Resident evil 5.

FEAR 2 was criticized for not doing too many new things and essentially being not really scary at all. With the incredible foreshadowing of every scary event etc. It got a 7.0 on GS.

Resident Evil 5 was praised for its co op system from what i understand. This seemed to be the only strong point aside from the minigame "mercs" which also allows co op.

The thing is Resident evil 5 STRONGLY and i mean STRONGLY represents RE4 but it seems to offer less at the same time. Very few gruesome death scenes. Sub par plot. Even by RE standards. Shoddy Co op AI. etc. Not that RE 5 doesnt have its strong points. I mean after all its basically a bastard child of RE4.

The thing is RE 5 got a lot of hype going for it since RE4 was such a huge success and the RE franchise in general. FEAR being a general sleeper hit didnt have the funding for advertisement etc for the sequel, as well as potentially NOT paying off gaming sites (assuming this is true) to give it a generous review.

Which brings me to jeffs release from the editorial team. Supposedly the way it goes is jeff was let go because he gave kane and lynch a garbage rating. (6.5 or so if i remember right) But Gamespot had all kinds of advertisements for it on the homepage and what not.

So is it that RE5 only got a good score because of which? I still think RE5 is decent. But not an 8.5 by any means. Even with online co op. FEAR 2 couldve been far scarier indeed. But it seems to have a solid online, and the firefights to me are pretty fun. The ol action movie gun fights n such. They are mild tricks but RE5 seems to be on the same bar. The co op just seems to be a mild trick not worthy of any MAJOR praise.

Thoughts?

Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Everyone likes money.

That's why when I personally buy a game nothing about my decision is based off of the review score.

I think it's a bit naive to think that reviews are not influenced by other factors. Look at what happened to Jeff Gerstman (sp?), that was obvious as to what was going on.

I sincerely doubt it. A review publication of any kind has only it's credability. andy_lyall

Not gonna lie, but more and more times a Gamespot review is talked about a LOT of people bring up the credibility issue, and then decide they no longer will use this site for reviews.

To me it honestly seems like it. With that debacle about jeff (a former reviewer) back in 2007 i THINK and something else that came to my attention.

sharpshooter188

But you know, If paying for reviews was a procedure, not single event then we wouldn't have had that massive exodus of gamespot's writers. I think that GS reviews are now still accurate.

Hmm, I acturally doubt the reviewers are payied off, I do think however that the spectacle, and hype the publishers make does factor in, like Preview shows that are more like a massive hypefest + whatever goes on there, should get the game in better light.

It is only a theory, but I do think that the better the pre hype, and preview shows are, the higher the final product gets rated, unless it totally bombs.

Not a garantee tho, since Ive seen alotta hyped games get the axe by reviewers

If it has been happening, then it's been happening well before the Jeff incident. I find it hard to believe that it could have happened just the one time.

I really don't believe that companies pay for better reviews. I think it's just that gamers get angry when certain games score bad or not.

Would it really matter? I don't know what to say to people who let scores given by reviewers affect how they view a game. I just don't. :|

People like to come up with stories about payments to the site when a game they like doesn't get the score they think the game deserves. The reason people overall read reviews is most often to get a professionals view on the game. Another important thing is to get second and third opinions. If three magazines/sites give a game a high score, and it's right up your alley, it's unlikely to be a bad game for you. First and foremost, the reason Gamespot gave F.E.A.R 2 a 7.0 and RE5 an 8.5 is they LIKED RE5 more than F.E.A.R 2. Indeed, both games are pretty muchvariations of the previous games, but if one of the previous games had a better formula, obviously, a copy of it with different "paint" would be better as well. You can also point to examples of the contrary. Financial juggernauts like Bungie and Epic games, not to mention Microsoft itself, is not getting any favors from Gamespot when they gave Halo Wars a 6.5 or neglected to place Gears of War 2 on the Game of the Year list.

I think that it does happen, just not that often and in more subtle ways. SO the companies arent directly paying for a good review but will pull the advertising from the site if the review isnt great. (which really does make sense, how often have you seen a game advertised on gamespot and typed its name into the search?)

I think the only reason that its possible for it to happen is that gamers read reviews in the wrong way. It's the inherent flaw of putting a number or stars to evaluate a game. If you spend the time to read the reviews and ignore the number you learn both the good and the bad. So a game might lose a point for being unoriginal however, it might execute an old concept very well (i.e. uncharted) if you just look at the number you wouldn't know that it was marked down for not being original. Long story short, if you want to stop game companies for even attempting to buy good reviews, just read the whole review and make your decision from that instead of the number.

The truth is that it doesn't matter because gamingeditorials, like most editorials these days, are written by people who do not, on even a fundamental level, understand what their job is in regards to reviewing something. They tend to inject too much of their own bias and perspective into their reviews when in reality all that is warranted is an objective look at the game. Everybody this day and age carries with them monumental egos and they feel the need to insertthose egos into these reviews, essentially reducing most of these editorials into very myopic and often worthless critiques.

When I read aneditorial like that Gamespot Army of Two review, I really do think some of these writers need to be fired and replaced with journalists who can approach the material with some semblance of humility. Some of these writers are so full of their own excrement that they ramble on verbosely about minor issues while often ignoring or flatly getting other facts wrong.

Even Jeff Gerstmann, who is too often held up as some sort of ethical paragon in this industry, wrote some flaccid reviews, most notably for VF5, where he gave the game a lower score than many felt it deserved while spending almost no real time dissecting the phenomenal gameplay mechanics and the host of other improvements that should have been obvious.

I have no doubts that there is some shady machinations in this industry but truth be told, reviews have become so fractured, segregated and generally worthless that I have a difficult time mustering up any concern.