Posted April 30, 2024
tfishell: You can select "written by: verified owners" on each game page, to the right of the reviews
SargonAelther: You can also easily filter reviews to only show those from verified owners, so I don't see any problem.
Good tips, but it doesn't change how the game's main rating (under the store page's title) is based on all ratings and not just verified owner ones. A potential consequences of this is people disagreeing with the overall rating and underrate/overrate their review to bias the score even more, which muddies the game's real rating even further. If a number isn't accurate at describing something, it is worthless. If GOG used the verified owner's rating instead of the overall rating, then this wouldn't be a big deal to me. Or if there were other tools used to mitigate inaccurate ratings as Sargon suggested with review edits, version-specific reviews, or Bayesian averages, etc.
AB2012: In practise, a review by a "non-owner" who owns the game elsewhere (on disk, Steam, etc), potentially for 20-30 years continuously, has played the game 15x times and is very familiar with tweaks / mods are often far more useful than "Dis sux, doesn't work" 1/5 one-liner reviews from 'Verified Owners'.
I'd wonder why a person playing it for 20-30 years on one platform would be on another platform reviewing that same game in the first place or not having another copy of the game on GOG if they love it so much considering it should be discounted heavily for that. And just because they've played for a long time doesn't mean that their experience will be reflective of a similar GOG version. Both viewpoints are subject to weakness of inaccurate reviews due to platform differences and version changes. At least with an owner's opinion, I know I'm getting someone's genuine opinion even if it's a poor quality one. I've attached some examples that also illustrate non-owner ratings and how they pull scores down and contrast their overall and owner ratings:
- Mary Skelter 2 - 2.8 overall, 4.2 owners rating (outrage over previous censorship that is now fixed)
- The Triumphant Return of Diablos - 3.3 overall, 5 owners rating (outrage because 18+)
- Ys IX - 3.6 overall, 4.9 owners rating (one of the reviewers here bombed all of NISA's other games simply because they didn't have regional pricing for their country)
- Witcher 2 - 4.7 overall, 4.2 owners rating (outrage over CDPR/GOG's work culture)
When did censorship, regional pricing, adult content, culture war cases, etc. suddenly become the only factor in judging game quality? To their credit, some of that stuff bothers me too, but nowhere should one small thing completely define the entire game's rating. It's not reasonable especially from someone who doesn't even own the game and is instead trying to make a statement and affecting the overall rating.
Consumers should be able to look at the rating under the store title and have a good idea of the quality of the game. If I reviewed the store page and the comments are too murky to discern and I have to consult a third-party source, buying games becomes a tedious chore rather than what should be a simple task.
Attachments:
ms2_non-owner_ra.jpg (114 Kb)
w2_non-owner_rat.png (225 Kb)
ys_ix_non-owner_.jpg (134 Kb)
diablos_rating.jpg (206 Kb)
Post edited April 30, 2024 by UnashamedWeeb