Game Reviewers Ignored!
According to a couple of researchers at Susquehanna University (where? Pennsylvania), a game's critical review and it's subsequent commercial response have no correlation. In other words games with good reviews don't sell any better than games with bad ones.
This little piece of news went counter to so many people's 'better' judgment that they ran the study again. Only the second time they expanded the sample from 275 games to 1200. Lo' and behold, their original analysis was confirmed.
Somehow I'm not surprised. First of all, people are stupid. Over 1 million copies of 50 Cent: Bulletproof were sold last year. Q.E.D.
Secondly, take Sword of the Stars. PC Gamer gave it 89% which is an excellent score. Not many games broach the 90 percentile. PC Gamer UK is published by the same company, but obviously distributed in the UK. The Brits rated the game 47% which is abysmal. What is a reader to believe?
IGN gave it a 77% while GameSpy handed it a 60%. Incidentally IGN owns GameSpy. Perhaps these companies are attempting to hedge their bets? More probable is that game experiences very so much from person to person that attempting to garner a nugget of truth from a review is futile.
This little piece of news went counter to so many people's 'better' judgment that they ran the study again. Only the second time they expanded the sample from 275 games to 1200. Lo' and behold, their original analysis was confirmed.
Somehow I'm not surprised. First of all, people are stupid. Over 1 million copies of 50 Cent: Bulletproof were sold last year. Q.E.D.
Secondly, take Sword of the Stars. PC Gamer gave it 89% which is an excellent score. Not many games broach the 90 percentile. PC Gamer UK is published by the same company, but obviously distributed in the UK. The Brits rated the game 47% which is abysmal. What is a reader to believe?
IGN gave it a 77% while GameSpy handed it a 60%. Incidentally IGN owns GameSpy. Perhaps these companies are attempting to hedge their bets? More probable is that game experiences very so much from person to person that attempting to garner a nugget of truth from a review is futile.
posted by mattjustmull | 5:58 PM | permalink
2 Comments:
Sometimes the differences in review scores can be out and out bias. The lowest score for SotS on the Internet is a 40% on 1up.com authored by Tom Chick. Wow, he much really hate the game you think. Maybe he does and maybe it's because he wrote the manual for Galactic Civilizations IV and is Brad Wardell's personal friend.
Sorry, that should be GCII not GCIV.
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