Looks like BioWare employees have been posting perfect Metacritic reviews of Dragon Age 2. Not a huge thing, but given the unusually mixed responses the game's been getting from players... Well, something's not quite right at BioWare.
Shrills, I feel its deceptive. Posters, reviewers, etc. ought to be forced to fully acknowledge their relationship with the product / game.
Remember when Bioware was, like, the best game company ever? I miss those days...
As do I EmersonPF, as do I.......
No worse than the mouthbreathers who started an underground campaign to lowball the game, most of them before they even played or pirated it.
In fact it's probably much better considering that you'd expect BioWare employees to have actually played the game. And they honestly could have high opinions of it. Remember what Frogboy thought of Elemental before launch?
One of the advantages of being owned by a mega publisher is they can help pressure the reviewers.
This is just another reason why you can't trust scores anymore, you always have to read between the lines of what the reviewer is saying to get a feel of where they're coming from.
Dragon Age II is, by all accounts, a decent game. Unfortunately, it's simply not as good as anything Bioware has done before. Easily their worst game, from what I've been told. The strange part is that the reviews for the game settle on Dragon Age II being a 8/10 or a 9/10 game and undermine a lot of the major issues. Considering that it's essentially a copy-paste job from Dragon Age, with less features, less customisation, less environments to explore and that the game simply isn't as engrossing as Biowares previous effortst, 8/10 and 9/10 are obviously inflated scores.When reviewing games, major reviewers often use two scales. The first scale ranges from 1 to 9, and is used for your unknown titles that have little hype, little marketing and are released almost without fan-fare. Little things get big mentions in these reviews, and less attention is paid to what they get right compared to what they do wrong. Unless the game is amazingly good, like Torchlight, they'll be lucky to get anything over an 8.
The second scale ranges from 8-10 and is used for all major titles. Anything from Activision Blizzard, major franchises from EA Games, Square Enix, etc. Final Fantasy, Call of Duty, etc. Regardless of the quality of the game, it'll be polished to perfection. This gets it an automatic 8. Final Fantasy XIII is widely considered a terrible, boring game - and yet it scored 8s, 9s and even a few 10s. For what? The game had no actual gameplay! It scored it based on sheer production vaules; its graphics and sound design were amazing! Blizzard figured this out long ago; the flawed Starcraft II scored nearly universal 9s and 10s despite a garbage single player story and sterile multiplayer environment because they took their time to make it feel polished.
Ultimately, I read forums rather than reviews these days. Unless the game is an Activision Blizzard game or a FPS, it's community is going to be non-toxic enough to be able to ascertain the actual quality of the game from the forum.
Ya but those pesky User reviews can't be bought... so they just post some to help counter act actual user reviews. If anyone thinks this is new they're crazy. This is just the first time an employee has been caught doing it.
I don't mind people who worked on a game shilling for it.. just as long as they are upfront about their vested interests in it. But doing so in a user review section and omitting the fact that you work for the company that produces it is rather shameful.
I can't believe EA are actually defending this. Oh well, the company is pretty much too big to fail at this point (hell, I bought three titles from them this month). Again, it only reinforces my opinion that reviews of ANY kind can't be trusted, and the only way to actually find out if a game is worthy is to play it myself, or watch a lot of gameplay videos on youtube.
I can tell you, "professional" reviewing sites have lost a reader.
I don't even care if the game is "decent" or "half decent". Before even getting to debate that, I need to know WHAT THE GAME IS. There are tons of "decent" games I'm not interested in buying since they're simply not my kind of games.
I would have appreciated if some "professional" reviewer actually bothered to tell me that this game has literally nothing to do with its predecessor, and that it's a console game through and through. Ok, I CAN figure it out by myself just by loading up a couple of youtube videos, but I was so ingenuous that I didn't do it until I read some of those angry reviews at Metacritic.
So, kudos to them, shame to Bioware for attempting to CON us, and shame to those reviewers for trying to help them with their scam. Now that Bioware is not an option anymore for me, I'm turning my attention to Bethesda and, I don't know, who else?
They're with EA now, what did one expect the outcome would be?
EA is in serious need of a new PR guy. But hey, I guess their goal is to gradually destroy Bioware like every other studio they've bought.
I don't get what the big deal is. Why isn't a BioWare employee allowed to offer his opinion on his game? Why does it have to be some great conspiracy? Is anyone who works on a game then not allowed to participate in a discussion about a game's strengths or weaknesses? Or is it because his opinion differs from the "public" (big stretch of the word here), that he's getting all this crap now?
Ask yourself - if the Dragon Age 2 naysayers didn't exist, and everyone thought it was an awesome game, would anyone care that some BioWare guy says the same? The answer is an obvious no. It's only because he posted something different that this is even an issue, and honestly that's crap. The guy who posted the review is an engineer. He's not some EA PR guy participating in a conspiracy. If that was the case (and it has happened before, where company PR guys would pose as someone), I could see everyone calling foul.. but it isn't, and the only thing this guy did is not disclose that he worked on the game. But why should he? How is his review any different from one who gives a game 0/10 because they didn't like that companions can't equip armor anymore?
The only reason this is a "scandal" is because people are disappointed with the game and wanted to turn it into one.
Well according to a very good friend of mine that loved DA:O & went out & bought DA2 on release day, the mouthbreathers were right. And *his* review means more to me than all the gaming websites & magazines in the world.
The Bioware employee IS allowed to offer his opinion of his game. But he should identify himself as such beforehand. E.g. we know a company will tout their own products. If they say something negative, it is said in code words. You know, as a random example, instead of saying, "Yes, we now know people think our combat sucks," they'll instead say something like, "We've considered fan feedback and are revamping our combat to make it more enjoyable than ever! (Buy our game! Please! With sugar on top!)" But by hiding his identity he is committing a form of fraud. An added layer of ire is drawn if he receives any sort of royalties on units sold. Even if there isn't a specific law being broken, the act is morally reprehensible on principle alone.
Because unlike most of the people posting reviews, Bioware employees have a vested financial interest in the outcome? Because they're being paid by EA to do so?
Astroturfing has never been accepted practice, and that doesn't change just because the game is from a popular studio. People aren't believing their most likely bought and paid for critics reviews, so they're trying to pay for user reviews without looking like it. Then they got caught and came up with one of the dumbest responses in the history of PR.
I don't think this is a big deal really. Shit, I bet Stardock people did this too. The game isn't as bad as people are claiming, it does have a few terrible changes that really hurt an old WRPG'r like me, but it was still a pretty darn good game over all. The story had more subtle depth to it than a lot of games, I really think the story and characters were pretty good. I'd say it's a solid 8. If they had left inventory and stats alone, I might be able to go to a 9. I don't think it was as good as the first, and maybe that's because the first Dragon Age was a real special game. But hey, we have Stardock that will create a new WRPG, maybe they will be the next Bioware/Black Isle/Troika.
Larian Studios.
Why? It's a "user" review. It does not artificially inflate the game's official review scores, which is what all the metrics look at. There's nothing "morally reprehensible" about it. It affects absolutely.. nothing. You're making a huge deal out of something that's completely harmless.
Because unlike most of the people posting reviews, Bioware employees have a vested financial interest in the outcome? Because they're being paid by EA to do so?.
How do you know they're being paid by EA to post reviews? You really think EA will pick out a random software engineer from BioWare and tell him to go post a review? Come on. All you're saying is the guy has bias. You think the other user reviews don't? Hah. The only difference is his post goes against the "popular" opinion, and it's the only reason this was ever an issue.
Please. I'm assuming you're pointing to this as the relevant example:
However, given that this is a single user review, there's absolutely no evidence that this was somehow orchestrated by EA. Think for a second. What does 1 user review change?
Here's a more interesting read that actually tries to think about it instead of bashing right away like Escapist, as well as gives the reason why EA even pitched in, because Kotaku asked them.
http://kotaku.com/#!5782097/dragon-age-ii-dev-rates-his-own-game-on-metacritic-ea-bets-obama-voted-for-himself-too
You might be correct in regards to the grades of things. I don't know, but I'm convinced that scores have been inflated the last 5 years.
However, the bolded part though is HORSESHIT! I'm playing it right now and I love it. Best campaign in an RTS so far. Definetly in storyterms. like when Ariel Hanson tells Raynor that she thinks he's losing himself in the crystal. That part immersed me.
Swan in the armory though, he's the best so far. LOVE his comments after every mission.
And we haven't even mentioned the Prophecy storyelements yet. Those are pure gold for those who liked the story in StarCraft. In Utter Darkness especially especially made me immersed. Changed my view on the Raynor vs Mengst conflict completely. Made it seem like two schoolboys fighting over who's boss in the playground....
Thanx! I will check them out.
About the employee issue: I can't see how anyone can defend him (or EA). The very official campaign to promote this game has been based on misdirection and manipulation of the audience's assumptions about a title labeled as a sequel. Orchestrated or not, it's really just more of the same: complete and blatant disrespect for the customers, considered idiots to be conquered by subterfuge rather than by merit. I think Bioware doesn't deserve to sell a single copy of DA II.
As I said before here in post 24, this is another just another one of the laundry list of numerous reasons why I don't like EA and the way they operate, looks like BioWare is well on the way to becoming the next Pandemic Studios and Westwood Studios before that.
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