So I noticed that the initial reviews for MEA were bombing it into the low 70's - the suddenly reviews were coming out conveniently pegged at 80, with JUST enough of them coming through to boost the Metacritic reviews into the green.
This became particularly suspicious when reading said reviews and they started feeling like 50-60%, for me at least; under another user's advice I ran the reviews through a sentiment analysis tool (I did a few test paragraphs with it and it felt very accurate).
The process I used was to ignore any sentences that simply described the setting without any opinion/analysis and break the text up into parses based on indiviudal concepts - if the concept was carried over two paragraphs (eg. talking about a single character or aspect of the story) then it was rated together, if the concept consisted of only half a paragraph then that half of the paragraph was analysed by itself.
Long story short, every single review I analysed came in massively above where it should have been, with an average of 32% positive bias, indicating that the "final verdict" was affected by external factors or outright changed.
Now there are a number of reasons why this might have been: >Reviewer or review publisher might not want to be the company that sets a game below 80% - doing so can massively affect trade credentials and information embargoes. >Last minute review buyout. >Not wanting to offend fans of the series, offended people are FAR less likely to click adverts.
Were there not inherent bias in the system, I'd wager that MEA would have received at best a low 60% rating and at worst a high 40% rating.
The bias is because it's a Mass effect game and people wanted it to be good
Sebastian Thompson
Late reviews always push a game toward the average. Contrarians always have to go against the grain.
Kayden Bailey
This is a good post OP, and your autism does you great credit today, but modern games are reviewed on a 5 star system, from 6 to 10.
Andromeda is essentially getting 2-3/5 star reviews across the board, which seems about right to me and does absolutely accurately imply the game is the fucking garbage we know it to be after playing the trail.
Jason Morales
I credit your autism user, you are a prince.
But any gamer today knows that games are like grades. A 75 is a C in a class, and it means you suck but at least you didn't fail. The only people happy with a C are people happy with objectively poor performance, and the only people still drawn to a C game are people who were going to play it no matter what it was reviewed at.
Unfortunately there are a ton of people who will play and watch and eat and live shit, so as long as the marketing guys do their job the game will more or less succeed.
Daniel Smith
back at 75, nigger
Brandon Ramirez
Calling it DA:I in Space would be insulting.
Jeremiah Moore
>Implying if this game was a new IP it wouldn't get below 60
Mason Hall
>AAA title scores highter than it should This isn't news, shit is rigged as fuck because they know casuals will feel safe to throw their money if the score is above the bar, the only people who should give a fuck about these are console wars faggots wanting something to scream at
David Hernandez
There's no 1 to 5, anything below 6 is the same. "bad, don't buy." 6 = "buy if it's in your niche". 7 is a broader 6, means average 8 = good game in your niche. 9 = good game 10 = great game 102 = actually an 8 or 9, if not for nostalgia or hype.
Everyone should just use 0 to 5 rating. Then an additional "badge" of approval like >angryjoe's badass seal of approval For games that are great but flawed or just fantastic beyond compare.
Kevin Brown
>there are people who think that Gamergate actually affected the corruption and buyouts going on in the videogame review and journalism industry >there are people who are not aware that that sort of shilling also occurs in movies and music >there are """""people""""" who don't know that in the information age the control of information in order to peddle narrative and product is a very real thing
Joseph Martinez
Is...is that... Sara ass?
Daniel Watson
There were spanish reviews shitting on it and then giving it 9/10. Suspect
Gabriel Jackson
77 average score is trash for a game that is supposed to be AAA from a well known developer
If they really pay for review why wouldn't they just go for 98/100.
Luke Edwards
...
Camden Phillips
>Sentiment analysis tool
Christopher Collins
It wouldn't be believable. Your shilling level is low. Being blatant is bad.
Owen Perez
They are a thing, and they probably have a better emotional intelligence than I do.
Aaron Lopez
the thing you need to realize is that by design, the publisher doesn't need to do anything overt like payola, as it was in the old days. They control access to the information and events that the journos need to conduct their business (that is, reporting on games). If you aren't favorable to the publishers, you find that many doors are closed to you and much information is withheld, not just at E3, but other events as well. You won't find your reporters invited to events, won't get to go to the super exclusive screenings behind closed doors and private theaters at E3, won't get invited to hands-on, won't get offered exclusive scoops, won't even get sent review code.
They've created a system where the publisher doesn't need to do anything to ensure they recieve profitable publicity because the journos are 'encouraged' by the invitational nature of the industry to stay in publisher's good graces by writing favorable, safe reviews regardless if the game in question has any merit or is deserving of such a score
This doesn't extend to just journos, it also now encompasses the social media content creators as well, they end up having to play by the same rules as the journos if they want favorable treatment (like not getting their shit demonetized or taken down).
It's far more insidious than just handing people wads of cash. And anyways, they have 'social media marketing' teams to help drive up the score if they so wish.
Nathan Ross
emotional (((INTELLIGENCE)))
Cooper Reyes
It's a legit thing, I am fucking beyond horrific in social situations, even other autists disgust me. A machine using contextual analysis to determine the likelihood and intensity of praise/derision is going to be way more accurate than me.
Jaxon Nelson
...
Christian Jenkins
I've also noticed a few journalists failing to give a rating for the game, particularly if they have negative opinions. I'm fairly sure if this RPS article is anything to go by, they'd give it a 4/10 at best, drastically reducing the game's metascore.
This review is fucking garbage >Technical issues are obvious, although not so serious to burden five years of development work from a studio that has brought us great moments in the past and will keep doing it in the future.
literally it's ok when bioware does it
Cooper Thompson
>Games have to fit into our lives, and that's not always fair. Mass Effect: Andromeda might've worked a decade ago on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but it doesn't work in a world that is delivering games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Nier: Automata, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In this reality, BioWare's latest role-playing game is old, broken, and often boring. Worst of all, it's going to disappoint fans of the Mass Effect series. >it's going to disappoint fans of the Mass Effect series.
this series still have fans?
Mason Thomas
I like how the review literally admits bias. >Bioware did good things in the past and will probably in the future, so that's enough merit for me to boost the score for Andromeda. >I liked the other Mass Effect games so i'm willing to ignore or downplay glaring technical issues What a joke.
Luke Long
Metacritic should just blacklist sites that do this.
Anthony Sanders
>I ran the reviews through a sentiment analysis tool (I did a few test paragraphs with it and it felt very accurate). It's okay, she's not pregnant. I checked.
Juan Baker
I will never own a house without a staircase, don't even need a second floor, just want me a staircase.
Brayden Davis
>Supporting AngryJoe.
Cameron Ward
WHY WOULD YOU POST THIS
William Collins
Geez. I'm still looking forward to playing this game, and seeing how I like it or not, and tend to be pretty damn forgiving in general. But even I'd call this completely deluded.
Angel Torres
Because pic related.
Ethan Clark
Is this a reference I don't get?
Nolan Young
I could understand a 10-15% swing, but like a 30-40% swing? That's fucking nuts.
Nathaniel Ross
reviewers aren't even hiding it, most scores can be summed up to "it's a shit game but I am a big fan of mass effect so it's worth buying for the story and lore I swear"
Jonathan Robinson
but will Jimquisition give it a 95% ? He will nott admit Zelda is better for sure.
Jacob Foster
Jim is a wild card.
Ryan Lee
Fuck you dude, college is hard, i take a C over a F anyday
Evan Watson
General consensus I get out of reading the "Professional" reviews is that Andromeda has all the parts of a great game, but that they've been put together in a manner that is, put simply, incompetent.
The scope of the game seems to be the only thing consistently praised, while simultaneously the monotony and last-gen variety of things to do within that scope is consistently criticized. Beyond that, most reviews do seem fairly polarized as to whether they found the characters and/or combat to be passable or bland.
Leo Ortiz
IMHO that doesn't make sense, primarily because MEA absolutely shits on ME lore.
>PeeBee is older than first contact with humans. >Her "father" is human.
>Cora somehow served with an Asari Commando Squad, one that specifically only takes Asari.
>Liam's bio immediately mentions he had great family life, just because he's black,
>On a whim multiple species in the Milky way got together and committed the largest and most expensive undertaking of all time - creating multiple sleeper ships and an entire fucking Citadel. >In ME3 it takes the entire combined economic and wartime output of the entire Galaxy to build the Crucible.
Angel Long
EQ test is bunk because people can fake it; yes, normies, as they know what's expected of them
Autists suck due to being overwhelmed by sensory and nonverbal inputs, and the processing delay of replying to verbal ones. It's why they're fine with typing out a message online.
Wyatt Hill
>what it's actually like
6 = trash 7 = if you're into this and know what you're getting out of it, you may go for it 8 = good game, nothing fantastic 9 = great game 10 = game that everyone should play. It might not be 100% perfect, but it can be recommended without reservations and truly excels at everything it sets out to achieve
Justin Gutierrez
>EQ test is bunk because people can fake it With enough time and practice, yes we can, but it's still very easy to startle us. Put me in a situation where I have no context to draw from and I will just shut down.
Brayden Moore
While most of that is bullshit, the first especially simply because it doesn't make any sense, regarding the last one; isn't the idea that the not-Citadel sent to Andromeda is just a skeleton the colonists are expected to gather resources to complete once they got there?
Tyler Green
If that fat fuck gives that game a better score than BotW I will bully him every day on twitter using a bot.
Carson Murphy
>isn't the idea that the not-Citadel sent to Andromeda is just a skeleton the colonists are expected to gather resources to complete once they got there?
>100,000 people can achieve within a lifetime, what took literally trillions of people to achieve.
Mason Gonzalez
>Put me in a situation where I have no context to draw from and I will just shut down.
That's because you have problems with interpreting nonverbal cues and processing delays with the verbal ones if they're speaking literally
It's not really your emotional intelligence that's the problem when interacting with people, simply because when given the context and a different form of communicating, you'd be fine
Jayden Reyes
I was offering an explanation for how it was conceived.
I said nothing about it being a good idea in the first place.
Samuel Brown
The sentiment needs to be normalized in someway though. Run it over a few reviews you judge to be accurate and use that as a baseline.
Charles Carter
>Medal of Honor: Warfighter >awful game, filled with bad level/encounter design, horrid animations, godawful writing and voice acting and writing and topped off with broken multiplayer >universally panned by reviewers >studio shut down shortly after release
>Mass Effect: Andromeda >awful game, filled with bad level/encounter design, horrid animations, godawful writing and voice acting and writing and topped off with broken multiplayer >many reviewers afraid to give it anything less than an 8/10, despite going on and on about the game's issues >???
What exactly is going on here? It can't just be about review copies and such, MoH was EA too.
Aiden Hall
A kind reminder that, according to multiple leaked documents, the current practice is that every reviewer who gets a review copy of a game signs a contract in which he or she is obligated to delay the review by X amount of days if the given score is lower than Y.
Negative reviews will come in in about 3-7 days after game's release. For the really negative reviews you'll have to wait over a week until people who did not get review copies finish the game.
Benjamin Hill
Have you just been... what, ignoring the entire threads going on and on about the naked bias that numerous reviewers are showcasing out of loyalty to Mass Effect?
Parker Green
It's called the quality gap. Women make 77 to men's 100
Joshua Roberts
T O P K E K O P K E K
Jayden Jenkins
So you're telling me it'll average out at fucking 60 or so?
Henry Smith
sauce on those documents?
Noah Green
upvoted
Carter Clark
On the cusp of Japan making a comeback, MEA is going to sell like gangbusters. Because of this, Persona 5 will sell poorly, and we'll have to deal with uninspired western open world trash for the next 5 years and Japan will be ignored.
Japan almost made it. I am fuming right now. I hope those italian reviewers die a slow, agonizing death. This wasn't supposed to happen.
Ethan Jones
Tried to find it, it was a big news story a couple of years back. There was a huge leak of documents and as far as I can remember one of the documents was an NDA where the reviewer not only had to agree not to disclose any information about the game until its release, but was also obliged to wait a couple of days if the score is too low.
Now, this was one extreme example, but usually it's softer and not officially written down. Journalists generally know what will get them blacklisted. And low metacritic scores are at the top of the list, especially when dealing with the biggest publishers who know how to bring the pain.
Nolan Carter
>When you're reviewing a 5/10 game but they paid for a high score
Angel Gonzalez
shotted for posterity. good job, dude.
Andrew Turner
It did though
Brody Sanders
so what's happening is the body of the review is an actual review, but the score at the end reflects the publisher's wishes?
Zachary Barnes
Pretty much, it's almost as if the first bad reviews started trickling in and then EA started frantically contacting reviewers before they could lodge their scores.
John Morales
>It is literally the as if someone turned my dog's rancid week old vomit and shit combo into a video game. 9/10, almost perfect.
James Cruz
this
Colton Adams
...
Jonathan Peterson
and then the whole point is it's a win-win situation for reviewer and publisher. the reviewer gets to "keep" their """journalistic integrity""" and the publisher gets a flashy high number.
Jonathan Brooks
Keep in mind that the last round of reviews are generally a bit lower because they're independents who don't get paid by the publisher and don't get review copies. (This is true of almost all games, not just this turd).
Nicholas Phillips
Eh, it sort of makes me want to become a reviewer just to push against the trend. But would I become what I hate?
I have a render server, a microphone and a complete lack of social awareness - nothing but my own laziness is stopping me.
I know enough not to show my face.
Tyler Kelly
>those noname publications added to inflate aggregate scores lmao
William Brooks
Because the Mass Effect series has been around for a very long time and a lot of people enjoyed it, they're afraid of bashing their old friend. Like when you see one of your best friends smoking crack, you know it's wrong, but even while laying down the truth you can't be too aggressive on him
Jason Wilson
I thought the Multiplayer was the only GOOD thing about this shitheap because it's made by the same guys who made Mass Effect 3's multi? I mean the only reason people even liked ME3 was for the multi.
Ryder Edwards
>Two highest rated reviews are both in Spanish. Do you think they had better VA and writing?
Gavin Lopez
It's just a cheap wave based shooter though - it was tacky and boring as fuck in ME3.
Adrian Wilson
I respect you're opinion that you didn't liek it but the truth is that the multiplayer form ME3 was literally the only think holding the game up to any sort of praise.
No-one bought ME3 for bioware touch, they bought it for the outsourced team that knows how to program. It's the same thing with ME:A. The only people buying this game is for multiplayer.
Owen Allen
>people liking a thing I don't like MUST mean conspiracy Go "investigate" pizzagate some more, retard
Cameron Collins
The new mass effect is shit. We know it, they know it and EA knows it. All we can do is hope it loses money so that they set it back on the shelf for a reboot.
Camden Hall
>you're >liek And I'm wrong for not wanting to play a wave shooter with paste eaters like this?
Isaac Stewart
cora's
Aiden Hall
>People handing out scores that are massively inconsistent with their reviews. >No user, don't call them out on it, you're the one at fault.
70 is too high for this crap. They are rating it so high because it's Mass Effect, not because it's good. This is like pretending that retarded kid is like everyone else. Obvious bias.
Michael Richardson
The reviews mean nothing to you people except to confirm your bias. If the reviews are high its paid shills but surprisingly 6 hours ago when the meracritic score was lower you faggots were creaming over all reviews. I mean the game us obviously flawed i havent played it yet so i dont know the exteng of it, but its clearly obvious the vocal majority just wants the game to crask and burn cause 5 years later they still cant get over me3 ending.
Camden Brooks
>better VA Probably not. >writing Maybe. Translators usually are encouraged to improve upon poorly written texts in the process of translating them. That doesn't mean NoA-tier "localization", just working on fluency and the like.
Of course, even if the writing was better, the plot, the animations and the gameplay wouldn't have improved one bit.
t. A translator
Christopher Clark
>Probably not. I don't know, the bar is pretty low.
It's totally because of ME3 and not at all because of the abysmal production quality evident from even the trial.
The key thing is the characters and writing - ME has always been strong entirely on its characters and your relationship with them - the entire cast is bland, poorly written and cringeworthy at every turn.
