Oh fanboys, is there no depth to which you won’t sink?
I’ve never understood allowing users to submit scores for games that aren’t yet released on sites such as MetaCritic, and this is a shining example of why, as apparently some people thought it would be a good idea to bury the user score of Gears of War 2 before it was even released.
MetaCritic Editor Marc Doyle himself responded to the ballot-stuffing of the otherwise-acclaimed game with a footnote waaaay down at the bottom:
My advice for our faithful users is to focus your attention on the Metascore for this game and not the thousands of user votes, most of which have been submitted before said users have played the game. This is a gaming community, and if people want to stuff the ballot box, there’s not much I can do at this point. When we upgrade the registration requirements for participation on the site in the near future, this type of thing won’t happen. We’ll post the full legitimate user reviews upon the game’s release. As always, thanks for using the site. — Metacritic
Speaking with 1up, he revealed that such a problem has not been “systematic,” only popping up recently for two other system-exclusive titles: Resistance 2 and LittleBigPlanet. As to the reason users are allowed to rate the game before its release?
Doyle says the issue stems from the site’s foundation. User reviews were allowed to be entered before a game’s release because they “wanted people who had legitimately played the game ahead of its release to post them.” Stacked on top of that was a desire for an easy sign-up process. “The founders were really interested in not having people sign up for a really huge registration process just so they can participate on the site,” Doyle said, adding, “Obviously that’s been exploited.” — 1up.com
Of course, they won’t sit idly by, as they do have some new ideas to implement. For example:
…an enhanced sign-up process that will now require users to enter more information than just an e-mail address in order to get an account and vote on MetaCritic. “Even before the enhanced registration portion, we’re going to disallow voting on games before release,” Doyle said. Speaking to the relative importance of user reviews on the site, Doyle stated, “Our primary product is the critic score. That’s what we control; that’s what we can certify.” He added that the site may look at new ways to highlight user reviews in the future as they develop better means of certifying that the user reviews are legitimate. Until these fixes are implemented, though, MetaCritic readers will simply have to deal with the fanboy flame war affecting the user review scores. — 1up.com
So, way to go, fanboys. You’ve gone and messed up a perfectly good thing, and have accomplished absolutely nothing whatsoever. You’re clearly the cream of society’s crop.
